Toxic gas pervasive in FEMA units, tests show

Mike Brunker Projects Team editor • Profile • E-mail

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.”

The results for mobile homes are especially puzzling, as the units had been presumed to be safer than travel trailers.  Mobile homes, which are mounted on a permanent chassis and contain at least 320 square feet of living space, are intended for long-term occupancy. The level of formaldehyde in building materials used in their manufacture is regulated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has halted distribution of travel trailers - described as campers no more than 45 feet in length — for temporary housing because of formaldehyde concerns and said it is working to move all 52,520 households currently residing in travel trailers nationwide into permanent housing. It also said it will provide temporary housing to anyone who expresses a desire to move out of travel trailers because of formaldehyde.

But the agency continues to provide mobile homes to disaster victims, including 50 it sent to people left homeless by last month’s wildfires in Southern California, according to FEMA spokeswoman Mary Margaret Walker. The agency also has agreed to donate up to 2,000 unused mobile homes to native American tribes, Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., announced in June.

Walker did not respond to queries about the number of people on the Gulf Coast living in FEMA- provided mobile homes, but it is believed to be substantially lower than those in travel trailers.

Formaldehyde, a chemical used in a wide variety of products, is considered a human carcinogen, or cancer-causing substance, by the International Agency for Research on Cancer and a probable human carcinogen by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

An array of ailments
But apart from little-understood long-term health risks, many residents say the gaseous form of the chemical causes immediate ailments, including bloody noses, respiratory distress such as asthma, sinus infections and bronchitis, skin rashes and burning eyes.  The gas is emitted by composite wood and plywood panels in the FEMA units.

Joseph Carmouche, 82, and his 75-year-old wife, Daisy, of Picayune, Miss., are among those who wonder if the gas is harming them.

The Carmouches, who lost their home to Hurricane Katrina, have had a rash of health problems since they moved into a FEMA-provided mobile home in December 2005. Joseph Carmouche said his emphysema worsened significantly and he suffered an outbreak of bullous pemphigoid, a chronic autoimmune skin disease. His wife developed asthma severe enough to prompt her general practitioner to refer her to a pulmonologist.

When they had the mobile home tested for formaldehyde in July, more than a year and a half after they moved in, the reading came back at 0.186 parts per million (ppm) or more than 23 times the long-term maximum exposure level of 0.008 recommended by the Agency for Toxic  Substances and Disease Registry, a unit of the federal  Centers for Disease Control.

The couple was in the midst of negotiations with FEMA to buy the mobile home at the time, but they have put any deal on hold until they get answers from the agency.

“We don’t know if we should attribute our health problems to the air quality or not, since we’re not experts,” Joseph Carmouche said. “We’re just curious and concerned.”

Carmouche and thousands of other residents in the temporary housing units continue to wait for the answers that might be provided by government-sanctioned testing.

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