FEMA ducked trailer problems
by Bruce Alpert - Times-Picayune (excerpt)

WASHINGTON -- Attorneys and management staff for the Federal Emergency Management Agency discouraged testing trailers for formaldehyde, concerned about legal liability and worried that a full-scale investigation might uncover serious problems the agency wasn't prepared to solve.

The revelation is contained in e-mails and other documents subpoenaed by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. On Thursday, the panel heard from three Mississippi residents who complained that they got little more than the runaround when they expressed concern that their families' health problems were linked to high formaldehyde levels in trailers provided them after Hurricane Katrina.

"It's sickening and the exact opposite of what government should be," said the committee chairman, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif. "It is impossible to read the FEMA documents and not be infuriated."

The only occupied trailer it tested, according to the committee, was housing a pregnant mother and her infant. The committee said the tests showed formaldehyde levels 75 times higher than the maximum workplace exposure level recommended by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

Recently discovered documents make it appear FEMA's primary concerns were legal liability and public relations, not human health and safety," said Rep. Tom Davis, the top Republican on the committee.

Lindsay Huckabee, a mother of five from Kiln, Miss., told the House panel Thursday that her children often were sick, particularly her 4-year-old daughter who suffered recurring asthma, "more ear infections than I can count" and nosebleeds. The illnesses, she said, soon became an accepted way of life.

Huckabee realized how accustomed she and her family had become to medical problems when she came home one afternoon and didn't react with urgency when she found her daughter covered in blood from a serious nosebleed.

Rep. Bobby Jindal, R-Kenner, told committee members that Huckabee's story isn't unusual. He said his office has fielded a large number of complaints, including one from a man who moved back into his mold-infested apartment because it was easier to breathe there than in his FEMA trailer.