Will meth-checks become the new norm for home buyers?

A growing number of prudent home buyers and landlords are going beyond traditional pre-purchase building, pest and asbestos inspections – they are also getting their homes drug-tested.

In homes that have gone undetected as meth labs or where there has been heavy use of the drug ice, chemical residue can seep into soft furnishing, carpets and even walls and ceilings, leaving unwitting new tenants or owners exposed to serious health risks.

“Pre-existing health conditions can be exacerbated,” Flinders University PhD researcher Jackie Wright said. “It can also cause breathing difficulty, asthma-type symptoms, behavioural changes, particularly in children, ADHD like behaviour, moodiness, trouble sleeping, vivid dreams and other chronic sleep issues, skin and eye irritation and more.”

She said children were more vulnerable to remaining residue, due to their smaller size and tendency to roll around on carpets and put toys and fingers in their mouth.

In a case in Victoria, two children tested positive for methamphetamine after their family had unknowingly spent more than a year living in a former drug lab that had never been cleaned properly.

While the council had informed the previous owner of their responsibility to have the property professionally decontaminated after it was uncovered by police, it was never remediated before it was sold to the unsuspecting family.

When the youngest son became ill and tests conducted at the property revealed a positive reading for meth, the family moved out, leaving their home and contaminated possessions behind.

High levels of drug residue on surfaces have been discovered in homes as long as two or three years after new tenants have moved in, Dr Wright said. There are many labs that go undiscovered, with Dr Wright estimating only about one in ten are busted by police.

“There would be well over 100,000 people nationally testing positive [for using methamphetamine] on any given day – that’s a lot of properties that could be contaminated,” forensic toxicologist Andrew Leibie said.

The company he works for, Safework Laboratories, had been approached by home buyers seeking pre-purchase inspections for drug contamination.

Leibie said drug-testing may need to be offered as part of pre-purchase inspections for home buyers and pointed to New Zealand where a growing number of buyers are requesting checks for contamination, which had prompted the creation of national standards for meth-testing.

Josh Marsden said his company, Meth Lab Cleaners Australia, gets a call-out at least every two days from residents and agents to check for traces of drugs in homes.

He noted while residents were issued with a notice to get their property decontaminated, there was no real process in place to stop them from selling or renting out their place.

“When you sell a property, you don’t need to get council permission,” Marsden said. “We quote a lot of [decontamination] jobs and the majority of them don’t go ahead.”

Marsden believes some owners who know or are worried about their homes being contaminated, don’t disclose this to real estate agents or change agents so the property can be sold without anyone knowing there’s an underlying problem.

Source: https://www.domain.com.au/news/will-methchecks-become-the-new-norm-for-prudent-home-buyers-20161011-gry47x/