Every now and then, Dr. Paul Loney finds a kid in his emergency room who’s been “huffing” to get a cheap high.

Sometimes, in the worst cases, the child is stricken with seizures. More often, the symptoms are less severe.

“Some junior high kid goes out and inhales a rag of gasoline, they’ll probably come in a little loopy or with nausea,” said Loney, an emergency room doctor at Lawrence Memorial Hospital.

But Loney sends those kids home with a stern warning, even in the mild cases.

“It doesn’t take much of this to start screwing up your brain and your kidneys,” he said Wednesday, adding: “I guess the one thing to know about it is — while it might seem to be a quick high, the permanent toxic effects can set in quickly.”

Such emergency cases have been rare, so far, in Lawrence; in 2004, LMH saw 11 patients under the age of 15 for “inhalation of fumes.” But the numbers could be on the rise.

After steadily dropping during the 1990s, the number of Douglas County youngsters between sixth and 12th grades who say they’ve gotten high by deliberately inhaling fumes from dangerous chemicals is creeping back up — from 8.9 percent in 2002 to 10 percent in 2003, and up to 10.6 percent in 2004.

Toxic, deadly

That’s lower than the high of 18.3 percent in 1995, according to surveys by the Greenbush Institute, and well below state and national averages.

The rising local numbers, however, are still cause for concern.

“Apparently, we have less issue with this than on a national or state level,” said Diane Ash, who helps lead drug-prevention efforts in the Lawrence school district. “But because sniffing inhalants is so deadly, one child doing this is a concern to us.”

6News video: Use of inhalants on rise in county Office of National Drug Control Policy: Inhalants Department of Justice Intelligence Brief: Huffing — The Abuse of Inhalants

Huffing involves breathing the fumes of office and household products, ranging from gasoline to cigarette lighter fluid, cleaning supplies to adhesives, which are often highly toxic and addictive.

The chemicals travel rapidly to the brain to produce highs similar to alcohol intoxication. Unlike the effect of alcohol, these highs disappear within minutes, making it hard for parents to detect the abuse.

New brain imaging research has shown that the chemicals can produce lasting changes in the brain, as well as heart, kidney and liver damage — or even a quick death.

Local officials, however, said they didn’t remember any huffing deaths since 1994, when a Kansas University freshman died accidentally from asphyxiation after inhaling nitrous oxide in his room at Ellsworth Hall.

“We haven’t had anyone with sudden sniffing deaths, no,” said Jen Jordan, director of the Regional Prevention Center for Douglas County. “But it could happen the first time they use.”

Movies, Internet

Ash, who has worked in the school district for more than a decade, said inhalant abuse had been around a long time.

“There have always been a group of students, or one or two students, who a teacher would catch sniffing glue or photo chemicals,” she said.

She’s at a loss, though, to explain the rising numbers in Douglas County.

“We don’t know,” she said. “But we do know there have been some very graphic displays of inhalant use in media recently — particularly in the movie ‘Thirteen,’ some kids have mentioned that.”

Students can also communicate their bad habits to each other across the Internet, Ash said.

“We never had that before,” she said. “Before we had word-of-mouth and anecdotal. It’s like a whole primer online, of how to do it and why you should.”

Over the last three years, the Lawrence school district has run “Project Alert,” an 11-week program to warn sixth-grade students and their parents about the dangers of inhalants and other drugs.

“You’re talking to people about making sure only clean, healthy air comes into the body,” Ash said, “because that’s what it’s designed for.”

Education efforts can be tricky.

“You don’t want to make (students) knowledgeable of things they didn’t know and encourage them,” Jordan said.

“I think the No. 1 thing is to get education out there that these are poisons,” she said. “They’re dangerous to your system. It’s not anything that’s safe.”

— The Associated Press contributed to this story.