Homes Contaminated with Ice (meth)

So what happens when you buy a home or move into a new rental and the previous resident had smoked meth?

If meth has been smoked even once in a home, you will find traces, and it will stay there unless it’s properly clean.

Now let me make this very clear, if meth is smoked once in a home it does not mean the home has to be professionally cleaned because the level of contamination will not exceed the Governments Recommended Level of 0.5µm/100cm².

This type of contamination is a problem to both home buyers and tenants simply because users of ice cover such a variety of professions, from Doctors, Dentists, Truck Drivers, Contractors, Welfare Recipients, Blue Collar Workers, Employees, The Unemployed to just about anyone. It has just been said that 25% of meth users are white collar workers!

If a user smokes twice a week it will take a while for the contamination levels to become unacceptable, however if 3 or 4 people get together 2 or 3 nights a week to smoke the drug then levels will reach the unacceptable level a lot quicker. Then we have the users who are using every day.

Unlike cigarette smokers who now opt to smoke outside on the porch, Crystal meth smokers don’t want to be seen by neighbours so stay indoors, the smoke is odourless and colourless, meaning it can be smoked in one room while people in the next wouldn’t know. Also it leaves no residue on walls or whatever it touches, it’s basically invisible, the only way to tell a home has had crystal meth smoked in it is to have it tested.

The chemicals found in the smoke include Red phosphorous, ephedrine, hydrochloric or muriatic acid and sodium hydroxide.

When the smoke touches any porous material the chemicals are sucked into the material where they revert to a crystal, over time the gases are expelled back into the air within the home, they will then contaminate the properties contents, and anyone that brushes against the contaminated material (walls, carpets etc) is likely to become contaminated themselves.

Many of these chemicals, like those from a meth lab, are absorbable through the skin. They get into the blood vessels directly beneath the skins surface.

So how many children are crawling around on carpets, brushing up against walls and putting things into their mouths that are contaminated through a meth user smoking within the home?

This link will take you to a meth smoking experiment titled “Methamphetamine Contamination on Environmental Surfaces Caused by Simulated Smoking of Methamphetamine”. The project was conducted in Thornton, Colorado USA. The following excerpt is taken from the experiment:

“Our methodology of “smoking” the methamphetamine was suggested by members of the North Metro Drug Task Force in Thornton, CO after interviewing drug users in the Denver Metropolitan Area. A total of four separate “smokes” were conducted in the motel room on the tabletop. The first two smokes consisted of using a methamphetamine pipe filled with 100 mg of methamphetamine. The methamphetamine had been manufactured in a previous controlled cook and had been analyzed by GC/MS and found to be 91% methamphetamine. This level of purity is considered to be higher than most “street” methamphetamine, which is reportedly less than 50% pure. The third “smoke” was conducted using the pipe and a 250 mg amount of methamphetamine. The fourth “smoke” was conducted using a hot plate with an aluminium plate holding 2000 mg of methamphetamine. The first two “smokes” were considered to be commonly used amounts of methamphetamine while the last two “smokes” were designed to provide information on the results of a large number of “smoking” sessions”.

Conclusions:

Based on the information that we have obtained during this study, the following conclusions can be made:

• The smoking of methamphetamine in a structure results in airborne methamphetamine being released into the environment.
• The airborne levels will depend upon how much methamphetamine is smoked and the efficiency of the smoker’s technique in capturing the drug and depositing it in the lungs.
• An average smoke involving approximately 100 mg of methamphetamine will likely result in airborne methamphetamine levels ranging from 37ug/m3 to 131ug/m3 in the air. These airborne levels will likely result in average surface deposition levels in the vicinity of the smoke that approach 0.02ug/100cm2. As the number of smokes increase or the total amount of methamphetamine smoked increases, the levels will increase.
• The levels of methamphetamine found on surfaces within a house where it has only been smoked and not manufactured, will likely be much lower than in a residence where it has been manufactured.
• If methamphetamine has been smoked in a residence, it is likely that children present within that structure will be exposed to airborne methamphetamine during the smoke and to surface methamphetamine after the smoke.   

Makes for interesting reading. Here’s that link again.

The 50% purity of the meth on the street mentioned in the experiment is not relevant today as the meth on the street in Australia has increased in purity since 2010. Now the purity of ice on Australian streets is around 80% and it’s a lot cheaper than in 2010.

So how many people in Australia are smoking Ice?

An article written in The Medical Journal (Aug 2016) titled “Estimating the number of regular and dependant methamphetamine users in Australia, 2002-2014” said that “Researchers and law enforcement officials have disagreed about whether its use has increased; household survey data on the prevalence of use in the past year and surveys of drug users have been interpreted as showing that methamphetamine use has, in fact, been stable”.

However in July 2016 a 2 week blitz on drunk drivers in Liverpool NSW found more drivers under the influence of ice than alcohol. In some western NSW country towns every third car stopped has a driver affected by ice.

Now in March 2017 a report from the ACIC (Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission) titled “National Wastewater Drug Monitoring Program 2017” has found large amounts of ice is being used across Australia. This type of analysis is being used because the strengths of wastewater analysis include that it is in near real-time, it is non-intrusive and is able to measure average drug use in both large and small populations.

The average figures for Australia, specifically for methamphetamine are quite amazing. In the following figures taken from the report, 1 dose/hit = 30mg.

33	hits per 1000 people per day
12,045	hits per 1000 people per year
24,309,330	Australia’s 2016 population
1000	Divided by 1000 (1 group)
24,309	Groups of 1000 people
12045	Times, hits per 1000 people per year
292,805,880	30mg hits per year

12 doses for every Australian (Man Women and Child) per year, or 1 per month.

That puts the 903kg of ice seized in Melbourne on Wednesday 5^th April into some sort of perspective when they estimated there were 9 million hits involved.

But now we have a discrepancy between what the ACIC call a hit (30mg) and the police call a hit (0.1 gm or 100 mg).

You would think the authorities would use a standard weight when undertaking reports and estimating the number of ice hits in a large seizure. Either way I’ll leave it up to you the reader to decide whether the results of the wastewater analysis are alarming or not.

And as a result of the above information you can form a decision as to whether there is a problem with contaminated homes in Australia when looking to purchase or rent.

Please contact us at enquiry@methtesting.com.au if you have any queries regarding Meth Testing.