Meth-lab exposures may be killing police

Something other than bullets and car chases is silently killing Utah police officers.

KSL-TV located 42 officers who investigated methamphetamine labs in the 1980s and 1990s. Twenty-four have died or suffer chronic health problems, including asthma, lung diseases, strokes, autoimmune deficiencies and other mysterious ailments.

Ten younger than age 50 have cancer — a rate 177 times higher than the normal rate for that age group.

"It's a travesty," said former police officer Kelly Call, who fights a precancerous condition in his throat. "I'm honestly surprised there aren't a whole bunch more agents who aren't dead."

Officer Kelly Nye Sterner spent 13 years with Salt Lake City police. She worked undercover with dope smokers and in meth labs. She spent hours in the evidence room sorting caustic meth ingredients that police used to store in plastic bags. She often choked and coughed on the fumes.

Sterner died this year from a rare cell disease at age 49.

"It attacked her spleen, her liver, her kidneys, her gall bladder. She had to have her gall bladder removed, her spleen removed, her liver was 3 1/2 times its normal size," her husband, Gary Sterner, said.

Former and current police officers believe there is a connection between the illnesses and deaths and exposure to meth and meth-making chemicals.

Fifteen government agencies and research groups to whom that question was posed said there's no proof the officers' diseases are linked to meth lab exposures.

But there are reports linking some methamphetamine ingredients to the same diseases officers are fighting.

John Martyny, a doctor at National Jewish Research Hospital in Denver, and his team are gathering scientific data from inside meth labs to determine exposure levels.

"If you go in at the wrong time, the levels can be debilitating," he said. "If a law enforcement officer were to go in during the cook, that's when the risk is greatest."

Chemicals and gases like phosphine, hydrogen chloride, iodine and ammonia reach levels 75 times what the government deems safe for humans, he said. Some of them are documented to cause lung diseases, asthma, severe headaches and liver, kidney and heart damage.

"I would go to my physician and say, 'Here are some of the exposures I might have had. Could any of these exposures be causing some of my problems?' "