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Police, EMS Taking Extra Precautions After Carfentanil Overdose Deaths

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- It's a drug powerful enough to be used on elephants. Now, two people from area have died after using heroin laced with Carfentanil.

Both deaths happened in Beaver County late last year, and test results are just back. One victim was in New Brighton, the other in Beaver Falls.

Other overdoses have happened in Detroit, Cincinnati and Huntington, West Virginia.

Beaver County Coroner David Gabauer says Carfentanil is frighteningly powerful: "It comes in a powder form. With something as small as a grain of sand, if it comes in contact with your respiratory system, it could knock you out."

Chelsea Blackburn, 25, of the Pittsburgh area was on heroin when she got pregnant, but is now clean. She says the search for a stronger and stronger high can easily take control of you.

"I started on opiates, like pain pills. And then, by 19, I was like a full-blown heroin addict," said Blackburn.

Overdoses across the nation got worse with painkiller Fentanyl being mixed into heroin.

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Fentanyl is 100 times stronger that morphine, but now Carfentanil is much worse, ten thousand times more powerful.

It's used legally, and sparingly, at the Pittsburgh Zoo as a tranquilizer for elephants and rhinos.

Dr. Alecia Hahn from the zoo says the thought of people using it is frightening: "It terrifies me. Honestly, I take this very seriously. I respect this drug a lot."

"We use it when we need it, and it is helpful for those situations, but I would never use it in a way outside of that because I know that death is a real concern."

Police and emergency responders are being told to be very careful with this.

If they believe they're going to come into contact with Carfentanil during an overdose call, they're advised to wear masks and gloves or even something more like a hazmat suit.

The trouble is, responders don't always know what they're walking into.

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