Meth-labs and HI's liability

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1

Originally Posted By: Caoimh?n P. Connell
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A question of liability for Home Inspectors ? (Food for thought).


The production of illegal drugs in homes and other real estate (hotels, motels, commercial storage sheds, etc), has hit an all time high in the US. These areas are known as ?clan-labs? or ?meth-labs? although the distinction is nebulous and arbitrary.

It should be common knowledge by now, but for those who may not know, meth-labs leave behind a legacy of chemical residues in a home to which the new occupants may be exposed. These residues can remain even after extensive cleaning efforts by the home seller or commercial housecleaning firms. For example, in one residence which had been ?thoroughly cleaned? by a commercial firm ? twice - I found 12,000 ?g of methamphetamine per 100 cm2 of surface area, which is 24 thousand times higher than the permissible limit. The combined surface area of the contaminated building item was only 180 square feet (approximately 13 feet on a side), yet at this contamination level, that was equivalent to 200 street doses whose $$ value was a whopping $10,000 worth of methamphetamine residue.

The list of hazardous residues left behind in the ?new? home can be lengthy and very impressive including mercury, lithium, iodine, acids, caustics, cocaine, LSD, and THC. More troubling still are the more active threats (booby traps, bombs, needles and guns in walls, etc).

These clan-labs leave behind tell-tale signs of their existence which often are visibly present to the trained eye during a walkthrough. What liability does an Home Inspector incur if they miss those indicia, and the new buyers move into a home and are subsequently exposed to this soup of contaminants?

I have been fielding a lot of calls from Home Inspectors and realtors alike who?s clients are concerned that the house they are buying may once have contained a meth-lab. Do you have language in your contracts that explicitly cover your liability regarding this issue? Should you? Does your state have regulations that cover meth-labs?

On Jan 19 of this year, the State of Colorado became the first state in the Union to promulgate a scientifically based meth-lab standard. The regulation became effective March 30, and requires a property owner to clean the home using specific cleanup protocol, and meet very specific cleanup standards. Notification of the meth-lab can come from anyone who is a cognizant professional.

If a meth-lab gets missed, and the buyer purchases the home, under the new Colorado regulation, the buyer would be on the hook for the entire cleanup. Their means to relief would be to subrogate their liability via third party law suits. Who do you imagine would be named in that law suit?

In my area, the local Home Inspector?s professional affiliation has asked me to give a lecture on meth-labs, and their indicia; which I will be doing (for free) at the end of June. The reason I was asked was because I have been working meth-labs for a number of years, and was on two of the legislative teams which assembled Colorado?s new regulation (I was the primary author of the actual protocols for sampling and contamination assessment). If you are interested, those protocols are available in PDF form from the State of Colorado web site. The assessment protocols of which I was the primary author are found as Appendix A and Attachment to Appendix A of the regulation:
http://www.cdphe.state.co.us/op/regs/boardofhealth/101403methlabrules.pdf

The supporting criteria document is located at http://www.cdphe.state.co.us/hm/methlabcleanuplevelsupport.pdf

Colorado?s complete meth-lab page is at
http://www.cdphe.state.co.us/hm/methlab.asp

We have just uploaded our forensic meth-lab page at
http://members.aol.com/fiosrach/meth.html and you can find additional information there.

Just food for thought?

Cheers,
Caoimh?n P. Connell
Forensic Industrial Hygienist

http://members.aol.com/fiosrach/main.html

(The opinions expressed here are exclusively my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect my professional opinion, opinion of my employer, agency, peers, or professional affiliates. The above post is for information only and does not reflect professional advice and is not intended to supercede the professional advice of others.)

AMDG

2

Originally Posted By: dplummer
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Is there anyway to clean up a meth lab house? Or is it demo time? Doug

3

Originally Posted By: dplummer
This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.


I posted to quickly. I’ve started to read the links you provided. Any additional info would be great! Thanks Doug

4

Originally Posted By: Caoimh?n P. Connell
This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.


Hello Doug ?


I?m glad you found the additional info. Meth-lab clean up can range from a couple of hundred bucks (carpet cleaning and a good old wipe-down) to the value of the property. I personally have seen $60,000 clean-ups.

The degree of contamination, and thus the cost of remediation, must be decided on a case by case basis.

Total losses can exceed $100,000 in a heart-beat, if the municipality slaps a no-occupancy order on the property and forces the occupant to ?prove? all of their chattels are clean. In a case like this, the occupant/property owner typically chooses to allow their chattels to be destroyed since it doesn?t make sense to spend, for example, $300 to confirm that a $300 couch is not contaminated.

