Tremendous growth in the number of Midwest methamphetamine labs has spurred the federal government to fund research that may find a way to make anhydrous ammonia, one of the drug’s main ingredients, useless to meth producers.

On Oct. 5, U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) announced that $250,000 is available to continue preliminary research in this area.

George Kraus, professor and chairman of the chemistry department, is one of the scientists who will be on the research committee if the money comes through.

“[The project] is still very preliminary,” Kraus said. “I am told that the funding, if approved, might be five to six months away.”

The money for the research still has to be approved by Congress and eventually by President Clinton before scientists actually can start their research, Kraus said.

“The overall goal is to find a set of inhibitors that would be economical, inexpensive and safe,” he said.

Creating a basic chemical reaction that inhibits ammonia’s effectiveness in meth is very complex, Kraus said, but if scientists were to accomplish this, several other factors would have to be considered before the new ammonia could be produced.

“If we find an inhibitor that works well and then if it went into ammonia, it would then have to be approved by the USDA and other agribusiness associations,” he said. “A lot of hurdles apart from the scientific issues arise before the problem is solved, such as what would the effects be on the land.”

Once other basic principles of science are evaluated, scientists can look at translating that knowledge into practice.

“It’s one thing to do something in a lab, but once you put it into the liquid ammonia, is it still practical?” he asked.

Kraus also will be working closely with the Division of Criminal Investigation of Iowa if the funding is secured.

Between 80 percent and 90 percent of the methamphetamines used for drug-related purposes come from sources out of the country, and the remaining 10 percent are manufactured in small meth labs such as those discovered in Iowa, said Mike Rehberg, laboratory assistant for the DCI.

“The method of choice for making meth is the [one] that uses ammonia and some other easily accessible drugs,” he said.

Ammonia is the easiest component to control when compared to the other meth ingredients, but it still remains difficult to regulate, Rehberg said.

“We are governed by the fact that we want to keep it as a viable product,” he said. “We either need to stop the meth reaction or taint the meth in such a way that it is not suitable for human consumption, and do all of this in an economical way.”

DCI scientists have done some preliminary experiments with liquid propane. They added different chemicals to the propane with the hopes of making the material’s odor so foul that it would be completely unobtainable.

“[The problem] is not simple and not an easy problem,” Rehberg said. “The synthesis itself is pretty simple, and that makes it difficult to inhibit the synthesis.”