United States enforcement agents today said the streets were safer after tracing an international drugs ring to a luxury Brighton bungalow.

Equipment and chemicals for the manufacture of up to £4 million of ecstasy, amphetamines and LSD were discovered in a back room at the £400,000 home.

The US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) assisted with yesterday's bust - codenamed Operation Pathfinder - the biggest in the city's history.

A spokesman said: "It is a highly significant case and parents in Brighton should be pleased their children are safer."

The raid on the property in The Vale, Ovingdean, followed the arrest of a 31-year-old American chemist from Idaho in a Brighton bar on Wednesday.

British police had been trained in US-style safe search techniques by their colleagues from the DEA before being sent in to search for the dangerous chemicals. Officers wore full-length body suits to enter the bungalow and went thorough decontamination procedures afterwards.

Police believe the drugs were being sold locally, nationally and abroad.

Officers from the Sussex Police Crime and Drugs Unit were assisted by the National Crime Squad and the National Criminal Intelligence Service in the operation which followed months of intelligence gathering.

Mike McManamon, DEA attache in London, said his agency had shut down 8,000 similar factories in the US in the past year.

He said: "Firefighters are used to dealing with chemicals but these are crime scenes and police need to be taught safety.

"There is a danger from inhaling or ingesting these chemicals."

One question Sussex Police want answered is how the chemicals were shipped to the Ovingdean address.