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There was a great podcast (I think Radiolab) about the thousands of Police and EMS who claim they have been sickened by exposure to fentanyl and heroin while responding to OD's......
The podcast featured a doctor who was a true expert on opiates - who related that, in most of these cases, what was claimed was nearly impossible. There is actually a name for it - a type of psychosomatic condition which is very real (that the person actually feels sick), but that it was impossible for them to be so....testing shows zero opiates, etc.
In the case specified the EMS guy only touched the arm of an OD guy....who ended up fine after the narcan.
If you think about it, the Doc makes perfect sense. Most of the street heroin and fent. mixes ends up being 5 to 20X as strong as heroin....not nearly enough that brushing against a person or even touching it would cause a adult to OD.
The Doc stated that hospitals have to put special solvents in with their Fent. patches in order to force the drug through the skin.
I'm posting this because, after hearing this podcast, I saw our local small town Police claim they were sent to the hospital for this. Apparently it's happening everywhere and lawsuits and payouts are starting to occur.
The "controversy" here is that a lot of the money and energy expended on the War on Opiates is going to end up in places other than directly solving the problem!
Note two things...so that I am clear on this. The mind-body connection is very real and I am not claiming that all of these first responders make this up. It would be foolish, tho, to also say that abuse of this type of thing is likely to happen (given the Bell Curve of people out there!).
Secondly, there ARE synthetic opiates (just not heroin or fent.) which are able to OD a person by contact with the medicine itself. These are up to 1000X the strength of Heroin and there is a famous case where the Mossad attempted an assassination (and messed it up) using a tiny speck of this stuff. Just brushing up against the victim in a crowd and touching their neck with it was enough.
But the possibility of these compounds being all over the country at the same time...and therefore causing an outbreak of cases....is very low.
I guess the main solution to this is a simple blood or urine test...after, of course, they "save" the victims with Narcan. Of course, if the illness is caused by the mind, the Narcan isn't actually doing anything.
Are you a first responder who might find themselves in this position?
Sorry, but first responders have every right to be compensated for fentanyl-related passive toxicity, and though those at no danger of encountering such an event may poo-poo it as no big deal, it is a legitimate concern for those that do. They have every right to be proactively treated without someone labeling it the snarky manner of referring to them as victims in quotes. If you aren’t the one on the front line it’s real easy to dismiss the danger to others.
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They have demonized this class of drugs SO MUCH, that all this 'hyperbole' is getting a bit ridiculous imo!
Especially when you consider the only reason LE is so against these drugs in the first place...is because they were such a great threat the other illegal street drugs and the cartels supplying them, pharmaceutical opiates were cutting the cartels and drug dealers out of the equation, addicts were going to the ER, or doctor shopping to get their fix (no longer needed the corner drug dealer).
If you 'read between the line' and follow the money, its pretty easy to recognize whats going on and why, in relation to 'those evil opioids'.
For it to be legitimate there would need to be an established pathway of the drug from the recipient to the attendant.
Unless the attendant is consuming body fluids of the OD victim (and that itself is suspect for many fluids, blood would be an actual path), there's no risk of exposure, thus no legitimate concern. I presume that normal measures are taken to avoid cross contamination of body fluids, maybe I'm wrong in that assumption, I mean a little HepC or HIV never hurt anyone right?
That does not negate an attendants concerns, nor diminish their concerns, it eliminates them as legitimate however, and counseling is about the only effective treatment.
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