Toxic Trailers From The Government

WASHINGTON, July 19 

Government investigators have learned that some of the 100,000 people
living in those trailers supplied by FEMA after Hurricane Katrina are now
suffering from formaldehyde poisoning.

Lawmakers heard testimony from trailer residents like Lindsay Huckabee, who
with her husband and five children, all suffered health problems since moving
into their trailer a year-and-a-half ago.

Lindsay's husband, Steve recently had a tumor extracted from his mouth, and
the couple's children have been chronically ill.

I do not believe that FEMA set out to harm people of the Gulf Coast,
said Lindsay Huckabee. I have to have more faith in our government than
that, but I do think it was handled very poorly when they were notified.

Rep. Elijah Cummings, a Democrat from the Oversight and Government Reform
Committee, had this to say about the poisoning, The thought that someone
would put children in that situation, and I don't care who you want to blame
for it, whether you say it's the top, the bottom; the fact is is that this
should not happen in the United States of America.

In testimony on Thursday, three people who had lived in the trailers said
they believed that exposure to formaldehyde, which is found in many building
materials, was the cause of health problems including sore throats, burning
eyes and respiratory problems 

The administrator of FEMA, R. David Paulison, told the subcommittee he was
not “100 percent sure that it was the trailers” that caused residents’
health problems. But Mr. Paulison also said that, in hindsight, the agency
could have moved faster when problems were reported in some of the more than
120,000 mobile homes and travel trailers provided to evacuees.

“We were not formaldehyde experts,” he said. “We recognize now that
we have an issue. We are dealing with it in the best manner we can.”

The chairman of the oversight committee, Representative Democrat of California, said 5,000 pages of documents released Thursday revealed a battle between the FEMA field staff and officials at the agency’s headquarters.

"They wanted to ignore the problem,” Mr. Waxman said, referring to
headquarters officials. “What we have is indifference to the suffering of
people who are already suffering because of Hurricane Katrina, and this is
from an agency that’s supposed to serve the public.”

Mr. Waxman said that after news reports in March 2006 about formaldehyde in
the trailers, members of the field staff urged immediate action. He quoted a
response in an e-mail message from a FEMA lawyer who said: “Do not initiate
any testing until we give the O.K. Once you get results, the clock is running
on our duty to respond to them.”

The documents include an e-mail exchange among agency staff members dated
June 27, 2006, relating the news that one person had been found dead in a
trailer in St. Tammany Parish, La.

Referring to the use of air-conditioning, one e-mail message said: “We do
not have autopsy results yet, but he had apparently told his neighbor in the
past that he was afraid to use his A.C. because he thought it would make the
formaldehyde worse.”

The staff member who wrote it recommended further investigation and said
that the agency’s office of general counsel had told a different employee
that it “has not wanted FEMA to test to determine if formaldehyde levels are
in fact unsafe.”

Mary DeVany, an industrial hygienist with her own practice, testified that
it is not rare to find formaldehyde in homes, because it is used in pressed
wood products like particleboard and plywood, and in glues and certain
insulation materials. 

Ms. DeVany said several agencies, including the the Environmental Protection Agency." , had classified the chemical as a probable or known human carcinogen.

Formaldehyde is a common component of glues, molded plastics and building
materials, including particleboard used in manufactured homes. Symptoms of
long-term exposure can include respiratory problems, burning eyes or nose,
headaches and bloody noses. The International Agency for Research on Cancer
identifies the chemical as a carcinogen in humans.

In May, FEMA said its own tests of 96 new trailers near Baton Rouge last September and October found formaldehyde at 1.2 parts per million, but levels dropped to 0.3 parts per million after four days of ventilation. FEMA said that is the accepted threshold used by the Department of Housing and Urban Development for its manufactured homes.

