CDC lied about formaldehyde toxicity in FEMA trailers in which 35,000 families still live 3 years after the floods

We wrote about Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) providing trailers for Katrina refugees which were discovered to have unsafe levels of formaldehyde, a component of the glue used to make the wood ply used in their manufacture which was perfusing some of the 120,000 they had purchased.

Revelations of high formaldehyde levels early on , caused the government to offer to buy back or replace trailers sold to evacuees at a discount under a federal program. As of May,2007 FEMA had received 140 complaints and replaced 47 trailers. It also said it would not continue to put storm victims into the trailers.

Well 60 of them them were sold to copper company, Phelps Dodge ( from March 19th 2007 a Freeport-McMoRan Company - "the world's largest publicly traded copper company" who took them over) ,to house their copper mine workers in Morenci and Safford, Arizona. Employees live rent free and the company pay the utilities.

See the post - Wednesday, August 22, 2007 Phelps Dodge / Freeport-McMoRan Company - why they hate the smell of formaldehyde 24/7 in Morenci, Arizona. Cost of copper and capitalism

Now it seems that was only a fraction of the story..

Nearly three years after the hurricanes swept the Gulf Coast, more than 35,000 families remain in tiny trailers as the emergency management agency struggles to find alternative housing.

A Feb. 14 report by the Centers for Disease Control has some bad news for those families: The air inside many FEMA trailers contains up to 40 times the normal level of formaldehyde gas.

Now CBS News report that a string of internal documents they have obtained reveal that Dr. Christopher De Rosa, director of the CDC's Division of Toxicology and Environmental Medicine, told his superiors "there is no safe level of exposure" to formaldehyde in trailers. That warning never made its way into any public report about the trailers.

As if this was not enough deception Dr. De Rosa wrote in an email that two of his staff members had been directed by FEMA officials to not "address longer term health effects" of formaldehyde in this February 2007 report.

In fact it took until October 2007 - after eight months and pressure from congressional investigators that the CDC revised its February 2007 report and finally issued warnings about cancer and other long-term health risks of formaldehyde. Formaldehyde has been classified as a carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer and a probable carcinogen by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

It contained this extrordinary explanation at the head of the report ...

The previous health consultation dated February 1, 2007,contained insufficient discussion of the health implications of formaldehyde exposure, and some language may have been unclear,potentially leading readers to draw incorrect or inappropriate conclusions. Additionally, analyses of formaldehyde levels by trailer type and by daily temperature were not conducted."

The primary conclusion makes un comfortable reading for those 35,000 still living inthese trailers.....

" ....formaldehyde levels in closed trailers averaged 1.04 parts per million (ppm), with some measurements exceeding 3.5 ppm. Exposure in this range is
sufficient to cause acute symptoms in some people. Allergic sensitization to formaldehyde may also occur. Risk of cancer will increase with increasedformaldehyde concentration and duration of exposure."

What did Dubya say at thePrayer Breakfast last week ?

"When we lift our hearts to God, we're all equal in His sight.We're all equally precious"

Except if you live in a trailer supplied by FEMA when your home was swept away when the levees maintained ineffectively by the Army Corps of Engineers over many years, gave way.

Anyway FEMA might now get it's arse in gear if a report in the Tampa Bay Press is to be believed ..

"After downplaying the risks for years, FEMA said Thursday it will rush to move Gulf Coast hurricane victims out of about 35,000 government-issued trailers because tests found dangerous levels of formaldehyde fumes.

FEMA Administrator R. David Paulison said the agency hopes to get everyone out and into hotels, motels, apartments and other temporary housing by the summer, when the heat and stuffy air could worsen the problem inside the trailers."

As recently as last spring, however, a FEMA spokesman said the agency said no reason to question the safety of its trailers.

Now FEMA Administrator R. David Paulison says "The real issue is not what it will cost, but how fast we can move people out,"

Louisiana has 25,162 occupied FEMA trailers and mobile homes, while Mississippi has 10,362, according to FEMA. Other states also have hundreds of trailers. At one point, FEMA had placed victims of the 2005 hurricanes in more than 144,000 trailers and mobile homes - no rent is charged for any of them - which makes their occupants, grateful, ..and very, very obedient .(Time)

Of course this means that all such trailers carry such a health risk. CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding (see pic) "Healthy People in a Healthy World-Through Prevention." said ,"I think we're going to learn a lot more in the next year or two," she said after a news conference at FEMA offices in New Orleans. Bit late in the fucking day sweetheart.