AKRON, Ohio — Akron police are sending out a warning about dangerous, illegal drug labs that are starting to pop up in neighborhoods around town.
During different investigations, the department has discovered three DMT labs in the last year, including one inside a home on Fillmore Avenue in the Kenmore area last Wednesday.
Detective Chris Crockett with the department's Clandestine Laboratory Enforcement Team showed News 5 pictures of liquids, solvents, chemicals, mixing tools and glass containers, including one that had "sludge" in it.
"At the bottom here, there's still some of this sludge, so this is once they cooked the DMT, the root powder," Crockett said while pointing to an image.
Crockett said "cooking it" is a risky process involving extracting Dimetheltryptamine (DMT) from a plant and then using a manufacturing process to turn it into a usable drug that can be snorted or injected.
"This is a hallucinogen that they take a root base product, so it's a plant that you can buy over the internet and they draw the DMT out of it," Crockett said.
Police said— like meth labs— there are serious concerns over possible fires, explosions and chemical burns with DMT labs.
"If you're in an enclosed area, the vapors start accumulating so if you inhale it, you become dizzy. You could actually die from inhaling too much of these vapors," Crockett explained.
In the Fillmore Avenue case, a 29-year-old man was arrested on weapons and drug charges. Two of the drug charges were elevated to higher felonies because the lab was found within 1,000 feet of an elementary school.
"With students walking home being near this, if this thing explodes— obviously an explosion or any sort from a house or a house fire— could harm anybody nearby," Crockett said.
Jeff Preston, a clinical manager at Oriana House, said there are always concerns when a new substance hits the streets.
"With a hallucinogen, you just don't know— anytime you're changing your brain chemistry or introducing something to your body that's messing with your brain— you just don't know how you're going to react to that," Preston said. "Since it's being made in a lab in a neighborhood, who knows what else is accidentally put in there or purposely put in there and could also have an effect."
While DMT labs are relatively new in the Akron area, Crockett fears more are out there or will be cooked up in the coming months. With that in mind, he's urging people to look for possible warning signs.
"If it doesn't look right to you, things are being cooked on the actual countertop or something is being stirred, you see gloves and things like that, just get out immediately and call police."
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