Testing standards were a hot meth
It may be a big job to clean up the mess from all those cleanups of methamphetaminecontaminated houses that, it turns out, weren’t particularly contaminated at all.
The prime minister’s chief science adviser Sir Peter Gluckman’s report makes chastening reading in light of the extensive human and financial disruptions resulting from the stern imposition of nationwide testing standards that were giddyingly out of proportion to any actual health risks.
The standards imposed for properties where meth was used were the same for those where it was industrially, or at least industriously, manufactured by the use of a range of truly hazardous chemicals in fairly substantial quantities.
Sir Peter’s finding was that although we were collectively reacting as though even trace levels of meth residue posed a health risk, there wasn’t a single case in medical literature of anyone being harmed from ‘‘passive’’ use, at any level.
It’s little wonder the pitch of reproach is so high given the cost to homeowners, landlords and the state. For its part, Housing New Zealand has spent about $100 million on the problem. The wasted money from landlords and householders will be massive, though the damage goes much further.
At a time of acute housing shortage, many properties have been off the market. Others have been sold for prices that the vendors will now be bitterly regretting. And tenants have been as good as frogmarched from properties on grounds that now seem dodgy indeed.
It’s perhaps tempting to ask where the hell the serious scientists, whistleblowing journalists and even the odd firebreathing politician were while things were going quite so wrong. They were among us, trying to get attention. It would be shabby to blame them for not succeeding.
There was, undeniably, a real problem with some seriously contaminated meth houses, and so much attention was focused on these – but the calm-down voices, such as those of Dr Nick Kim at Massey University and Leo Schep at the National Poisons Centre, were at very best just part of the blizzard of commentary and reporting.
While corrective measures are being lined up to apply more considered testing standards, interesting issues of compensation and legal consequences may yet lie ahead.
More widely, some will draw comparisons between what’s happened here and other issues of widespread alarm, ranging from M bovis to climate change. But to whatever extent science and sense were sidelined in the public agitation about meth contamination, there’s scant indication that scientists are being disregarded in the plan for the phased eradication of M bovis.
And as for human impact on climate change, the dissenters are consequential only as noisemakers. The overarching scientific consensus about the urgent need for significant corrective measures is emphatic, and long has been.