Past Drug Lab Raids May Be Spawning Cancer

PORTLAND, Ore. — Police take no chances when they raid methamphetamine laboratories, protecting themselves in gear that makes them look like astronauts. But it wasn’t always that way.

And now, officers who gathered evidence in the early 1980s at labs where the drug known as “speed” was cooked are getting sick.

“For years and years we went into these labs with no protection,” said a longtime Portland police officer who suffers from a type of cancer called non-Hodgkins lymphoma. “We’d come out and we’d be coughing and lightheaded and have skin rashes and burns.

“One of the officers used to wear latex gloves to the labs, but the chemicals would just eat them away and the gloves would flop back.

“We used to laugh because there are no old meth cooks; some in their late 40s looked 70, their teeth gone, their brains fried. We used to say, ‘Hey, this person doesn’t look so good.’ ”

Authorities knew that methamphetamine “cooks” often become horribly sick and begin to resemble human skeletons by the time they are arrested. Police and firefighters who join in on raids at meth labs began using protective gear in the mid-1980s, but the knowledge that short-term exposure could have long-term effects is dawning gradually.

Portland, because it had an early concentration of meth labs, is grappling with a problem that has not yet been studied and quantified nationally.

That would be difficult because many of the exposures occurred long ago and the people who were exposed did not keep journals of their activities in meth labs, said Brad Sant, director of hazardous material training for the International Assn. of Firefighters in Washington.

“People are raising questions,” Sant said. “Firefighters call here and say, ‘I’m sick. I’ve got this rare cancer. Could it be that I was exposed at meth labs?’ ”

Dr. Brent Burton, who heads the occupational health program at Oregon Health Sciences University, stresses that a cause-and-effect link has not been scientifically established.

But the police pension board recently granted service-connected disability claims filed by the officer with lymphoma, one with multiple myeloma cancer and one with emphysema.

After an extensive investigation, the board traced the health problems of all three to their exposure to drug laboratory chemicals, which include dangerous metals, solvents and acids.

“In the research we have done, there is a strong indication their illnesses were caused by their exposure years ago before protective equipment was used,” said Ed Freeman, administrator of Portland’s Fire and Police Disability and Retirement Fund.

One of the three Portland officers agreed to speak, but none would be identified by name for fear that the publicity about their medical conditions would affect their careers. They all continue to work and have put off collecting disability.

The 52-year-old officer with lymphoma recalled one drug lab where the cooks couldn’t stand the noxious fumes.

“We got a call that two men had come screaming out of a house in southeast Portland,” he said. “One ran smack into a telephone pole and knocked himself out. The other guy lifted him up and carried him away.

“When we went inside we saw something cooking and giant bubbles were spewing out.”

In Redding, Calif., state Department of Justice Special Agent Mike Baker, 38, traces his cancer to unprotected raids on drug labs. He had a baseball-sized tumor removed from behind his heart and has returned to work.

“What happened to me was there’s no cancer in my family, but I got a real rare form of cancer,” he said. “In some of these labs the acid vapors were so thick in the air, they would burn your nasal membranes and you would get a bloody nose.”

Freeman said police officers often try to keep their medical problems to themselves and wait as long as possible to file disability claims.

“A lot of people for their own reasons are very private,” he said. “They want to work as long as they can.”