The Sierra Club in May 2006 reported finding unsafe levels of formaldehyde in 30 out of 32 trailers it tested along the Gulf Mary C. DeVany, an occupational health and safety
engineer advising the Sierra Club, testified that that exposure limit of 0.3
parts per million is 400 times greater than the normal limit for year-round
exposure set by the CDC-affiliated Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease
Register. It is also three times the daily exposure limit recommended by the
National Institute on Occupational Safety and Health, she said.

This misapplication and skewing of scientific results is at best unethical and grossly misrepresents and attempt to minimize the adverse health effects being experienced by thousands of travel trailer residents, DeVany said.

High levels of formaldehyde were still found in nearly all trailers sampled, whether continuously ventilated or air conditioned, DeVany said.

She called on FEMA to relocate without delay people living in trailers with levels above 0.05 parts per million and not to turn over any trailers for re-use without testing.

Committee members argued that FEMA had ample opportunity to test the
trailers after about 200 residents lodged complaints referring specifically to
formaldehyde. Agency documents showed that only one inhabited trailer was
tested, in April 2006. Its formaldehyde level was measured at 1.2 parts per
million, 75 times higher than the maximum workplace exposure level set by the
National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

FEMA subsequently tested 96 new trailers last fall, but under what Waxman
called dubious conditions — their ventilation systems and air conditioners
were constantly running and the windows were left open for three weeks before
final readings were taken. Asking individuals to live like that, Waxman noted,
was not realistic.

We recognize that in the summertime on the Gulf Coast, that's not going
to be reasonable, said Paulison, adding that the test conditions were
set with advice from other agencies, including the Environmental Protection
Agency.

Paul Stewart, a former Army officer and one of three trailer residents who
testified that they had experienced formaldehyde-related illnesses, said he
asked FEMA to test his trailer after the family's pet cockatiel became ill.
When nothing was done after several months, he obtained a test kit from a
nonprofit group. He called FEMA with the results, which he said were twice the
NIOSH safety standard.

When Mr. Stewart reported the results to the agency and asked for a new
trailer, he said, “The way FEMA treated us was as if we were charity
cases.” He added, “To them, it was like you were asking for something
better.”

Lindsay Huckabee of Kiln, Miss., said that after moving into a FEMA mobile
home in December 2005, she, her husband and four children began to experience
symptoms that she now believes were related to formaldehyde exposure. Visits
to doctors became a common occurrence. Ms. Huckabee, who was pregnant when she
moved in, said she experienced pre-term labor for three weeks that had to be
stopped with medication. Even then, her son was born four weeks early.

Mr. Paulison said the agency received its first complaint of formaldehyde
fumes in March 2006, six months after the trailers were first delivered. He
said that “after a prompt review,” officials replaced the trailer listed
in the complaint on March 19. He said 58 of the 66,800 travel trailer and
mobile homes now in use had been replaced because of formaldehyde concerns and
that as a result of five other complaints, residents were moved to rental
housing.

As of May 2007, FEMA had received 140 formaldehyde
complaints. Some Katrina trailer residents filed a class-action lawsuit in
June in federal court in Baton Rouge against trailer manufacturers.

The American Academy of Pediatrics remains deeply concerned that Gulf Coast children residing in FEMA trailers may have been and may continue to be exposed to levels of formaldehyde gas that are hazardous to both their short-term and long-term health, Dr. Scott
Needle of the American Academy of Pediatrics said in testimony for the
committee today. ‘They can air those trailers out’.

In a letter to Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.) that month, CDC Director Julie Louis Gerberding
wrote that her agency recognized residents' symptoms but said the effects of
formaldehyde are likely to be transient.

Mr. Paulison said FEMA had updated its trailer purchase specifications,
improved training of the agency and medical staff members who must respond to
complaints and increased efforts to move residents into other long-term
housing.

Representative Mark Souder, Republican of Indiana, which is home to many
mobile home manufacturers, expressed concern that the hearing was portraying
the industry unfairly.

“What we have are terrible personal stories,” Mr. Souder said. “To
just uniformly, without research, make the assertions that I’ve been hearing
today about an industry is irresponsible.”