By: Travis Kaya - Claremont Courier, 11/24/2007

COURIER photo/Gabriel Fenoy Joseph Byrne and Steve Brayley, owners of Novent, created the Locking Refrigerator Caps that are tamper-proof and keep children from huffing the refrigerator fluid.

When Carolyn McGuigan, a mother of 3 from Alta Loma, caught her teenage daughter inhaling refrigerant fluid from a Ziploc bag in her family's home last July, she did not know where to turn.

At age 15, Ms. McGuigan's daughter found an all-too-effective drug that was not only legal but also available literally in her own backyard. Her daughter had joined the ranks of the more than 2.6 million teens nationwide involved in "huffing," the dangerous social phenomenon that drives many 12- to 17-year-olds to inhale fumes from common household products for a quick and intense high.

"This was the first time she acted out," Ms. McGuigan said. "It came as a shock to me about the whole situation."

Concerned for her daughter's safety, Ms. McGuigan quickly began a search for ways to prevent her daughter's destructive addiction. Scouring the internet for solutions, she eventually discovered Novent Locking Refrigerant Caps.

Developed by Novent, a company started by Steve Brayley and Joseph Byrne out of Anaheim, the tamper-resistant caps are a quick and easy deterrent for would-be refrigerant fluid thieves. The color-coded caps simply screw on to the access points on all standard air conditioning units, and can only be removed with a special key sold only to licensed contractors. It's a simple fix, but the people at Novent swear their product prevents teenagers like Ms. McGuigan's daughter from gaining access to dangerous refrigerant fluid.

"A certified contractor would only take minutes to install this," Mr. Brayley said. "There's no additional time or labor costs, and it keeps unauthorized people out."

Mr. Brayley, who also works as a product distributor at another firm, came up with the idea for the tamper-resistant caps almost 10 years ago while working on a project at a local church complex. Church officials came to him with questions about what they believed was a leaking air conditioning unit. Mr. Brayley soon found traces of vomit around the perimeter of the church, immediately sending up a red flag.

The refrigerant was not leaking, he says, it was being stolen.

Mr. Brayley quickly turned to longtime friend and inventor Joseph Byrne for help, and together they developed a first-of-a-kind solution that has since garnered national attention.

"Lo and behold, there was nothing else like this out there," Mr. Brayley said. "We became the unofficial experts of solving the problem of huffing."

COURIER photo/Gabriel Fenoy The color-coded caps screw on the access points on all standard air conditioning units and are a deterrent for refrigerant fluid theives.

The refrigerant caps have since been distributed across the United States and internationally in Japan and parts of Europe. According to Mr. Brayley, since their product first became available commercially more than 5 years ago, there has been a major increase in demand for the product to match the spread of huffing from Texas to Florida and beyond.

"This isn't just a southern California or a Florida thing," he said.

Hundreds of deaths have been reported across America since the problem first emerged in the late 1980s. From 1987 to 1996, the state of Virginia reported 39 inhalant related deaths while Texas, during the same period, reported a whopping 144 fatalities. There is speculation among doctors, however, that the side effects of huffing, including brain aneurisms and heart attacks, may have killed many more.

Despite the hundreds of deaths, there is generally very little awareness about the growing problem, especially among parents.

"It's something that is out there that [teenagers] are doing that they don't realize how fatal it can be," Ms. McGuigan said. "I wish it would be mandatory that every household with an A.C. unit would have this installed."

Locally, a number of contractors have begun offering the product to families and businesses to confront the issue of huffing.

Pilgrim Place recently had the product installed on all of its air conditioning units as a preventative measure, and a number of apartment complexes and businesses have also begun asking for the caps.

"We are very pleased to have such a product that we can help consumers with," said Steve Pikschus, owner of Steve's Air Conditioning in Upland. "I hate to have those installed because I know why we're installing them, but then I feel good because they won't be able to go back to that unit."

With a quickly expanding market for their product and a growing huffing epidemic, Novent's owners hope to get the word out about their product at trade shows and through distributors nationwide.

"If we save one life," Mr. Byrne said, "then we've done our job."