Toxic Trailers

Recent testing by Sierra Club has shown that more than 88 percent of FEMA trailers tested in Mississippi had excessive and unsafe formaldehyde levels. Click here to download the fact sheet about this issue.

FEMA trailer residents have recurring health problems consistent with formaldehyde poisoning. Please call U.S. Rep. Gene Taylor at 228-864-7670 and ask him to make FEMA address the formaldehyde problem and provide SAFE AND HEALTHY emergency housing for victims of Katrina and future natural disasters.

Jan. 4, 2009

Dear Editor,
         During the month of January, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will be holding five meetings across the country to take public comments on regulating formaldehyde. Despite the widespread publicity about formaldehyde problems in FEMA trailers, there is still no national standard for formaldehyde in the indoor air and products such as RVs are still for sale that contain high formaldehyde levels.
         Mississippi Emergency Management Agency (MEMA) testing in April showed some MEMA cottages tested high for formaldehyde, but that information wasn’t released to the public at the time. In a recent news article, MEMA director Mike Womack said: "We did not tell people we tested the cottages, because there was and still is no national formaldehyde standard for indoor air quality."
         The levels found in the cottages were higher than what the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health recommends that workers should be exposed to (.016 parts per million) for more than 10 hours without wearing a respirator. And levels were, on average, even far higher in the FEMA travel trailers many families lived in for years.
         The government spent over $2 billion on FEMA trailers. Most of those not only can’t be used now, but are costing millions per year for storage. Another $281 million was spent on the MEMA cottages.
It is far less expensive to prevent health problems from formaldehyde than to provide medical treatment for people who are exposed. Some people’s health care costs have run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Children are particularly vulnerable. A Children’s Health Fund study has shown FEMA trailer children are the sickest in the country. I know of many families who had loved ones, including infants, die of health problems suspected to have been caused by formaldehyde. This is heartbreaking.
Congress held a hearing in 1981 about formaldehyde that concluded that the U.S. needed formaldehyde regulations. Twenty-seven years later, it has yet to be done. Protecting Americans from formaldehyde is long overdue.
         The FEMA trailer tragedy just exposed what is a widespread problem that experts believe has become worse in recent years because of the increasing importation of cheap, wood products. I’ve received complains from people across the country who have been poisoned by RVs, modular homes and apartment buildings, and mobile homes. Even some children’s furniture contains enough formaldehyde to raise levels in the entire room.
The people who have called about formaldehyde problems used test kits that confirmed high formaldehyde levels. They reported the same health problems as the FEMA trailer residents: burning eyes, sore throat, congestion, headaches, memory problems, and rashes. They also face an increased risk of cancer.
Although it was because of a Sierra Club petition to EPA signed by 5,000 people that EPA is now considering formaldehyde rulemaking, EPA has shunned the Gulf Coast where the largest number of Americans have personal experience from formaldehyde exposure. None of the hearings are planned on the Gulf Coast. But you can mail comments to EPA before the Feb. 2 deadline. Send comments to: Document Control Office (7407M), Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics (OPPT), Environmental Protection Agency, 1200 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20460-0001. Or you can e-mail comments to Cindy Wheeler at Wheeler.cindy@epa.gov. All comments must be identified by docket identification (ID) no. EPA-HQ-OPPT-2008-0627,
Wood products that are low in formaldehyde are readily available and affordable. The California Air Resources Board (CARB) has adopted tough new standards to protect people from formaldehyde. The rest of the nation deserves the same protections. Please tell EPA to adopt the CARB standards for formaldehyde along with a nationwide standard for formaldehyde levels allowed in indoor air.

Sincerely,

Becky Gillette
Formaldehyde Campaign Director, Sierra Club
Eureka Springs AR (former resident of Ocean Springs)

Update: June 10, 2008

Mississippi Press, Letter to the editor (summary):

Written by the formaldehyde campaign chair.

Dear Editor,

As someone whose home flooded in Hurricane Katrina, my heart goes out in sympathy to the thousands of families in Iowa who homes have been flooded. I hope that you can learn from the experience of Gulf Coast residents and be aware that mobile homes provided by FEMA may make you and your family ill. Recently FEMA announced that it was sending hundreds of mobile homes to Iowa to house disaster victims.