Most states do not have particularly stringent clean-up standards.

Cheers,
Caoimh?n P. Connell
Forensic Industrial Hygienist
http://members.aol.com/fiosrach/main.html

(The opinions expressed here are exclusively my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect my professional opinion, opinion of my employer, agency, peers, or professional affiliates. The above post is for information only and does not reflect professional advice and is not intended to supercede the professional advice of others.)

5

Originally Posted By: dplummer
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Hi Caoimhin, In a typical meth lab clean up how many air samples and/or tape lift samples would a hygienist perform? Also, would the use of Hepa type air scrubbers be effective in this type of application ? Thanks for your help! Doug

6

Originally Posted By: Caoimh?n P. Connell
This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.


Good morning, Doug -


Thanks for the opportunity to address some questions.

Each state has different requirements. The requirements in the state of Colorado are the first scientifically based cleanup standards. No state should ever allow air samples to be relied upon in meth-lab assessments, since they are not capable of speaking to the issue of risk, in this case. Similarly, tape lift sampling methods have no application in this type of chemical sampling.

Rather, wipe samples and vacuum samples are more typical. Starting on Page 13 of the Colorado State Regulations, I describe both methods and the required number of each. When I prepared this section of the regulations, I drew upon the concepts already employed in PCB and lead cleanup and asbestos clearance sampling. The Colorado regs are at:

http://www.cdphe.state.co.us/op/regs/boardofhealth/101403methlabrules.pdf

In a nut shell, in Colorado, for close-out (final sampling), a minimum of five samples must be collected from a structure not exceeding 1,500 ft2 from strategic locations. One additional sample must be collected for every 500 ft2 greater than 1,500 ft2. So the total number of samples increases with the size of the house. Since each of the samples may be a composite, and no greater than five samples per composite are permitted, even for the minimum, a total of 25 locations may be wiped/vacuumed in the house.

Some states don?t require any sampling whatever.

Yes, HEPA filtration units are valuable in meth-lab remediation. In fact, the Colorado regs require the use of HEPA negative air machines during remediation.

Feel free to pursue the matter further.

Cheers,
Caoimh?n P. Connell
Forensic Industrial Hygienist

http://members.aol.com/fiosrach/main.html

(The opinions expressed here are exclusively my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect my professional opinion, opinion of my employer, agency, peers, or professional affiliates. The above post is for information only and does not reflect professional advice and is not intended to supercede the professional advice of others.)

AMDG

7

Originally Posted By: loconnor
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Hello Caoimh?n:


I was at the understanding that any kind of air filtration was not effective, since a majority of the residues existed in the walls, furniture floors, etc. So a scrub cleaning and/or replacements of furniture, building components, and other items would be the most effective methods for cleanup.

Also, are you familiar with any companies that provide lab anaysis kits for an HI to perform drug residue sampling? I have received emails from a company that offers this service. I would like to include this as an ancillary service to my current business. Would I be taking on too much liability?

Also, how would any one know if a house they are buying MAY be a former meth-lab?

Thank you for the information you provided above.

--
Larry
Western Michigan NACHI Chapter
http://www.w-michigan-nachi.org

"We confide in our strength
without boasting of it.
We respect that of others
without fearing it"
Thomas Jefferson

8

Originally Posted By: Mike Buettner
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The sampling is pretty straight forward and easily learned, the science is in the lab analysis. Be careful though, this is some nasty stuff. Aerotech P&K has a sampling kit. www.aerotechlabs.com

9

Originally Posted By: loconnor
This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.


Mike


Thank you for the information. Appreciate it.

--
Larry
Western Michigan NACHI Chapter
http://www.w-michigan-nachi.org

"We confide in our strength
without boasting of it.
We respect that of others
without fearing it"
Thomas Jefferson

10

Originally Posted By: Caoimh?n P. Connell
This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.


Hello Larry -


I?m afraid that I must disagree with Mike Buettner?s assertion, and point out that this is exactly the mind set that gets inspectors or investigators into trouble when sampling for environmental contaminants, whether they are meth-labs or moulds or PCBs.

There is a big difference between running around higgledy- pigledy collecting samples that won?t make sense, and developing a sampling strategy upon which one can draw tenable decisions that will hold up in court.

