The stories are scary and illustrate just how dangerous police work can be: Cops across the nation, including Michigan, overdosing from accidentally touching fentanyl while searching cars during traffic stops or rendering first aid.

Except toxicologists say the stories also are wrong — and that they're creating unnecessary panic. Touching a small amount of fentanyl won't cause an overdose, experts say.

"If you could absorb drugs by touching them, why would people bother to inject them?'' said Dr. Andrew Stolbach, a medical toxicologist and emergency physician at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. He also is an expert on the subject of fentanyl exposure.

“Drugs like fentanyl and analogs of fentanyl aren't absorbed through the skin very well at all," Stolbach said. "So brief, incidental contact isn't going to cause somebody to absorb a therapeutic dose, let alone a toxic dose."

What is fentanyl?

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that's 50 times stronger than heroin and up to 100 times more potent than morphine. Fentanyl comes in many varieties or analogs. Carfentanil, which is intended for use as an elephant tranquilizer, is one of those analogs. It is 100 times stronger than fentanyl.

Pharmaceutical fentanyl is used in hospitals — often in the form of a patch — for patients with extreme pain. But even then, said Dr. Ryan Marino, an emergency medicine physician and toxicologist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, who uses #WTFentanyl to bust myths surrounding the drug, it's not easily absorbed .

"Fentanyl patches require putting fentanyl into special liquid vehicles so it can be absorbed through skin, and then sealing them against the skin for 72 hours at a time," Marino said. "The patches took decades and millions of dollars to develop and are still incredibly slow and inefficient."

What's sold on the street, what first responders come into contact with, is illicit fentanyl. It's mixed with heroin or other drugs — often without the user's knowledge.

Snorted or injected or sometimes swallowed because it is pressed into counterfeit pills, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Preventinon says fentanyl is the deadliest drug in the nation, responsible for more deaths than any other drug.

In 2017, more than 28,000 of the nation's overdose deaths involved synthetic opioids, according to the CDC. In most cases, the synthetic opioid involved was fentanyl or one of its analogs.

Lemont Gore, who works with drug users in his job as street outreach coordinator for Unified HIV Health and Beyond in Ypsilanti said he doesn't know of anyone who has overdosed from casually touching fentanyl or a drug containing fentanyl.

"The person that is selling fentanyl ... that person, for the most part, I would doubt is a chemist and they're handling it," he said. "The people that are ingesting it are handling it ... so that just doesn’t seem to follow that narrative that fentanyl is just making people fall out by touching it."

On top of that, experts said overdosing from unintentionally inhaling fentanyl is difficult because the opioid doesn't become airborne naturally. For that to happen, someone would have to scatter it into the air. Or, as Marino said, "You would have to be in some sort of wind tunnel with massive amounts of fentanyl.

"That wouldn't exist in the real world."

The most likely route of unintended exposure would be this: Someone with fentanyl on their hands rubs it into their eyes or nose; mucous membranes absorb fentanyl.

But, Marino said, doing so, being that careless would be at odds with universal precautions first responders are trained to take.

Overdose reports gain momentum

But reports of law enforcement officers getting sick after touching fentanyl continue across the country, most recently in Iowa, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Arizona and in Michigan, where there were two reports of accidental exposure last month.

According to the Michigan State Police, one of its troopers became sick after getting a substance on his hands during a mid-March traffic stop in Lincoln Park.

"We’re pretty confident it was fentanyl just by the way he reacted,'' said MSP spokesman 1st Lt. Mike Shaw. Signs of a fentanyl overdose include slowed breathing, grogginess or loss of consciousness and pupils that look like pinpoints.

The trooper experienced difficulty breathing and pinpoint pupils, Shaw said.

When told that toxicologists say it's impossible to overdose from touching fentanyl, Shaw said: "I’m not going to argue with the toxicologists, just like I wouldn’t expect them to argue with me about criminal law. All I know is the trooper was searching the car, was exposed to something, got sick and got two doses of Narcan and recovered."

At the end of March, another officer became ill while searching a car during a traffic stop in Saginaw. The contents of a package blew onto the trooper's uniform, according to Lt. Jim Lang, assistant commander of the Tri-City MSP post in Freeland.

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Second-chance court

The trooper returned to his own car and after about 10 or 15 minutes, began to feel light-headed and dizzy, Lang said. He also experienced double vision and felt as if blood was rushing to his head. He thought he was going to pass out.

After two doses of Narcan — one he administered himself — the trooper recovered.

According to Lang, lab results confirmed that the substance in question contained fentanyl.

Confusion may cause treatment delays

In 2017, the American College of Medical Toxicology and the American Academy of Clinical Toxicology issued a paper saying the odds of first responders overdosing from inadvertent on-the-job contact with fenanyl is "extremely low."

So, what's happening to these first responders?

"It is impossible to overdose from accidentally touching fentanyl. The odds are zero," said Marino. "The police are now getting sick — actually sick — because of bad information, though they are not overdosing. But bad information is ... taking a serious toll."

He and other experts believe the reaction of police is being fueled by panic.

"The vast majority of emergency responders that are around fentanyl and fentanyl analogs are experiencing no symptoms at all," said Stolbach. "But for the few that have symptoms ... anxiety associated with being concerned with being exposed probably accounts for many of these symptoms."

Said Marino: "I feel badly for these people that are feeling these symptoms. It's not pleasant."

But stories about inadvertent overdoses also create hysteria, which creates the potential for delays in treatment of people who are sick from drugs.

"I've heard stories where people will wait and they're putting on hazmat suits," Marino said. "And when people aren't breathing, time is kind of critical."

Contact Georgea Kovanis: gkovanis@freepress.com