While good protocols now recognize that officers involved in such raids should wear protective suits and breathing apparatus, and basic protective rigs are inexpensive, many smaller agencies still do not own or use such gear. Many officers involved in meth house raids tell stories of the "We all ran in with guns drawn ... then we all ran back out coughing" variety. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has developed standards for workers who handle dangerous chemicals, but following OSHA is not a requirement for local governments. Nor is Texas one of the states having an OSHA-like set of regulations for local governments to follow instead of the federal law. So, officer safety is left to each jurisdiction: some agencies are far-sighted enough to provide protective gear, and some are not yet at that level of development.

Nationwide, the most immediate risks are from fire and explosion. The Florida Department of Financial Services summarizes a survey they made as follows: "In Minnesota, as many as 25 firefighters and police officers were injured while responding to incidents related to meth labs. In Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Oregon and Washington, meth labs were responsible for 155 injuries, with more than half involving first responders, firefighters, EMTS, hospital personnel and police officers. In the Midwest, 28 firefighters battled a structural fire for hours after ignition in a suspected clandestine drug laboratory. One man, one woman, and three children were transported to the hospital for burn treatment. In addition, two paramedics, one firefighter and eight citizens were treated for inhalation of fumes and minor burns. According to published reports, firefighters had responded to the same location one week earlier for a report of smoke in the structure. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, clandestine laboratories were responsible for injuries to 79 emergency responders in 14 states between 1996 and 1999. In December 2004, four persons – including two children – were killed in Texas when a methamphetamine lab exploded. Estimates suggest that as many as 100 public safety officers have been injured while seizing meth labs over the past several years. (Source: Fire Chief Magazine, December)" Nationwide, about 30% of meth labs are discovered as a result of fire.

Officers and others at the scene are sometimes injured by immediate exposure to chemical releases, and some data on short-run chemical releases are available. The Centers for Disease Control, working with the 16-state (including Texas) Hazardous Substances Emergency Events Surveillance (HSEES) system has concluded that most of the chemical-related injuries at meth labs happen to police officers, based on data from 2000 through 2004: "Of the 1,791 meth events [i.e., meth-related chemical releases requiring clean-up] , 558 (31%) resulted in a total of 947 injured persons. Persons most frequently injured were police officers (531 [56%]) and members of the general public (314 [33%]). Median age of victims was 32 years (range: 1 - 72 years). The 947 victims had a total of 1,371 reported injuries, most frequently respiratory irritation (531 [39%]), headache (348 [26%]), eye irritation (109 [8%]), and burns (104 [8%]). A total of 274 (29%) victims were treated at hospitals but not admitted, 68 (7%) were treated at hospitals and admitted, and 62 (7%) were treated at the scene; nine (1%) died." [Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, April 15, 2005].

But chemical releases, fires and explosions are not the full story and, in the final analysis, may not even be the major sources of risk. Back in mid-2005, Debbie Dujanovic, a reporter for KSL Television & Radio in Salt Lake City, did a series of three stories on the deteriorating health of officers who had been involved in meth raids. Her series can be read and viewed beginning at http://tv.ksl.com/index.php?nid=66&sid=201989, and you should take a few minutes to watch the short videos. She details the stories of the fifty-or-so current and former police officers she had located in Utah who were heavily involved in meth house raids themselves or in the disposal of the chemicals seized and their unexpected major health problems, including cancers, mysterious diseases and heart disease. In some cases she documents unexpected disease-related deaths. One quote from Salt Lake City Officer Lisa Pascadlo sums up the situation in encountering meth labs on the street: "You basically have a hazardous waste dump. There’s no other way to explain it." Officer Pascadlo was commenting not on the older cooking operations, but on smaller, often mobile cooks, including those that an officer might meet unexpectedly when popping the trunk on a suspect’s car.

