Utah among top states for meth use
Utah and Idaho are up near the top of statistical lists for smoking meth. Because of this trend, contaminated homes are considered unsafe until they are cleared out.
Only three days after moving into a Smithfield trailer home, occupant George
Martinez was informed by the Bear River Health Department that his house was
contaminated with methamphetamine.
Martinez came home from Iraq on Jan. 22 and planned on living in his sister’s
trailer home she bought about 10 years ago.
A week before he moved in, he started pulling out carpet and painting walls.
After he’d put in new carpet and began moving in, he was told to leave.
“I moved in, and about three days later I got a call from the health department,”
Martinez said. “I’d started working, dropped a lot of money into it and all of the sudden they were like, ‘You’ve got to get out,’ and I was just, like, awestruck.”
He said he lost more than $3,600 in remodeling and repairs to the house. The dead bolt was broken when Martinez moved in, which he used as proof of a break-in, so his insurance company will pay for the damage.
The break-in to the home happened sometime around November to January, when the home was not rented to anyone. Both he and his sister were unaware of the damage from the drugs until the health department came.
The initial methamphetamine reading in the house was 0.46 micrograms per 100 square centimeters, which was well above the state standard of 0.1 micrograms per 100 square centimeters. After talking with the health department, Martinez was able to get the house re-tested.
“(The heath department) gave me a little bit of time to do a re-test on the
facility, so I hired a third-party contractor from here in Cache Valley to come and check the facility. “The (second) check of the facility show that there was meth in the facility, but it was a lot lower than what the health department had previously told me.”
Dwellings are tested by wiping surfaces in the home and then taking them to the lab for analysis of the level of contamination, said Randy Wilde, an environmental health scientist.
“When the tests come back, the reading on the homes are normally non-detect.”
Before decontamination, home testing levels vary from one microgram, and the majority comes back to two to seven micrograms per 100 square centimeters, “which is substantially higher than what the state standard is,” Wilde said.
Martinez has since found contractors in Idaho to help him clean out the house.
Homes can be decontaminated having the owner contract with a state-certified decontamination specialist. The decontamination specialists go through a
procedure to try to chemically change the meth, Wilde said.
Martinez said this is strange to happen in Utah of all places because he has been to six different cities around the world in the past six years.
“The strange thing is, all these places I’ve been, never once have I had a
problem with any kind of health-related issue to where I couldn’t live in a
facility. I’ve been to different countries, different states, and it just seems like the problems are here,” he said.
Nine dwellings are currently closed from Box Elder County to Cache County, and more than 22 dwellings have closed in the past, Wilde said.
Methamphetamine causes inhalation symptoms such as coughing, irritation to throat and nose and some links to chemical pneumonia, Wilde said. There can also be neurological symptoms such as headache or nausea while others have no immediate symptoms, he said.
“Because science has not been tracking methamphetamine for the past 20 years, long-term health defects are hard to tell,” Wilde added. “We’re hopeful it’s nothing, but because you don’t know, you air on the side of caution.”
If people are concerned that their apartment or home may be contaminated they can call the Health Department and for $150.00 they can get their home tested.
An emerging trend is to have people test homes before buying real estate.
“We’re getting a lot of requests from potential renters potential buyers of real estate even some loan officers and appraisers are showing interest in having homes tested prior to real estate transactions,” Wilde said.
-ranaebang@cc.usu.edu