Health professionals are warning of the irreversible impacts volatile substances have on the human body after witnessing a rise in the number of cases of "young kids" inhaling the substances — a practice commonly known as chroming.

Key points: Chroming is a form of volatile substance abuse involving inhaling solvents or other household chemicals

Chroming is a form of volatile substance abuse involving inhaling solvents or other household chemicals Dr Jeremy Hallyar said inhalants can affect the organs including the liver, heart, kidneys and bone marrow, as well as the brain

Dr Jeremy Hallyar said inhalants can affect the organs including the liver, heart, kidneys and bone marrow, as well as the brain He also said the practice could cause developmental abnormalities in young children

Jeremy Hayllar, the Clinical Director of Brisbane's Biala Community Health Service, said the issue of volatile substance abuse had become more apparent to him in the last six months.

"I am aware that there does seem to be an increased number of very young kids who are running around the [Brisbane] CBD under the influence of solvents or inhalants," Dr Hayllar said.

A recent rise in Queensland cases of deaths caused by inhalants prompted a two-week long community awareness project from the Queensland Police Service.

Earlier this week, ABC Radio Brisbane spoke to a teenager named Rosie* whose cousin died as a result of inhaling volatile substances.

She described how the teenager fainted without warning and writhed on the ground, choking and convulsing until an ambulance arrived.

Rosie and her partner Jordan have both been devastated by chroming. ( Supplied )

"All volatile substances are taken up very quickly in the brain and change the way that messages are sent around the brain," Dr Hayllar said.

"That can lead to loss of consciousness, so this young lad collapsed, [and] vomiting is a kind of response to things going badly wrong and later on the effects can be progressive."

Figures from Queensland's Department of Youth Justice revealed more teenagers had been caught chroming in 2018 than in 2017, but because chroming is not illegal, the department cautioned the statistics are not necessarily an accurate reflection of a rise in society.

Volatile substances generally act as depressants, or relaxants, due to their effect on the central nervous system (CNS).

CNS depressants are more likely to result in euphoria than depression and are accompanied by side effects such as nausea, dizziness, hallucinations and poor body control.

The chemical compounds in the object being used to chrome become vaporised when exposed to air and, when inhaled by the user, are absorbed from the blood and into get into fatty tissue, thereby damaging the brain.

Sudden death is associated particularly with the abuse of butane and propane, while some other chemicals act as asphyxiants caused by oxygen deprivation to the brain.

Brisbane bus drivers have expressed being put in harm's way by an increase in chroming cases. ( Supplied )

'Effectively dissolving the brain'

Dr Hayllar has previously described the impact of these inhalants on the central nervous system to "dipping your brain in detergent" but has since updated his analogy.

"Imagine something made of plastic; now let's say you heat it up and it kind of loses its shape and form. We could make the same analogy with the effects of solvent on the brain," he said.

"These are all very lipid-soluble compounds so they get into the brain and effectively they start dissolving it.

"It's not heat that's doing it, but it's being dissolved by soluble substances that get into fatty tissue and disrupt them.

"When people continue use day-to-day, they're really damaging their prospects, their brain development."

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Social workers have reported seeing children as young as nine or 10 involved in substance abuse, adding that most children engaging in the behaviour were between 12 and 14.

"Adolescence is a time of huge changes," Dr Hayllar said.

"The inhalants can effect their organs such as their liver, their kidneys, their bone marrow and in particular, the brain.

"People start losing feeling in their hands and feet, they lose coordination, their thinking capacity and their cognition can be really badly affected."

In the United Kingdom, products used to chrome are labelled with a warning. ( Supplied )

Dr Hayllar said the worst-case scenario for people abusing volatile substances was death, which could happen in a very short period of time.

"It certainly sounds extreme, but I don't think it is uncommon … things can go wrong when you're not awake enough to protect your airway," he said.

"That could be an early death from overdose, from aspiration — or vomit — because someone loses consciousness; from hypoxia because often people consume the volatile substance from something they cover their face with, that means they're preventing oxygen or air from getting in safely.

"Some people become very unsteady, they fall over, they can injure themselves.

"The solvents can damage the heart, the conduction tissue of the heart, leading to arrythmia and heart damage in that way … there is very wide range of effects and many of them can happen quite early."

Exacerbating underlying conditions

People often abuse volatile substances to ease the symptoms of an undiagnosed mental disorder, to cope with difficult emotions, or to temporarily change their mood.

But abusing substances often worsens the symptoms or underlying condition the user thought they would relieve.

"If you have an underlying vulnerability, a depression, or an anxiety, then over time that drug use can actually amplify that," Professor Maree Teesson, from the Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use, said.

"When it comes to drugs like, stimulants or inhalants, often what you first get is a really strong increase in the neurotransmitters in the brain when first use happens.

"Then over time you get the brain habituating to that and then after a while you tend to need the drug to have the production of those chemicals in the brain so you develop into this vicious cycle."

Rosie was chroming with friends at a park when her cousin began choking and convulsing. ( ABC News: Allyson Horn )

Professor Wayne Hall from the University of Queensland's Centre for Youth Substance Abuse Research said many young people turned to drug use as a coping mechanism.

"A lot of young people who get involved in volatile substance abuse, particularly heavy use that goes beyond experimentation … are at high risk of neurological complications and I think probably a lot of them already are depressed," he said.

"The intoxication wouldn't help their coping and wouldn't help a lot of the problems that led them to use in the first place … to cope with feeling bad, depressed, anxious and so on."

Professor Hall cautioned the exact effects on underlying psychological and mental conditions were dependant on the chemicals inside the chroming products — but a slew of studies find that inhalant users put themselves at higher risk for mental disorders.

Japanese researchers found that chronic psychiatric symptoms — inability to manage stress, poor concentration, unreasonable anger — could be caused by inhalant abuse.

A Dutch study found that abuse of any substance increased the risk of developing schizophrenia and that inhalant users specifically were 2.8 times more likely to develop the disorder.

While a 2010 US-based study published by the US Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs found that rates of suicidal ideation were higher among individuals with inhalant-abuse disorders than non-users.

None of the studies could determine whether the substance abuse caused the mental health issues or vice versa.

Professor Hall also warned that inhalants and solvents were often a "gateway" to illicit substances.

"Often the young people who are using these products end up using a lot of other things as well so it adds to a pretty nasty cocktail," he said.

For free and confidential advice about alcohol and other drugs, call the National Alcohol and Other Drug hotline on 1800 250 015. If someone is in need of urgent medical help, call triple-0.