It is no secret that the use and manufacture of Methamphetamine has grown exponentially over the last decade.

Not only is it a direct health risk to those foolish enough to partake in the manufacture or use, but it also has knock on effects to others around them including future tenants or owners of the homes.

State Governments in Australia have made the move and introduced guidelines following the footsteps of our neighbour, New Zealand.

As an example, the Victorian State Government and EPA commissioned a report in 2009 from from Environmental Risk Sciences to investigate what “appropriate investigation levels would be relevant to the protection of human health and the environment to be used in the assessment and remediation of indoor and outdoor areas associated with clandestine drug laboratories.” (Full report here)

However, as stated these guidelines specifically look at houses that have been used in the manufacturing process, not just for the use of the drug as could be the case for many residential properties around Australia. This had led to a lot of ambiguity as to what really is a dangerous level and what homes actually need to be remediated, is it just if there has been the manufacturing of the drug on the premises?

Meth testing companies, such as MethScreen, use this guideline figure, which is 0.5 [tg/100 cm2 when conducting their testing on residential properties. This figure was determined and consequently adopted, by Environmental Risk Sciences stating:

“Most significant exposures occur by young children who spend more time in contact with residues during crawling and floor play. Also have greatest exposures during mouthing of hands and objects. The potential for exposure decreases with age. Hence investigation levels for residential surface residues have been based on exposured by young children”

An issue faced is that everyone reacts differently to the contamination, some showing no signs and others being adversely affected.

We sat down with CEO of Meth testing company MethScreen, Ryan Matthews to discuss the industry and what they face.

Watch the video below: