FEMA blasted over trailer toxins

20 Jul 2007 // The Federal Emergency Management Agency mishandled complaints about potential toxins in temporary trailers for Gulf Coast hurricane victims because agency lawyers were concerned about liability, a House committee charged Thursday.

"They didn't want the moral and legal responsibility to do what they knew had to be done," said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

The committee released hundreds of pages of internal FEMAe-mails, obtained by subpoena, showing that agency lawyers ordered workers not to test the levels of cancer-causing formaldehyde in the 120,000 trailers purchased to house displaced residents. The lawyers felt such testing "would imply FEMA's ownership of the issue," according to an e-mail on June 16, 2006.

FEMA Administrator David Paulison said he now believes the agency should have moved more aggressively, but he disputed the notion that the agency was motivated by lawsuit fears.

"In hindsight, we could have moved quicker than we did," Paulison said repeatedly.

Lawmakers peppered Paulison with questions about why the agency did not quickly test and replace trailers when residents first reported noxious fumes and health problems in early 2006. But, he added, "This agency made the best decisions it could with the information it had."

Republicans and Democrats alike disagreed. They said that while FEMA replaced a few dozen trailers for residents who persistently complained, the agency did little to investigate the extent of the problem, even after a report that one person died in June 2006 in a FEMA trailer.

The man, who was not named, told a neighbor he was afraid to use his air conditioner because he worried it made the formaldehyde worse, according to a June 27, 2006, e-mail.

The e-mails portray an agency whose "primary concerns were legal liability and public relations, not human health and safety," said Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, the committee's top Republican.

Rep. Edolphus Towns, a Brooklyn Democrat, accused FEMA of "a coverup."

Formaldehyde, an embalming fluid, was used in the glues and pressed wood used to make the travel trailers that FEMA purchased to house tens of thousands displaced by the storms. Complaints about fumes first surfaced in early 2006. The Sierra Club, an environmental group, tested dozens of trailers in summer 2006 and found that 83% had levels above the point at which federal workers would be required to use respirators if exposed all day to fumes. Residents complained of headaches, burning eyes, running noses and asthma.

FEMA officials responded that residents could reduce their exposure to formaldehyde by airing out their trailers. Paulison said the same thing to a different House committee two months ago.

He said he realizes that "probably is not a practical solution."

Paulison pledged a new regime of testing and a public campaign to urge everyone still living in a FEMA trailer to come forward if they have respiratory or other health problems. He said the disaster agency will replace problem trailers. About 60,000 remain in use, he added.

Mississippi resident Paul Stewart told the committee he ended up spending $50,000 in insurance proceeds to purchase his own trailer after FEMA brought him two problematic replacements — one that stunk of formaldehyde and one with bedbugs — during 14 months of wrangling.

"We lost a great deal through our dealings with FEMA, not least of which was our faith in government," Stewart said.