While FEMA said the mobile homes would be low in formaldehyde, this is an agency which for two years denied there was a formaldehyde problem in the FEMA trailers and RVs even when residents and even FEMA workers reported that serious problems such as burning eyes, headaches, breathing problems, bloody noses, rashes and extreme fatigue.
Earlier this year after testing by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found elevated levels of formaldehyde in the FEMA housing, FEMA decided to try to move everyone out of the housing before the heat of summer. Now this same kind of housing is deemed okay for victims of Iowa flooding?

Formaldehyde levels increase dramatically with higher heat and humidity, and also with inadequate ventilation. FEMA is testing the units prior to sending them out under conditions designed to get the lowest levels of formaldehyde—lots of ventilation and cool temperatures. Under actual use with families bathing and cooking, formaldehyde levels could be much, much higher.

Many serious illnesses and even deaths of have been linked to the formaldehyde in FEMA trailers. Be especially wary of FEMA’s housing if you are pregnant or have young children, have existing health problems such as asthma or cancer, or elderly. These are the people we’ve seen suffer the most.

If you do get a FEMA trailer, be alert to the symptoms of formaldehyde poisoning. Even if you don’t feel sick, ventilate the trailer as much as possible, keep the temperature low, and stay out of the unit as much as possible.
Also know that formaldehyde problems aren’t limited to FEMA housing. Sierra Club testing has found high formaldehyde levels in private purchase RVs as old as 2002 and also in new manufactured apartments. Industry special interests continue to make sure there are no regulations for formaldehyde in the indoor air, so you are not being protected by the government.

For more information, you can Google CDC trailer study or visit www.toxictrailers.com <http://www.toxictrailers.com> .

Sincerely,

Becky Gillette, formaldehyde campaign chair
Sierra Club

Update, June 30, 2008:

Story ran on WLOX (TV news station in south Mississippi)

AJ Giardina Reports On EcoPlanter Air Filtration System

Picayune Man's Invention Filters Formaldehyde From FEMA Trailers, Cottages

PICAYUNE (WLOX) -- A scientist from Picayune says he has the answer to eliminating formaldehyde problems in FEMA trailers and Mississippi Cottages.

As WLOX News uncovered recently, tests done by the Sierra Club found high levels of the chemical in the cottages that are replacing FEMA trailers.

Dr. B.C. Wolverton has spent more than 30 years as a civilian scientist with the military and NASA. Since retiring from NASA 18 years ago, Dr. B.C. Wolverton has developed high-efficiency plant-based air filtration systems. He says he has the solution to eliminating formaldehyde inside FEMA trailers.

"What this filter does, it performs the function of about 100-200 potted plants in removing chemicals such as formaldehyde from the indoor environment," Wolverton said.

Wolverton worked with a Japanese engineering company for ten years where he helped develop the EcoPlanter, which is sold in Japan. The planter has a mixture of expanded pebbles, mixed through with activated carbon.

"Now, when you pull the air down through there, this activated carbon, and we have a dry and wet zone. This filter absorbs all these nasty chemicals, including formaldehyde, benzin, what have you. It traps them and what happens, the plant microbes convert these trapped chemicals into a source of energy and food for the plant and the microbe."

Wolverston says since the system regenerates itself under normal operating conditions, you never have to change the filters. He calls it a hostile environment for most disease causing viruses and bacteria.

When formaldehyde problems began cropping up in FEMA trailers, the Sierra Club contacted Dr. Wolverton. In October of 2006, the Sierra Club placed one of Wolverton's EcoPlanter systems in a Bay St. Louis family's FEMA trailer. The results were amazing.

"We started off with 180 parts per billion of formaldehyde. We put one of these small little portable plant filters on a timer, and we ran it off and on for several days. We tested again, and it reduced it down to 30 parts per billion."

Wolverton says the results, which were sent to an independent lab, provided incentive for further evaluation. He also contacted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but he says so far, no one from the government has shown enough interest to take the next step.

Tuesday night on WLOX News at 6pm, A.J. Giardina will have more information on the EcoPlanter system and he'll contact the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to see why the government agency isn't testing a FEMA trailer using this air filtration system.

For more updates on this important issue, visit: http://www.toxictrailers.com

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