Which fema trailers have formaldehyde

About Us. Contact Us. Weather Blog. Watch Previous Newscasts. Investigate TV. Gray DC Bureau. Published: Jul. Share on Facebook. Email This Link. Share on Twitter. Share on Pinterest. Share on LinkedIn. Their study was criticized as being rigged to produce favorable results, but still supported the Sierra Club findings. In July of this year, FEMA offered alternative housing to Gulf Coast refugees, but approximately 47, of the trailers are still in use.

In the study announced today, the CDC will measure formaldehyde levels in trailers. However, the study's utility is limited. CDC environmental health officer Henry Falk qualified it's import, noting that levels are only being measured "at a single point in time. Formaldehyde levels were probably higher in the past, and will probably be higher again in the future. Falk said there isn't a single established standard for formaldehyde exposures in trailers.

That's true, but somewhat disingenuous: there are general exposure standards, such as those mentioned above. But these trailers had never seen a display lot. In New Orleans, everyone knew what they were, and the city was desperate to get rid of them. They had been built fast, and not to last.

The fact that some people were still living in them because they had never gotten enough money to rebuild their homes, or had run afoul of unethical contractors, was just an unwanted reminder of how far the city still had to go to recover from Hurricane Katrina. But in the oil fields of Alexander, where Shapiro found them, people had, at best, only a dim memory of hearing something bad about the trailers on the late night news. Grist thanks its sponsors. Become one. Only one person in the improvised trailer park near the Tumbleweed Inn knew where the trailers were from.

The trailers. Most of the people living in the trailer park were like him: men, young, drawn to North Dakota from all over the U. They made it work. They slept in bunk beds, seven to a trailer, so that they could save as much as they could, and then get the hell out of there.

The story of the trailers — which Grist has assembled from Freedom of Information Act requests, interviews, and the public record — goes like this: Less than 24 hours after the New Orleans levees broke, trailer companies were in touch with local officials for the Federal Emergency Management Agency FEMA , setting up contracts to provide housing for people whose homes were destroyed in the flood.

Since 80 percent of New Orleans, plus a whole lot of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama coastline, had been flooded, the need for housing was overwhelming. At the time, there were about 14, trailers in lots around the country, waiting to be sold; FEMA needed , Video above by Mariel Carr. Still, a month after Katrina and Rita hit landfall, Louisiana had only managed to get families into trailers.

The alternatives were overcrowded shelters, or squatting in the wreckage of the flood. As new trailers arrived, they brought hope: They were shiny and new, and most importantly, had never been buried under 12 feet of water.

But when the people who were supposed to live in them opened the doors, many noted a strong chemical smell inside. Some thought it was OK: It smelled kind of like a new car in there! Others did not think it was OK, especially after they started to get nosebleeds and headaches, and began to have trouble breathing. Local pediatricians began to notice an epidemic of respiratory infections in children in the area — and all of them seemed to be living in FEMA trailers.

But I had a friend who would wake up in the middle of the night, gasping for air. The link between mobile homes and formaldehyde was well documented ; the low ceilings and small size concentrated any fumes emanating from the particleboard they were built with. When 30 of the 32 tested positive for high formaldehyde levels, she shared the information with FEMA — which, she said, did nothing.

So Gillette got a grant from the Sierra Club to buy even more kits. FEMA — or at least some parts of FEMA — did know that the trailers were dangerous, though that would not emerge until the congressional hearings on the issue in FEMA appears to have stopped testing trailers in early , after a field agent discovered that one trailer, which was occupied by a couple expecting their second child, had formaldehyde levels at 75 times the recommended threshold for workplace safety.

The couple was relocated, and management pushed back against further testing, even after a man was found dead in his trailer a few months later. Trailers built by three companies in particular — Pilgrim International, Coachman Industries, and Gulf Stream Coach — had the highest levels. Kevin Broom, a spokesperson for the Recreational Vehicle Industry Association, told reporters that trailer residents needed to open their windows.

Then it had to start figuring out what to do with them as people began to rebuild their lives and leave them behind. The agency had planned on getting rid of the trailers by selling them, possibly even to the people who were living in them, but that was no longer an option.

In July of , FEMA suspended sales of the trailers to the public , and in November, it announced plans to move as many residents as possible out of the trailers — partly, a FEMA spokesperson said , because of formaldehyde levels. Around the same time, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began running its own tests.