Regarding the statement: ?The sampling is pretty straight forward and easily learned, the science is in the lab analysis.? Having worked as a laboratory chemist for 10 years performing such analyses, and a forensic industrial hygienist collecting samples for 17 years, I can confidently say that the opposite is the truth ? I could teach a 12 year old the analysis procedure in a couple of days; but it would take me six months to a year to teach a college grad proper sampling theory.

The quality of analyses results to be used as data will be no better than the thought process behind the sampling plan that collected them. I will again refer to my discussion on DQOs at http://www.nachi.org/bbsystem/viewtopic.php?t=10216 since the points I made there are as valid in this discussion.

During the analysis, there are virtually no subjective or decision making steps ? typically these are quite literally cook-book directions. The sampling questions, unlike the analysis questions can involve very subjective concepts that would need to be articulable.

What is the probability of false negatives one is willing to accept? How many samples must be collected to ensure that that probability has been attained? How many field blanks will you collect to ensure that you will not have a false positive? How many field duplicates will you collect to ensure that your field samples are valid? How many spikes will you need? What is the minimum surface area needed to be collected at the a priori threshold limit that must be sampled based on the method detection limit? How will you guard against matrix modifiers? (Will you even be aware of when a matrix modifier is probable?) What kind of a sampling grid or sampling scheme will you employ to ensure that your positives (if present) will be representative? How many individual samples can go into a composite before you loose your required detection limit? All of these questions can only be answered by the professional in the field based on professional judgment and a sound grasp of statistics.

To underscore the above, just take a look at Colorado?s new meth-lab regulations. Compare the length and depth of the of discussion I put in there regarding sampling theory and protocol vs. analysis! Analysis is a no-brainer, the science is in the sampling. Similar examples exist elsewhere ? consider NIOSH methodologies: The typical method will be perhaps 3 or 4 pages long but the Occupational Exposure Sampling Manual is 150 pages long. A typical SW846 method is a couple of pages ? the sampling guide runs into chapters. In short, how one samples for ANYTHING, one samples for EVERYTHING; it's a concept, not a procedure.

Regarding kits. I make my own. That way I control the contamination, and the blanks. I am in a better position to testify as to the methods and materials. In the case of controlled substances, I merely use gauze and USP grade IPA; vacuum samples are collected using 37 mm MCE cassettes.

Just my thoughts having collected (and analyzed) tens of thousands of samples, and performed US EPA CLP RAS/SAS data validation for court; Mr. Buettner?s experience may be different.

Cheers,

Caoimh?n P. Connell
Forensic Industrial Hygienist
http://members.aol.com/fiosrach/main.html

(The opinions expressed here are exclusively my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect my professional opinion, opinion of my employer, agency, peers, or professional affiliates. The above post is for information only and does not reflect professional advice and is not intended to supercede the professional advice of others.)

AMDG

11

Originally Posted By: loconnor
This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.


Hello again Caoimh?n:


Thank you for taking the time to respond to my questions. However, I interpret your posts as saying to all home inspectors, that we should concentrate on our home inspection only, and leave the sampling of lead, radon, drug residue, and mold, to you and other professional industrial hygienists.

Am I correct in this assumption?

If I am doing a disservice to my client by performing these samplings, why are there so many "professional" labs pushing to offer this service to home inspectors. Albeit, most do offer courses on those particular subjects to ensure we understand what we are doing.

I offer water sampling, and have it tested through a local lab. It's a very simple procedure for extracting a sample. In your opinion, is this also an area we should avoid performing?

Your opinion is strongly requested on this entire sampling services we offer. Perhaps we need to rethink about offering these services, if we are. potentially, causing more problems then attempting to solve.

I look forward to your response.

Thank you again for sharing your professional expertise on these subjects.

Regards,

--
Larry
Western Michigan NACHI Chapter
http://www.w-michigan-nachi.org

"We confide in our strength
without boasting of it.
We respect that of others
without fearing it"
Thomas Jefferson

12

Originally Posted By: Caoimh?n P. Connell
This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.


Good morning, Larry ?


These discussions, in one form or another, are the very same discussions I have on other fora including (sadly) industrial hygiene fora. Because the truth is just because someone is a CIH no longer conveys a certain degree of competency in industrial hygiene. Therefore, many CIHs actually don?t know much about industrial hygiene (See for example my letter in the ABIH journal from June of 1998 - http://www.aiha.org/TheAcademy/html/june98.htm).

