FEMA’s Formaldehyde Trailers are Back in the Gulf
Kate Sheppard
Mother Jones
As if people in the Gulf coast didn’t already have enough health concerns due to the BP disaster, now it appears the infamous formaldehyde trailers used in the region after Hurricane Katrina are making a reappearance.
Ron Mason, owner of a disaster contracting firm, Alpha 1, said that in the past two weeks he had sold more than 20 of the trailers to cleanup workers and the companies that employ them in Venice and Grand Isle, La.
Even though federal regulators have said the trailers are not to be used for housing because of formaldehyde’s health risks, Mr. Mason said some of these workers had bought them so they could be together with their wives and children after work.
“These are perfectly good trailers,” Mr. Mason said, adding that he has leased land in and around Venice for 40 more trailers that are being delivered from Texas in the coming weeks. “Look, you know that new car smell? Well, that’s formaldehyde, too. The stuff is in everything. It’s not a big deal.”
The policy of selling the trailers off to likely unsuspecting and probably low-income people, is highly questionable by itself. But a piece on the auction in the Washington Post in March included this ominous passage, which made it clear that the government hasn’t made much of an effort to change its ways:
But the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still have not issued a contract for a long-promised study of the health effects on children who lived in trailers; no binding safety standards for formaldehyde in housing have been set; and FEMA is still fleshing out how it would manage housing in a future Katrina-scale catastrophe.
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