Lawmakers Fault FEMA on Trailers
Democratic leaders of a House science subcommittee alleged yesterday that the Federal Emergency Management Agency manipulated scientific research into the potential danger posed by a toxic gas emitted in trailers still housing tens of thousands of survivors of hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
FEMA “ignored, hid and manipulated government research on the potential impact of long-term exposure to formaldehyde” on Katrina and Rita victims now living in the FEMA trailers, the congressmen wrote in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, whose department includes FEMA.
Reps. Brad Miller (N.C.) and Nick Lampson (Tex.) cited agency documents given to Congress in alleging that the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — generally considered a repository of nonpartisan scientific expertise — was “complicit in giving FEMA precisely what they wanted” to suppress the adverse health effects.
The lawmakers said the CDC’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry ignored one of its experts, Christopher T. De Rosa, after he informed FEMA there was no “safe level” of long-term exposure. They said FEMA bypassed that opinion and “shopped” the agency for its desired recommendation to study only short-term exposure.
“Any level of exposure to formaldehyde may pose a cancer risk, regardless of duration,” De Rosa wrote in a Feb. 27, 2007, letter to a FEMA lawyer, recently obtained by a House Science and Technology investigative subcommittee that Miller chairs. “Failure to communicate this issue is possibly misleading and a threat to public health.”
De Rosa wrote the letter after learning that the CDC bypassed his office to produce a Feb. 1, 2007, report for FEMA that did not consider long-term exposure risks, contradicting his recommendation to the agency in June 2006.
“Honest scientific studies don’t start with the conclusion, and then work backwards from there,” Miller said.
FEMA said the health agency’s report last February did not address long-term health effects but rather concerned ways to avoid toxic exposure to formaldehyde. “FEMA did not suppress or inappropriately influence any report,” agency spokesman James McIntyre said.
More than 40,000 trailers are still being used by families displaced by Katrina in August 2005 and Rita weeks later. FEMA announced last July that it would test occupied trailers, after congressional investigators disclosed that the agency had suppressed warnings for more than a year from its field workers about health problems experienced by Katrina survivors.
Tests on 500 trailers, finally begun last month, are being performed by CDC, the lawmakers noted. “The Committee is concerned about the independence and scientific integrity of any indoor air testing for formaldehyde levels in these trailers done under the auspices of FEMA,” Miller and Samson wrote.
“For those who are too poor to live elsewhere, FEMA’s position remains as it was in 2006: there are no possible adverse health effects that can’t be cured by opening the windows,” they added.
© 2008 Washington Post
Trailer trash. Who cares? The important thing is, someone had a contract to build thousands of trailers, most of which sit empty near “Hope” Arkansas, and tons of money was pocketed by a select few. If the tests prove they aren’t safe, issue gas masks, gotta be a way to make more money there.
Why should I pay for insurance? If a hurricane knocks down my house the government will buy me a new house and give me a trailor to live in while I wait. If I cry enough, they’ll even give me a job.
I am really glad they stopped put formaldhyde in shampoo. To bad this problem is not confined to trailors. oh well.
OK, there’s something fishy about this sudden government concern for Katrina victims in trailers.
Millions of Americans, including me, live or have lived in trailers. Why not evacuate everyone in a trailer? Why the double jeopardy for Katrina refugees?
Besides, after the trailer has sat for a while, there is less off gassing. So why the concern now, 2 years later? The damage is done.
There is something very fishy about this.
Lorax, are you really ignorant enough to think that insurance protected people on the Gulf coast?
How about an investigation into just which Corporations sold the trailers to FEMA?
Republican campaign contributors, perhaps?
I believe it was a sub-contrator of Halliburton. They get into a lot of things, like Blackwater Inc.
But there are thousands of them parked near Hope, Arkansas, so maybe it connects to Billy Boy.
it’s good that this is being exposed. what i wonder about is why now, so late? this formaldehyde news is nowhere near “new”. anyone who reads and is concerned about health is aware of this, so why were the people living in the trailers allowed to be exposed to formaldehyde for so long?
greenerthanthou asks this, and i agree there is something peculiar going on.
anyway,it would be very difficult to be at ones best when eating toxic so called ‘food”, taking pharmaceuticals, and living in a toxic home.
i hope action will be taken, and that these people finally get some actual, honest help!
I think they are going to evacuate the Katrina victims again, but this time they won’t provide anywhere for them to live.
Then the right wingnuts will scream about how they should provide their own housing, and we shouldn’t help them.
That’s my theory.
Is this saying that Shrub gassed his own people?
