This is the moment a Florida cop nearly died after apparently being exposed to fentanyl during a traffic stop.
Concerning footage showed Officer Courtney Bannick go limp on the ground after supposedly touching the narcotics wrapped up in a dollar bill.
Her eyes rolled into the back of her head and she was left drifting in and out of consciousness after the incident in Tavares on Tuesday.
Earlier in the night she had pulled over a car and taken the passenger to jail before she started struggling to breathe and pleaded for help over the radio.
Officers found her in her police uniform starting to pass out before administering Narcan to save her.
The incident, which has not been fully explained by cops, comes after experts reassured the public a person cannot overdose on fentanyl just by touching it.
Officer Courtney Bannick nearly died after being exposed to fentanyl during a traffic stop in Florida on Tuesday
Bannick lies on the ground as she struggles to breathe after being exposed to Fentanyl
Experts say a person CANNOT overdose on fentanyl from physical contact alone
Earlier this year experts cast doubt to DailyMail.com about overdosing just by touching it.
Dr Gina Dahlem, a professor at the University of Michigan School of Nursing, tells DailyMail.com cases are highly unlikely.
While the highly potent synthetic opioid can be administered through the skin, it would take extremely high dosages and hours of time for a person to overdose – not suddenly like it has happened in some high profile cases.
Reports of police officers suffering fentanyl-related injury from short exposure have made headlines in recent years, including cases in San Diego, California, Kansas City, Kansas and East Liverpool, Ohio.
Earlier this year, Officer Dallas Thompson of Kansas City, Kansas, collapsed to the ground and required five doses of Narcan – a drug highly effecting at stopping an overdose – after he came in contact with a bag that contained pills believed to be laced with fentanyl.
In a case last August, the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department published a video showing an officer collapse after being exposed to fentanyl during a vehicle search.
The San Diego Sheriff’s Department was widely panned after it published a video showing an officer allegedly overdose on fentanyl
The video was widely panned by the public and health officials for allegedly being faked and for misrepresenting fentanyl overdoses and how they look.
‘This is very obviously not a fentanyl overdose to anyone who has actually seen one or knows how they work, and you should be ashamed of yourselves for advancing this disproven narrative that hurts people,’ Dr Ryan Marino, a toxicology expert, tweeted at the time.
Officer Bannick had pulled over the vehicle in the early hours of Tuesday morning and found the passenger with narcotics rolled up in a dollar bill.
After Bannick had brought the passenger to jail, her co-workers began to hear her struggling to breathe over their radios, and rushed to help her.
It is unclear exactly when or how she was exposed to the drug during the stop.
Cops said the individuals who had the narcotics will likely be prosecuted with felony charges after their investigation concludes.
Terrifying footage showed Bannick on the side of a dark road as officers led her wide-eyed and breathless from her car to the sidewalk.
There she fell down on her back as cops tried to soothe her and administered Narcan up her nose, causing her to roll over and vomit on the street.
Later, as they waited for an ambulance, she could be seen leaning on the legs of another officer and breathing heavily, when suddenly her face went blank.
Officers began shouting at her to breathe as they slapped her face to jar her awake and were forced to administer more doses of Narcan before she sprung back to life.
Bannick was taken to a nearby hospital and is expected to recover.
‘She was completely lifeless. She looks deceased in these videos,’ Tavares Police Detective Courtney Sullivan told Fox 35, ‘so she’s very thankful today.’
The department said she had been wearing gloves and followed all protocols properly when handling the narcotics.
‘I have done this one-hundred times before the same way. It only takes one time and a minimal amount,’ Bannick after the incident. ‘I’m thankful I wasn’t alone and had immediate help.’
The department said the names of the individuals who were in possession of the narcotics will not be released until they are charged.
Fentanyl has been increasingly used to cut heavy drugs such as cocaine and heroin. The drug binds to receptors in the brain, causing a feeling of numbness, euphoria and sedation.
Over time it diminishes the receptors sensitivity, eventually leading to the opioids being the only way a person can reach those feelings. This leads to addiction.
When a person overdoses their breathing may stop, depriving the brain and other parts of the body oxygen. As a result, a person will suffer severe brain injury.
This can often be deadly. Even survivors will often have permanent brain damage.
Naxolone, sold under the brand name Narcan, is the most effective tool doctors and first responders have against an overdose.
The fast-acting nasal spray quickly clears up the opioid receptors on a person’s brain and undoes the effects of the drug.
A police officer guides a struggling Bannick from her car to the sidewalk where they treated her
Officers strip Bannick’s uniform vest off of her torso to help her breathe easier
Officers break open Narcan doses which they then administer to Bannick through her nose
Bannick is held up by officers as she struggles to breathe on the side of the road after the fentanyl exposure
It can only be used in the time immediately after an overdose. Earlier this year experts cast doubt to DailyMail.com about overdosing just by touching it.
Dr Gina Dahlem, a professor at the University of Michigan School of Nursing, tells DailyMail.com cases such as these are highly unlikely.
While the highly potent synthetic opioid can be administered through the skin, it would take extremely high dosages and hours of time for a person to overdose – not suddenly like it has happened in some high profile cases.
Reports of police officers suffering fentanyl-related injury from short exposure have made headlines in recent years, including cases in San Diego, California, Kansas City, Kansas and East Liverpool, Ohio.
Many experts, including those at the American College of Medical Toxicology (ACMT), have come out to dispute and cast doubt on these reports and studies have shown that they are highly unlikely.
‘Fentanyl and its analogs are potent opioid receptor agonists, but the risk of clinically significant exposure to emergency responders is extremely low,’ the ACMT wrote in a report.
‘To date, we have not seen reports of emergency responders developing signs or symptoms consistent with opioid toxicity from incidental contact with opioids. Incidental dermal absorption is unlikely to cause opioid toxicity.’
The group reports that the drug is highly dangerous, around 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine.
This has been reflected in America’s budding overdose crisis as well, with synthetic opioids like fentanyl at fault for more than 70 percent of the more than 100,000 overdose deaths reported in the U.S. over a 12-month period.
As dangerous as the drug is, the ACMT said the main risk is when it is inhaled or ingested, not transmitted through the skin.
‘Incidental dermal absorption is unlikely to cause opioid toxicity,’ it writes. It gives the example of fentanyl patches which can be used as pain killers in some cases.
If a person was covered in the patches it would take around 14 minutes to absorb 100 micrograms (mcg) of the drug.
The DEA warns two milligrams of fentanyl can cause an overdose – 20 times the amount a person would ingest through the patches.
Patches will also be significantly more efficient at transmitting fentanyl into the blood stream than a simple street drug since the devices were designed to specifically do that.
‘The above calculation is based on fentanyl patch data, which overestimates the potential exposure from drug in tablet or powder form in several ways.
‘Drug must have sufficient surface area and moisture to be efficiently absorbed,’ The ACMT writes.
Dahlem referenced the report to DailyMail.com, explaining that they are consistent with what she knows about the drug as well.
She also noted if fentanyl was deadly enough to cause an overdose from mere touch there would likely be even more deaths caused by it.
