Family Poisoned by Their Dream Home

Aug. 2, 2009— -- In 2004 Rhonda and Jason Holt found what they thought was their dream home in Winchester, Tenn.

They immediately started a family, and over the next few years had three children, but the playground in the backyard did not get much use. All three children developed mysterious respiratory illnesses before they were a year old. Anna, the middle child, was the sickest.

Rhonda Holt said one day when Anna was 5 months old she walked into the little girl's room and found she had stopped breathing.

"Her face was just white as a ghost, her lips were blue and her tongue was hanging out of the side of her mouth," Rhonda Holt said.

The girl was eventually diagnosed with bronchial myalgia and tracheal myalgia, which caused her airways to collapse whenever she coughed.

It wasn't just the children who got sick, though. Rhonda Holt developed migraines, and Jason started suffering from kidney problems.

Their medical bills reached $25,000 before the Holts got the answer.

When a neighbor told them someone had run a methamphetamine lab in their house before they lived there, the Holts said, their jaws dropped.

Ricky Davis, who lived in the home before the Holts, is in prison for making meth.

The Holts got the house tested, and the same day they got the results confirming it had been contaminated by the toxic chemicals and fumes from the meth lab, they moved out. By then, they'd been in the house nearly four years.

Meth labs are so toxic, 70 percent of first responders suffer health problems, according to a study by the National Jewish Medical and Research Center.

"The chemicals [released by cooking meth] actually are hydrochlorine gas and phosphine gas, the phosphine gas is what they actually use in a gas chamber for executions," said Danny Mantooth, a drug investigator in Tennessee.

The chemicals get into carpeting, air ducts, even dry wall. So the Holts have to virtually gut the house and start all over. The cleanup will cost nearly $80,000, and the Holts are stuck with the bill. There is no help from the government.

Rhonda and Jason Holt are both working two jobs to pay for the cleanup, but still they don't expect to be able to move back into their house until sometime next year.