A CBS 46 News Investigation has uncovered potential dangers in former methamphetamine homes that experts say could be reaching epidemic proportions. We partnered with the Douglas County Sheriff's Office to test a methamphetamine haven for poisonous residue and toxic chemicals left behind from the use of this highly addictive and popular drug.

The home we tested is a house where methamphetamine was heavily smoked in room after room more than four years ago. But methamphetamine was never manufactured in the house, the typical description law enforcement use to describe a “meth Lab.”

Investigative Reporter Wendy Saltzman asked Douglas County Sheriff’s Sgt. Jesse Hambrick if we found methamphetamine in that home, what that says about the toxicity of the residue from just smoking methamphetamine. Hambrick responded, "It shows methamphetamine doesn't just go away. It doesn't dissipate."

In November a CBS 46 Investigation revealed Georgia is failing to flag potentially toxic methamphetamine labs. The state promised to take action after we first discovered homes could be bought and sold without the buyer ever knowing about the contamination left behind.

Now, eight months later, nothing has been done to safeguard you from purchasing potentially deadly methamphetamine houses.

Saltzman asked Public Health Director Dr. Stewart Brown, "Would you move your family into a home that had formerly been a methamphetamine lab?" Brown responded, "I would not."

In November he told us the state should have been doing more to protect the public.

“We should have acted sooner," Brown said. It's a problem and one we are going to address in the short term."

But eight months later, not only has the state failed to take action, but now a CBS 46 Investigation has discovered a new reason to believe the problem could be even more widespread than experts once believed.

"This could be a public health epidemic, and that's what I'm afraid of," warns Dr. Vance Boody of the Douglas County methamphetamine Task Force.

CBS 46 News was provided a clinical test by Global Detection and Reporting that is capable of detecting cannabis, cocaine, opiates, and methamphetamine. We tested inside the former methamphetamine house and found a positive reaction for amphetamines and methamphetamine.

Dr. Vance Boody says what we uncovered is a "poison palace.”

"Now we know residue has lasted in a house where there wasn't even production," Boody said. "It lasted for four years. The next questions will be how much of that residue had to be there to poison the people who live there?"

"We've got to protect people from this stuff. It's death. This stuff is toxic," Representative Mike Coan agreed. When we first alerted Coan that former methamphetamine homes were not being flagged in Georgia, he introduced legislation to quarantine properties that present possible health dangers.

"These methamphetamine labs are basically toxic waste dumps at the end of the day," Coan said.

Now our research has found chemicals can be left behind from just using methamphetamine, and not only from a manufacturing lab. Dr. Vance Boody confirms, "Several of the chemicals [in methamphetamine] are highly toxic and poisonous, and in fact, instantly fatal."

Boody warns our findings raise the risks of methamphetamine to a new level. The long term health effects of methamphetamine and the toxins it leaves behind, he says, may be far more dangerous than any household hazards this country has experienced before.

"You are talking about something far bigger potentially that we ever had with asbestos or radon gas or any of those other things," Boody said.

Coan's bill to quarantine these homes will be debated during the next legislative session.