Health Departments Role The Health Department's role in the decontamination of drug lab sites is to ensure that environmental contamination does not pose a threat to public health
after a lab bust has taken place. The Health Department also helps property owners and cleanup contractors with the following:
Provide technical assistance
Help interpret state and local rules and regulations
Locate approved cleanup contractors
Provide fact sheets
Confirm that the decontamination procedure
meets state and local guidelines.
Answer Questions!
For more information call (253) 798-6566 or (253) 798-4782. |
"Volatile chemicals and disregard for safety can turn homes, motel rooms and even cars into hazardous waste sites." (Meth: A year in hell, Everett Herald, February 11, 2002) The intent of this section is to show how all of us are being affected by meth. Though we won’t all have a direct encounter with a meth user, all of us are paying to clean up meth dump sites. All the processes of meth production use a variety of chemicals including explosives, solvents, metals, salts, and corrosives. During the drug manufacturing process (cooking), additional compounds and by-products are produced. The fumes, vapors, and spillage associated with cooking can be toxic. The waste products are routinely spilled onto the ground, polluting soil and water systems or left behind where unsuspecting people discover these waste chemicals. Under RCW 69.50.511 the Department of Ecology is responsible for “securing a contractor to identify, clean-up, store, and dispose of suspected hazardous substances…” 
"'There are five pounds of waste for every one pound of meth manufactures' said the federal official. 'We're seeing chemicals dumped behind waterways, abandoned wells and septic tanks, which are polluting the water tables.'" (Meth on the Reservation, Tacoma reporter, November 8, 2001) "Chemicals are often just dumped on the ground to seep into soil and water. And then there's the fire danger. The recent discovery of one lab in Ashford closed the entire 26,000 acre Tahoma State Forest." (Meth Labs in forests need snuffing out, Bellingham Herald, May 21, 2001) "It's a record no region wants, but Yakima County may have hosted the largest methamphetamine lab ever discovered in the state. ...Three 10-acre parcels of rocky range land in the hills west of Yakima are yielding an alarming array of waste, said Mark Layman, a cleanup expert in the state Department of Ecology." (Meth Lab May Set Dubious State Record, Yakima Herald Republic, October 21, 2000) |
