'Dusting' is the new killer high for teens
Canned air is the new cheap inhalant, but it can cause severe damage and even death. NBC News correspondent Peter Alexander reports
By Peter Alexander
NBC News correspondent
TODAY
Updated: 11:15 p.m. CT July 26, 2005
Inhalant abuse has been on the rise nationwide, and more teens are experiencing the tragic effects of this cheap high. NBC News correspondent Peter Alexander reports on how a common household product, a computer cleaner, can result in a deadly high.
There's a new way to get high, and you could have it right next to your desk at home. They're designed to clean your computer but, if inhaled, these popular products have the potential to kill.
It’s called "dusting" — the term comes from the cleaning brand "Dust Off" — and it has become a teenager’s new cheap and easily accessible high, despite a warning on the side of each canister.
This form of inhalant abuse, “huffing,” has been around for years, but dusting is the more specific term associated with the use of cans of any common aerosolized computer keyboard cleaner that contains compressed gas.
One teen, 18-year-old Jessie Stotz, is now in rehab at the Pathway Family Center in Indianapolis because of dusting.
"There wasn't the hassle of finding somebody to buy it for you and stuff, you could walk into a store, being 13 years old, and buy it yourself," says Stotz.
But one hit can be crippling, as 15-year-old Ben Goudberg experienced in California.
"I couldn't move for three to four minutes, and I was staring at a door thinking I wanted to get up and go and touch it and I couldn't do it," says Goudberg. "It's one of the scariest feelings in the world."
The high from the gas paralyzes the user for several minutes and gives a feeling of euphoria. Both dusting and huffing can result in damage to the brain, lungs, heart, kidneys and liver, and can cause death. In computer cleaning products, a freon type of gas, or fluorinated hydrocarbon, is the dangerous ingredient.
The dangerous practice was dramatized in the film "Thirteen." In the opening scene, the two actresses are sitting on a bed, "dusting," and then slapping each other out of their trancelike states.
"Sudden sniffing death" describes the process of inhaled hydrocarbons provoking irregular heart rhythms in the victim, which leads to sudden fatal cardiac arrest in even very young and healthy hearts.
"Just that fast a kid could experience intoxication," says John Daily, a drug counselor at New Directions — and just that fast they could die. The compressed air in the cleaners fills a person's lungs, keeping oxygen out and potentially stopping the heart.
Some retailers, like Staples and Wal-Mart, now restrict the sales of computer cleaners to buyers over 18 years of age, and many have placed warning labels on the top of cans.
But Jeff Williams, a Cleveland police officer whose son Kyle tragically died in March while trying dusting, thinks more needs to be done. Williams says there is already one keyboard cleaning product on the market that adds a bitter smell and taste to the chemicals, making them unpalatable, and he says all manufacturers should do the same. Williams also thinks that retailers need to do a better job of policing who they sell to.
Dusting is part of a larger problem involving inhalants, with huffing on the rise. In 2002, more than a million people abused them for the first time — the vast majority in their teens.
The National Survey on Drug Use and Health found that inhalant experimentation is initiated earlier than any other illicit substance, with young females starting before young males. Also, a higher percentage of 12 and 13 year olds had used inhalants than marijuana.
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