Former meth labs can be filthy and dangerous to clean. (Photo by Katie@! via Flickr)

As John Fox stood outside a house in Bloomington, Minn., dressed in a hooded white jumpsuit with a respirator dangling from his neck, a disheveled man darted out from behind a nearby dumpster and approached him with an urgent question.

“Is Tom around?” he said, referring to the home’s previous renter.

“No,” Fox replied, “Tom’s in jail.”

“Oh,” the man said as his face dropped in disappointment. “Well is there anyone around here that can help me out with getting something, you know?”

Fox knew exactly what the man was looking for. He and his colleagues at Landmark Environmental were cleaning a former meth lab in rural Minnesota, a house that was used to cook crystal methamphetamine. He sent the man away.

Across the country, hundreds of meth lab remediation contractors like Fox spend their days in other people’s homes, breathing from respirators and painstakingly wrapping furniture and personal items in sheets of plastic to haul out to the garbage. They must clean every inch of former meth labs in order to protect property owners, who may be unaware that their houses were used to cook up the toxic, addictive brew.

“Nine times out of 10 it’s not the drug users’ property — it’s a rental” said Dave Ammons of Eastern Oregon Environmental Recovery in Pendleton, Ore.

The most recent U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency statistics show there were 6,783 meth labs across the country in 2008, most of which require the services of technicians like Fox to clean them up in order for the property to be listed for sale. Though the number of meth labs across the country decreased from its all-time high of 17,356 in 2003, meth lab remediation remains a steady industry.

Methamphetamine can remain in tiny particles in the most remote corners of a house, and while no federal laws require meth lab remediation, 26 states have statutes that outline the maximum particle levels at former meth labs, according to Deb Grimm of the Montana Department of Environmental Quality. Montana, for instance, has guidelines about how clean a house must be in order to be listed for sale. In Colorado, any property that housed a meth lab is listed as condemned until it has been remediated by a certified contractor. Traces of meth can live for years in a house, so multiple sessions of meth lab remediation are sometimes necessary.

Indeed, although the number of new property cleanup requests is down, requests for meth lab remediation training remain steady. “A meth lab home never gets well,” said Nick Gromicko of the International Association of Certified Home Inspectors. “So you have to keep testing, and it will always be there. Meth, on its own, doesn’t diminish over time.”

Crystal methamphetamine contains dangerous chemicals such as ammonia, benzyl chloride, ethanol, hydrochloric acid and sulfuric acid. These chemicals are combined in homes where meth is cooked to create small crystals that can be smoked, injected or snorted to get an extremely addictive high.

“The abuse of methamphetamine — a potent and highly addictive psychostimulant — is a very serious problem in the United States,” according to a 2006 study by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. It can lead to “devastating” medical, psychological and social consequences and adverse health effects. And it “can infuse whole communities with new waves of crime, unemployment, child neglect or abuse, and other social ills,” the report said.

Fox was a hydrogeologist who mainly worked on environmental protection issues such as decontaminating toxic waste sites or Superfund sites. Then in 2000, he got a call to help clean up a meth lab in a hotel in Elk River, Minn.

“I agreed to help with the investigation and found tons of chemicals in the hotel,” Fox said. “It was so bad that they ended up knocking down the entire building, and I couldn’t believe how contaminated everything was since the meth lab started.”

Since then, Fox estimates he has cleaned up more than 500 meth labs across the Midwest. The work is physically and emotionally exhausting.

“It’s the same thing, same place, rough life, stupid people,” Fox said. “After work I come home, get in the bathtub, grab a beer and try to wash it off mentally and physically.”

Although he gets death threats and has to deal with some creepy people, Fox said one of the toughest parts of his job is seeing evidence of neglected children.

“There are guns with ammunition and syringes laying around,” he said. “Lots of times, we’ll find things like pot and heroin, and there are kids living there, and you just feel the neglect in the house,” he said. “The kids were clearly born with potential, and the parents just squander that away.”
Fox regrets his decision to enter the business. “I would have been perfectly happy not being exposed to these people,” he said.

In addition to the shady people and dirty houses, experts say cleaning up a former meth lab is just plain hard work. Contractors have to remove everything from a house, then sift through clothing, food and garbage looking for traces of the drug.

So why do Fox and many others get started in the meth lab remediation business?

“The reason we do it is the money, and for an average house, the fee is between $5,000 to $10,000 to clean,” said Dana Rickers, who does meth lab remediation work for the Clean Source in Jenison, Mich. “It can be scary, and you never feel very comfortable when you’re there.”

Contractors can command up to $30,000 per property; the landlord must pay the bill.

Nick Hodgdon of Crime Scene Cleaners Inc. in Denver said the reward in cleaning up meth labs usually comes when property owners can get their homes back.

Hodgdon was a foreign correspondent for a Belgian media company before deciding he needed a change of occupation. He heard about crime scene and meth lab remediation and took a training class in California in 2003 to get certified. He quickly learned how rough the business could be.

“Imagine being in a full bodysuit and wrapping an entire refrigerator in plastic in a completely air-conditioned house and taking it outside,” Hodgdon said. “The conditions are pretty awful. There are respiratory infections and other dangerous chemicals that can hurt you.” Still, the money is too good to pass up, he said. He makes from $10,000 to $30,000 per property.

“It keeps me busy, and there’s really never a dull day at the office,” he said. As for the drug addicts who keep him employed, Hodgdon said he doesn’t really think about their situations too much.

Both Hodgdon and Fox said they often find personal items like diaries and photos of the people who once occupied the meth labs they clean.

“I see pictures of them around the houses,” Hodgdon said. “They look like normal, successful, happy people before they started using it.”