FEMA trailers blamed for chronic illness
Three years after Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent rupture of New Orleans’s levies, and the federal government is still failing the victims. In an effort to quickly house the thousands of people who became homeless after the hurricane, FEMA brought in temporary housing, mostly in the form of wheeled trailer homes. More than 143,000 trailers have become part of the landscape in New Orleans.
Initially, the complaint about these homes was that there weren’t enough and that FEMA took too long to deliver them. But these days, the biggest issue is that they’re making people sick.
The Sierra Club tested FEMA trailers and found that 83 percent had levels of formaldehyde that were above the recommended EPA limit.
Now, complaints are rolling in from trailer residents who are claiming to have persistent health issues, such as breathing difficulties, flu-like symptoms, eye irritation, and nosebleeds. Some doctors are saying that kids living in FEMA trailers are at particular risk. The EPA considers formaldehyde a probable carcinogen, and respiratory problems are an early sign of exposure. Doctors claim after 10 or 15 years of constant formaldehyde exposure, cancer can develop.
The problem here is that the government – as it so often does – responded to a national crisis by throwing billions of tax dollars at it before doing adequate research to determine if the money was being spent correctly. If they had done a little bit of research to ensure that the trailers were up to code, all of this additional suffering could have been avoided. And they could have saved a ton of money in the process.
A bill has been introduced in Congress that would force FEMA and the CDC to provide health examinations for the FEMA trailer residents who believe that formaldehyde has made them sick. This bill is similar to the $108 million in tests and examinations on workers who were exposed to similar air quality problems while working at ground zero after the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center site.
According to Arch Carson, a professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center, preliminary examinations for FEMA trailer residents could cost much more than the $108 million for the Trade Center workers. He also raised the specter of the inevitable class action lawsuit that’s sure to come, which he thinks could cost the government billions. “It would be best for the government to get its act together now,” he said.
Some have argued that the untold millions spent on these cancer-traps would have been better spent on mold removal and the repairing or replacement of actual permanent homes. What if the money that was funneled to the trailer program had been given directly to homeowners whose houses were still salvageable? Couldn’t they have repaired their homes more quickly than the slow, red-tape-wrapped U.S. government? Wouldn’t the quick construction of large numbers of permanent, pre-fab homes have been preferable to the flimsy trailers?
You will have to look long and hard to find a worse case of the government throwing good money after bad than in the aftermath of the Katrina tragedy. We surely haven’t heard the last of this Katrina stuff. Stay tuned.
