FEMA Trailer Manufacturers Knew About Formaldehyde, Findings Went Undisclosed
July 11th, 2008It’s not a conspiracy:
“The problem was and remains confusion among federal agencies, not some conspiracy among trailermakers,” said ranking committee Republican Rep. Tom Davis (Va.).
It’s just a Coincidence that thousands of children from low income families will be dead from cancer before they have a chance to have children of their own.
Via: Washington Post:
A leading U.S. trailer manufacturer failed to disclose to Hurricane Katrina evacuees or the government its internal findings that formaldehyde in some units exceeded a federal health standard by as much as 45 times in 2006, its chairman acknowledged to Congress yesterday.
Jim Shea, chairman of Gulf Stream Coach, which built 50,000 trailers for the Federal Emergency Management Agency for $520 million, said his company decided that its results were “irrelevant information” because FEMA already knew about high formaldehyde levels. The agency and the company were working together to improve ventilation, he said, and FEMA later turned down company offers to conduct more tests.
In hindsight Gulf Stream should have shared information from its sampling, Shea said. “Anything that would have been helpful to public health in any kind of way with this in retrospect, we would have loved to have been able to shed more light on it,” he said.
The testimony came as Democrats and Republicans on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform clashed over builders’ responsibility for the housing debacle that unfolded after the August 2005 storm, raising both public health alarms along the Gulf Coast and doubts about how the government will house Americans in future emergencies.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended this winter that all Katrina trailer residents be moved to safer housing after finding elevated formaldehyde levels in 42 percent of trailers. Four companies — Gulf Stream, Forest River, Keystone and Pilgrim International — were identified as having significant problems.
Appearing under oath, executives of those companies each acknowledged CDC findings that some of their products contained unsafe levels of formaldehyde, a common industrial chemical used in glues to make particle board and plywood. It has been linked to cancer and higher rates of respiratory illness.
But company officials and some GOP lawmakers blamed the federal government for failing to set any binding indoor air-quality standards for formaldehyde in trailers or any other U.S. housing. Republicans from Indiana, where the recreational vehicle industry is based, defended builders’ records and integrity.
“The problem was and remains confusion among federal agencies, not some conspiracy among trailermakers,” said ranking committee Republican Rep. Tom Davis (Va.).
Research Credit: ltcolonelnemo
My favorite:
Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) said that 8 million Americans live in or own mobile homes or trailers but that there had been only a handful of formaldehyde complaints before March 2006. “Instead of beating up manufacturers, we ought to give them a little vote of confidence,” he said.
Oh, those poor companies, somebody’s gotta stick up for them! Safe to say it wasn’t your kid in one of those trailers, eh, Dan?
DUH! the conspiracy was to make as many effing bucks as possible off of the crisis of Katrina.
And while we’re at it, let’s use the stankiest, most toxic, cheapeast crap shit imaginable in these trailers that the U.S. Gov’mint is paying primo dollars for and make us some real good “snuff box coffins” so these effing nigger po folk down there yonder in New Orleans just shrivel up and die in em.
And if we don’t kill them, well, that crap we put in there will sho nuff be the best birth control pill ever invented.
And you know the sad thing? If the U.S. government (Department of Homeland Security) didn’t give these trailer makers standards re quality of materials ( you know, DO NOT USE SPENT FUEL RODS FROM ELECTRIC POWER PLANTS IN THE COUNTER TOPS), well guess what?
There are lots of US utilities really pissed off at the US government because of Yucca Mountain. (nice way to get rid of that crap).
And Dan Burton. o-my-g-d.If you need a horror story to read go look.
A good apple that really got a bad worm lodged in what was most likely his human spirit.
Belongs in the gang of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and SATAN (that satan part is a joke).