Author: Eric Jensen, Managing Editor
On Friday, Feb. 14, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed that the trailers issued to post-Katrina evacuees were saturated with unsafe levels of formaldehyde. While the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has vowed to relocate residents to safe housing, their response has come over two years too late.
FEMA was responsible for the distribution of about 144,000 trailers to house hurricane victims in 2005, dispensing them in areas of need throughout the Gulf Coast, including New Orleans and Baton Rouge. Though relieved to have shelter, recipients were immediately aware that something wasn’t right.
“[The smell] was really bad,” evacuee Melody Stewart of Bay St. Lewis Mississippi said in an MSNBC report. “Within hours, I woke up to the smell-it was that strong-and I was gasping for fresh air.”
The smell was formaldehyde, a substance known to cause respiratory distress, eye irritation, headaches and nosebleeds. Studies conducted by the World Health Organization also classify formaldehyde as a human carcinogen, or cancer-causing agent. Stewart and her husband Paul notified FEMA officials of their trailer’s condition, only to receive two more contaminated trailers as replacements. Already suffering the effects of formaldehyde exposure, the couple decided to move on. “We took what resources we had left and what we really should have used to rebuild our house and went out and bought our own camper,” Paul said.
The Stewarts were relatively lucky. Those whose money and resources had long since run out remained in the trailers; in fact, according to news reports released in mid-February of 2008, 38,000 families are still living in them, in spite of countless studies that have emerged since 2006 indicating that the trailers are uninhabitable.
The Sierra Club reported levels of formaldehyde up to 0.34 parts per million, nearly equal to the amount that a professional embalmer would come into contact with on the job. Air quality tests conducted by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration at trailer holding stations produced even more alarming results, with formaldehyde levels of up to 5.0 parts per million-50 times the Environmental Protection Agency limit for elevated levels.
Industrial hygienist Mary DeVany said the contamination was not only exacerbated by hot and humid conditions along the Gulf Coast, but could easily be attributed to the hasty manufacture of the trailers. In an MSNBC report in 2006, she said, “Typically with these plywood and particleboard materials . . . before assembly, they’re put in ovens that heat them to 130 degrees. This sets and bakes off the formaldehyde in the glues and resins . . . I’m not sure that happened in this case.”
In spite of these and several other studies, FEMA denied claims that their trailers were unsafe. “FEMA stands confident in using travel trailers for emergency sheltering,” spokesman Aaron Walker said in 2006. The agency claimed that more research was necessary to prove that the formaldehyde contamination was a serious issue.
Now that the official reports from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) have emerged, FEMA has supplied an official press release. FEMA Administrator David Paulison said, “As a result of preliminary findings FEMA will be taking additional actions to provide for the safety and well being of the residents of these travel trailers by finding them alternative housing.” No part of the release explained or acknowledged the two-year delay.
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal criticized FEMA’s slow response in a statement released shortly after FEMA announced the CDC results. “The incredible delay in taking this action has most likely elevated the negative health impact of high formaldehyde levels on trailer residents,” he said. “These people have already been the victims of a natural disaster, and now they are the victims of a man-made disaster.”
FEMA has sworn to transfer all residents who remain in trailers to appropriate housing immediately. But as the preexisting struggle for affordable housing rages on in storm-damaged cities, it is possible that FEMA has made yet another empty promise.
This article has been archived, for more requests please contact us via the support system.
