PestX meth tester Scott Lawton reveals his darkest encounter

Qld methamphetamine tester and cleaner Scott Lawton has spent seven years scrubbing the scum off the walls and floors of drug dens and meth houses. See how he tests for contamination.

Users with needles and homes with hundreds of needles shoved into window tracks are just some of the things Queensland methamphetamine tester and cleaner Scott Lawton has seen on the job.

His business PestX, which used to only deal with pest control and carpet cleaning added meth testing to its list of services about seven years ago.

“The opportunity was there,” Mr Lawton said, so he jumped at it.

He said meth testing was usually triggered by an event like the tenants of a rental property being arrested by police on drug charges, and that they were predominantly contacted by landlords, as well as real estate agencies.

PestX owner Scott Lawton. Picture: Aden Stokes

“It’s an incredible cost burden for landlords,” Mr Lawton said.

PestX staff cleaning a building contaminated with methamphetamine. Picture: Contributed

“You could be talking $10,000. They can’t put anyone in the house until they get the place clear.”

While Mr Lawton said meth testing generally occurred at houses and units, “sometimes schools have concerns”.

He said he had also dealt with a lot of public housing and bank repossession clear-outs.

He said the other people concerned with meth clearances on houses were those who had bought a home and wanted to make sure they were not inheriting a $10,000 clean up bill.

While cases involving meth are a weekly occurrence in Central Queensland courts, the 56-year-old businessman said only about 50 per cent of tests were positive with his team only cleaning “a few” places a year.

“Sometimes you will get a run of them in a short period of time.”

He said it was not common to come across a home where the occupants were producing meth.

“More so it is users.”

Mr Lawton said the amount of meth residue in a manufacturing site would be less than a user’s site.

“It’s the smoking that causes the problem,” he said.

PestX staff cleaning a building contaminated with methamphetamine. Picture: Contributed

Mr Lawton said the first step was establishing whether there was a meth contamination.

“We test for if the houses are exceeding the government’s guidelines on methamphetamine contamination,” he said.

“We do that by using what looks like a Covid test kit. It gives us an instant readout whether or not things are contaminated.

“When we test a place we only test a small area. Sometimes the contamination is isolated to particular rooms, other times it can be through the whole house.”

Mr Lawton said meth contamination only occurs if the people are smoking it.

“The way we clean it is we basically wash the hell out of it,” he said.

“It is a Part A and Part B chemical we use to clean and we basically foam the hell out of the walls, scrub them like mad, rinse, suck all the water up because there is a lot of water going around.

“Then we go with the Part B chemical and then we test it again to see how much the levels come down.”

PestX owner Scott Lawton demonstrating building methamphetamine testing. Picture: Aden Stokes

Sometimes Mr Lawton and his team have to do triple washes on places.

“Sometimes we will go to the extent of encapsulating the contamination if it’s crazy high.”

Mr Lawton said cleaning a house contaminated by meth was “a lot of labour” and would take about four days.

“If we were going to scrub out a meth house I’m probably having six or more staff turning up to do it,” he said.

“It’s a 360 degree scrub. It’s everything on every surface.

“We are scrubbing all the fans and the air conditioners are being pulled apart. All the blinds and curtains are either being thrown out or cleaned.

“We are putting water everywhere.”

PestX owner Scott Lawton demonstrating methamphetamine testing on a random $50. Picture: Aden Stokes

“The issue with methamphetamine residue in a building is there is a long list of health conditions it will set off.

“It’s the long-term exposure that’s the issue.”

He said his team had gone as far as Townsville to do a decontamination.

Mr Lawton said the mess was something he would always see in a house contaminated by meth.

“It’s always quite a level of disorderliness,” he said.

“The carpets have never been vacuumed, grubby handprints over the walls.

“Sometimes people have attempted to cook their own meth and there will be chemicals like acetone or turps and it is really nasty.”

Shockingly Mr Lawton said something that stood out would be the number of needles they would have to remove, with one place having about 50 to 100.

“Sometimes you go ‘oh my gosh, I’ve never seen so many needles’,” he said.

“They have been shoved in window tracks.”

A random $50 note tested positive for methamphetamine. Picture: Aden Stokes

While he said drug paraphernalia and the number of needles were among the oddest things he had seen, his saddest case involved a man who was being managed by an outside agency.

“We had to go in and sort the building out because the insurance company was refusing to insure the building, it was in disrepair,” he said.

“They had to move out of the building while we fixed it.

“We were doing the renovations and had decontaminated the building as well because he was using and had friends that liked to come around and use.

“They had to move out for about eight weeks and they didn’t stay out.

“It was a good deal of money being spent fixing this house, repairing it and everything else and they had already knocked holes in the walls again.

“We were repairing stuff we had already repaired.”

Originally published as PestX meth tester Scott Lawton reveals his darkest encounter