Draft meth contamination standard welcomed

Local Government New Zealand welcomes the new draft Standard for testing and decontaminating properties contaminated by methamphetamine.

Councils have obligations under the Health Act to ensure residential properties are safe and liveable, and are responsible for overseeing the decontamination process.

The new draft Standard, released by the Ministry of Business and Innovation for public comment yesterday, aims to provide guidance on methodologies, procedures, and performance criteria to ensure the testing of properties provides reliable results, and the decontamination of contaminated properties is effective, reduces harm, and enables properties to be safely reoccupied.

It is aimed at methamphetamine testing and clean-up/decontamination companies, laboratories that analyse samples taken from methamphetamine contaminated properties, health, safety, and environmental regulators and property owners, managers, and insurers.

LGNZ President Lawrence Yule says a new, consistent standard is needed to ensure all parties are working towards the same goal and with firm guidelines.

“Methamphetamine production can cause serious and harmful damage to properties and expose people to dangerous chemicals,” Mr Yule says.

“Families need to be confident that their homes are healthy and that all parties involved in assessing methamphetamine contamination and cleaning up properties are doing it in a consistent way.”

The Standard addresses all sources of methamphetamine contamination, and aims to ensure consistency, reliability, and competency in activities including screening, sampling, testing and, where necessary, decontaminating properties and disposing of contaminated materials.

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