Home Inspectors can provide valuable assessments for mould, lead, asbestos, radon, meth-labs etc, in the residential market. But, like an industrial hygienist, they should be performing the work correctly, based on sound science. Otherwise, in my opinion, they are providing a disservice to the client, and bringing disrepute on their profession. That disservice can sometimes land them (or their client) in court crossing swords with other professionals, like me.

You mentioned water testing. I think it?s a good idea, but I presume that you would not invent your own sampling and analysis protocol, but rather follow national consensus guidelines for water testing (such as HUD). Similarly, the Home Inspectors whom I have met who perform lead testing follow the HUD guidelines and do a fine job; ASTM guidelines for Phase I inspections, and EPA guidelines for asbestos sampling. Unfortunately, these too had to be hammered out by the science guys who already developed the DQOs and sampling requirements for us to ensure that good inspections (or at least standardized cook-book inspections) were conducted.

However, for mould, there are no such guidlines and therefore, in my opinion, unless one can identify by sight alone the genus of a common mould and can sit down and explain to an homeowner the difference between a lipopolysaccharide and chitin; the difference between a lognormal distribution and Gaussian distribution, or why they are using a potato dextrose agar instead of blood agar (and why a CFU from one lab report does NOT equal a CFU from the same report or another report), that pereson should not be performing mould sampling (any more than I should be out performing home inspections - GAD! THAT would be a disaster!)

I would say that although 100% of the mould sampling I have seen from Home Inspectors has been improperly done, a whopping 80% of the mould sampling performed by fellow Industrial Hygienists has similarly been improperly done, and about 20% of IAQ sampling by industrial hygienists has been improperly done.

In some states, only industrial hygienists may perform certain types of work in asbestos, lead, meth-labs, etc. However, in those states wherein the market remains open, an Home Inspector can successfully compete, and provide a valuable service. But, it is my opinion that service should not be provided if the professional doesn?t really understand the area and only has a phoney-baloney three day wonder certificate as evidence of competency.

Just because kits are out there doesn?t mean that they permit one to perform the work. A mould sampling kit merely collects the sample, the kit and the lab that analyzes it, does NOT provide data. Data comes from the application of scientific methodology, not from a laboratory and certainly not from a plastic bag.

My objective with these posts is to provide clarity, bust myths, and inject a scientific perspective. That?s all.

I hope that addresses your question.

Cheers,
Caoimh?n P. Connell
Forensic Industrial Hygienist

(The opinions expressed here are exclusively my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect my professional opinion, opinion of my employer, agency, peers, or professional affiliates. The above post is for information only and does not reflect professional advice and is not intended to supercede the professional advice of others.)

AMDG

13

Originally Posted By: eporter
This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.


One and all,


This is one of the most educational threads I have read in a LONG time.


Caoimh?n P. Connell, thank you for posting!

--
------------------------------------------------
"Inspecting this home like I'm buying it myself."

Ed Porter
Cornerstone Home Inspection Services, Inc.
Grand Haven, MI

14

Originally Posted By: dplummer
This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.


I’ll 2cd that! Doug

15

Originally Posted By: phinsperger
This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.


Caoimh?n P. Connell wrote:

These clan-labs leave behind tell-tale signs of their existence which often are visibly present to the trained eye during a walkthrough.

loconnor wrote:
Also, how would any one know if a house they are buying MAY be a former meth-lab?

So what are the visible signs that home inspectors should/could be looking for?



.

--
.


Paul Hinsperger
Hinsperger Inspection Services
Chairman - NACHI Awards Committee
Place your Award Nominations
here !
16

Originally Posted By: Caoimh?n P. Connell
This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.


Hello Paul -


Depending on the kind of meth-lab and the degree of cleaning (if any), and cosmetic painting to cover-up stains, etc, some properties appear to be pristine and others are completely trashed.

Nevertheless, even for the pristine properties, there can be clues left over:

1) Unusual quantities of "cat litter" scattered in the yard

2) Yellow staining/ghosting

3) Persistent odour of urine

4) Unusually high utility bills

5) Unusual repairs/ structural modifications

Frequently, neighbours will drop by to tell you of a few stories about the house, and it?s frequent visitors.

Cheers,
Caoimh?n P. Connell
Forensic Industrial Hygienist
http://members.aol.com/fiosrach/main.html

(The opinions expressed here are exclusively my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect my professional opinion, opinion of my employer, agency, peers, or professional affiliates. The above post is for information only and does not reflect professional advice and is not intended to supercede the professional advice of others.)

AMDG