Toxic gas pervasive in FEMA units, tests show
Nearly all trailers, mobile homes exceed long-term formaldehyde standard
Mike Brunker
Projects Team editor
More than two years after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita battered the Mississippi Gulf Coast, private tests of FEMA travel trailers and mobile homes provided to storm victims indicate that high levels of formaldehyde gas in the units is much more widespread than the government has acknowledged.
The previously undisclosed test results from nearly 600 units, reviewed by msnbc.com, found that 95 percent of the temporary housing units provided by FEMA measured at least twice the CDC’s maximum recommended level for long-term exposure to the toxic gas. In some extreme cases, the levels were 70 times the long-term standard.
The tests were conducted by the Sierra Club and a Galveston, Texas, law firm that is involved in federal litigation against the manufacturers of the travel trailers and mobile homes that FEMA distributed.
The federal government promised to test inhabited travel trailers and mobile homes but has not yet followed through. Many of the trailers and mobile homes have been occupied for two years which makes the high formaldehyde levels a scientific mystery, since those levels typically decline significantly when units are ventilated by residents.
‘I really can't account for it’
“It’s really surprising,” said Mary DeVany, an industrial hygienist whose Vancouver, Wash., firm has conducted more than 100 of the tests. “I really can’t account for it.”
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21725858/