The point of the Utah stories is that many officers are being exposed to dangerous chemicals and later reporting bad health effects. The commonsense of the cases suggests that the health issues are a result of the exposure. But not so fast. The truth in Utah has apparently been that these officers have generally failed to have their illnesses accepted as being workplace related for insurance purposes. It has apparently been fairly normal there for workman’s compensation claims to be denied. Moreover, should the officer become too ill to work, he or she often no longer has access to affordable health insurance and may eventually sees personal savings exhausted paying for medical attention.

Proving that a particular disease was "caused" by exposure to a particular chemical can be very difficult. Consequently, proving that the illness was incurred as a result of exposures experienced in the line of duty may require the services of extremely good attorneys. There generally is very limited test data showing the result of exposure to particular chemicals on humans. In fact, very few of the 80,000-or-so chemical compounds we routinely encounter have actually been tested for their human impact, so it would be difficult to even locate evidence to begin to prove that a certain exposure caused a particular disease or cancer. Moreover, the "chemical cocktail" of meth labs -- and chemical dumps -- makes the situation even more difficult for an officer trying to  prove that exposure resulted in the disease. Nor are we likely to develop useful test data anytime soon, given the ghoulish process that one would have to undertake to run the tests. About a year ago, for instance, the Environmental Protection Agency, under congressional pressure, dropped its plan to intentionally expose a group of low income children to pesticides over a two year period. The New York Times reported on April 9, 2005: "A recruiting flier for the program, called Children's Environmental Exposure Research Study, or Cheers, offered $970, a free camcorder, a bib and a T-shirt to parents whose infants or babies were exposed to pesticides if the parents completed the two-year study. The requirements for participation were living in Duval County, Fla., having a baby under 3 months old or 9 to 12 months old, and ‘spraying pesticides inside your home routinely,’ according to the flier. The study was being paid for in part by the American Chemistry Council, a chemical company trade group that includes pesticide makers." That chill running down your spine is a reminder that we won’t be developing such test data anytime soon. We won't be learning about human exposure to chemicals through intentional exposure. 

Insurance claim cases that have tried to rely on warnings of possible diseases printed in Material Safety Data Sheets have usually not been successful. Defense attorneys are usually able to show that the disease may have been contracted in some other way, was common in the plaintiff’s family, could have been the result of non-job-related environmental exposure, or raise other legitimate questions about the diseases’ cause.

California and a couple of other states have taken another approach. Their laws include what are called "Peace Officer Worker’s Compensation Presumptions," which require the states’ workers compensation programs to presume that certain illnesses, including cancer and heart problems, are caused by exposure to chemicals while the officer was on the job. Rather than prove that the illness was caused by the chemical, the officer simply has to show that he or she was exposed to a known carcinogen while on the job. If Texas currently has such law, we can't find it. 

So, the bottom line is probably this: if an officer who has been exposed repeatedly to chemicals in meth house raids develops some major health problem, he or she may have a very tough time proving that a later illness was caused by the exposure. Workers compensation claims may well be denied. If the officer is too ill to continue working, then he or she may be faced with paying high post-employment health insurance premiums or even with having to pay for medical attention out of savings.

Everything said thus far about officers being exposed to toxic chemicals in meth raids also goes for officers kicking around the illegal dumps of Texas, encountering Lord-knows what chemicals in the process.

Several things can be concluded from all this:

(1) Officers working around dangerous chemicals should get and use appropriate protective gear. This is not about being macho by not using the suits and respirators; it's just good sense to use the protective gear. Officers not use to working in this equipment may have to train and practice awhile before it becomes comfortable. This is an important enough issue to push for a policy supporting using this gear in your agency, if its not already a policy;

(2) Officers working around dangerous chemicals should work through the exact insurance ramifications of what would happen if they were to contract a debilitating disease that required them to stop working. You owe this to your family. Risk-based personal planning is required; 

(3) Environmental enforcement officers need to stop thinking that they are chemically bullet-proof. The big danger associated with environmental enforcement may not be from gunshot, fires, disease or explosion. The big risk may well be from the repeated exposure to toxic materials so common to this line of work; and,