FEMA TRAILERS FOUND TO BE POISONOUS

As if Hurricane Katrina victims didn't have enough to deal with, new FEMA trailers housing thousands of displaced residents in the Gulf Coast were found to be toxic with unsafe levels of formaldehyde.


A version of the chemical was present in composite wood and plywood panels used in thousands of travel trailers that the Federal Emergency Management Agency purchased after Katrina to house hurricane victims.


Formaldehyde is considered a human carcinogen, or cancer-causing substance, by the International Agency for Research on Cancer.

Air quality tests of 44 FEMA trailers since April by the environmental group Sierra Club show formaldehyde concentrations as high as 0.34 parts per million – a level nearly equal to what a professional embalmer would be exposed to on the job, according to one study of the chemical’s workplace effects.


And all but four of the trailers have tested higher than the 0.1 parts per million that the EPA considers to be an “elevated level” capable of causing watery eyes, burning in the eyes and throat, nausea, and respiratory distress in some people.


Dr. Scott Needle, a pediatrician in Bay St. Louis, said he noticed some unusual and persistent health problems among his patients living in the trailers well before the possible link to formaldehyde exposure surfaced.


“I was seeing kids coming in with respiratory complaints – colds and sinus infections – and they were getting them over and over again,” he told the Associted Press. “…Almost invariably, these families were staying in the FEMA trailers.”

As a result of its testing and such accounts, the Sierra Club is pushing for a congressional investigation of the potential health hazards posed by the trailers.


“It’s simply wrong that the government would spend billions of dollars to poison people in these toxic tin cans,” said Becky Gillette, co-chair of the Sierra Club's Mississippi chapter.


A class-action lawsuit also has been filed in Louisiana, naming the federal government and trailer manufacturers as defendants and alleging that “the temporary housing is unsafe and presents a clear and present danger to the health and well-being of plaintiffs and their families.”