It’s a form of “post-partum” birth control. Some have to die, by whatever means available, so that others,(the rich) can keep on living.
The government contracted, bought and paid for substandard trailers. Now that is saying something, because even the best quality mobile homes are crap. I know. A company I worked for printed wallpaper for the 5/16 gypsum wallboard they used in place of 1/2 inch used in most houses.
One factory I visited built 39 mobile homes a day with 1 electrician who supposedly inspected every circuit. HA
A real customer would not have paid for the crappy trailers.
A real government would have hired thousands of QUALIFIED contractors to build or repair houses and rented all available properties. (There were thousands of properties in or near New Orleans that were not available to black people even those with money. Others mostly black were illegally evicted because new tenants would pay more rent.) A real government would have required insurance companies to pay for the houses damaged. Some companies claimed flood damage (not covered) when the roof of the house was found blown off far away by the wind (covered).
There is a book about the San Francisco earth quake about 100 years ago that shows how much better that disaster was handled with telegraph communication and steam trains.
Kem Patrick must surley be jesting with his retarded remark about “trailer trash who cares”. As I see @ least additional comment of his, on this blog, I suspect he does actually does have a brain.
~Onetodo~, I lived in a house trailer for several years, my father was in construction and we followed the jobs. He was the superintendant for the plumbers on the UN building in 1949 for example.
It actually was a very pleasant home. It was very well made, a 45 foot Vagabond, top of the line then. Not at all like the ones made since the 1970s. The interior beech plywood wa all 3/4 inch, even the kitchen cabinets and doors and the frame was all steel.
We who lived at our trailer park, were called trailer trash by many others in the local community, even though my parents made very good wages. The school buses would not pick us kids up, they would pass us by and pick up students who lived in permanent houses a half mile up the very busy and narrow road.
It was two and a half miles to school, if we rode our bikes, they would always be vandalized or stolen at the school. Some of the teachers did treat us very badly, ignore us, or berate us in front of the other students for no reason. I was being sarcastic with my first comment.
Kem don’t like to be called “Shirley”.
The San Francisco earthquake?
Gianini (later called Bank of America) addicted thousands of people who already owned their own homes to Fiat money: an endless life of credit(my neighbor’s house is costing her $600.oo a year).
See the movie “The Devil and Daniel Webster” 1941.
Remember, many of the homes in New Orleans had Titles from the days of Nepolean. Like the ex STASI in eastern Europe; a cottage industry in new paperwork eating the past. “But after the 1906 earthquake and fire destroyed all San Francisco’s birth and citizenship records”…go figure.
Many San Francisco Supervisors were under federal indictment for graft before the earthquake, the Mayor was in jail when it happened.
They hired the General (C.O.) of the US Army Presidio to deliberately burn much of the city, read the testimony on the disparate attempt to destroy Chinatown.
The Fire chief had millions of gallons of firefighting water stored in cisterns under the streets, conveniently he was hurt that morning, dieing a day later.
President T.Roosevelt had the moral backbone to fire the General after word.
Thousands were shot mostly for attempting to save their own property, the Army admitted to shooting over 800 citizens of SF.
I hitched hiked to New Orlines the following week, the story on the streets of Algiers was 10,000 dead. We drove tons of supplies from white churches to black churches, from Target parking lots to Gang Leaders in the projects.
The Red Cross was unseen, but hundred of tree trimer trucks travailed in caravans.
We were pushed out of the private campgrounds in Covington by incoming out of state contractors, our money wasn’t as good as theirs. We left many thousands of mailed gift packages in open warehouses, locked out of the city “because of Rita”.
The convenience stores and gas stations were mobbed, if your purchase was small it was no-charge.
I talked to insurance men at cocktail parties after the Los Angeles “Rodney King uprising”, “70-80% owner-type arson” was the opinion. Many of the 438 fires were set more than once. The destruction of 1992 fits Los Angeles’ “General Plan” (planed zoning) like a glove-
I lived within the “Riot Zone” on Normandie. Bush sent the Marines, a first since Posse Comitatus Act of 1870’s.
Who thinks Nero was playing a fiddle when Rome
was burned?
Daja view:
23 April 06: “Imperial decree on the 30th Day of the Third Moon from Empress Dowager of China to send 100,000 taels as a personal contribution to the relief of the San Francisco sufferers. President Theodore Roosevelt declined the offer, as well as donations from other foreign governments”.
My apology Kem Patrick
No need, I understood your reasoning. Sometimes my sarcastic remarks gets me into trouble.
How to buy votes…
Where to house all the illegal immigrants?
soon to be called immigrant workers,
after they are made US citizens,
before the elections in November.