BernieHund: The Political Watchdog

Information from a report by Betty Ann Bowser for The News Hour with Jim Lehrer. 

FEMA trailers have been named as the primary cause of blood disorders, leukemias, nasal cancers, premature births, asthma, and the list goes on.  Formaldehyde is a known carcinagin.  Some of the trailers have tested to have as much as 75 times the levels allowed in most homes.  Yet, today many Katrina victims are still living in these make shift travel trailers.

Angel Gordon’s family moved into a FEMA trailer in February 2006.  January 2007, Angel’s eyes started burning.  She began running a fever.  At the time Angel was ten.  She had never experienced these symptoms prior to moving into the trailer with her family.  Days of tests proved leukemia was present.  With treatment she is now in remission and her family has moved from the trailer.

Thousands of residents who have begun suffering with chronic asthma, cancer and numerous other disorders now charge that the CDC and FEMA suppressed evidence of formaldehyde.  Accusations have been made that testing was held off until winter when the levels of the chemical would register lower on the tests.  CDC refuses to admit that they suppressed any evidence.  Jim Stark from FEMA said they only found out about the problem in 2006. 

However, internal FEMA emails from attorneys specifically tried to put a lid on the problem because of litigation concerns, stating that once they get negative results the “clock is running”.  Only when a Congressional committee found evidence of a cover up did FEMA ask the CDC to begin testing the trailers where residents lived.  Results showed unacceptably high levels of formaldehyde in all 519 trailers that were tested.  Some had levels up to 75 times higher than expected or experienced in other trailers or manufactured homes.  Testing was stopped after the 519 because the tests were supposedly a random sampling and there was no evidence that any of the trailers would test within the expected ranges.  Stark maintains that FEMA acted aggressively when the problem surfaced.  They swapped out trailers.  (That was smart.)

Documents show that FEMA was aware of testing before the first trailers were delivered and that FEMA knew there were high levels of formaldehyde.  Both FEMA and CDC have pushed the blame off on the builders, since FEMA is the consumer, not the builder.  Department of Labor, before 2005, had tested some of the trailers and all showed high levels of formaldehyde, higher than what the CDC considers acceptable for habitation.