Op-Ed: Get rid of FEMA, toxic trailers for Katrina victims is the last straw

There’s probably a whole new set of expletives waiting in Language Heaven waiting to be born, to meet new situations, and one of them will definitely be “FEMA”. It has that subtle suggestion of a bodily function gone astray. Or slums in estrus.

The agency has discovered levels of formaldehyde in the trailers issued to New Orleans evacuees. This chemical is also used by undertakers for embalming, traditionally. Its fumes are toxic. Heat releases these fumes, and the famous temperatures of the Southern summer are considered a threat to health. Tests on 519 trailers have found levels up to 40 times levels of “customary exposure”. PBS has the story: “FEMA Administrator R. David Paulison and CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding said at a news conference they hope relocate people out of the trailers before the Gulf Coast's sweltering summer months, when heat and a lack of ventilation inside the trailers could make formaldehyde accumulations worse.

"The real issue is not what it will cost but how fast we can move people out," Paulison said, according to the Associated Press.

Gerberding said that although formaldehyde levels were low in some trailers, others were high enough to cause breathing problems for children, the elderly or people who already have respiratory problems.

"We're also concerned because they've been in there 18 months, and even a low level could result in large cumulative exposure," she told the Washington Post. "We know less about effects of chronic exposure. It's very important we reduce it as much and as quickly as we can, and the way to do that is to get people out of these homes." Matter of fact, 18 months, including at least one summer, would probably have already had effects. I searched “formaldehyde toxicity” and got 733,000 responses in 0.23 seconds, many from medical and government sources, so it’s not quite a secret. What is obvious is that the dangers may have been seriously understated. This is heading into Congressional hearing territory. There's no telling what 18 months' exposure could do. This PDF report from California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) is quite a bit less than ambiguous. 94 micrograms is enough to cause problems, according to Item 1, Page 1, of its report Determination of Acute Reference Exposure Levels for Airborne Toxicants, dated March 1999. OEHHA’s report also includes specifications of material which are major sources, including “Mobile home interiors and pressed wood furniture are two other common sources of formaldehyde exposure.” PBS quotes from a Washington Post report: (Have to love the way these guys can accuse Citizen Journalists of swiping mainstream stuff, then come up with whole articles like this.) “The health findings come 23 months after FEMA first received reports of health problems and test results showing formaldehyde levels at 75 times the U.S.-recommended workplace safety threshold, the Post reported.” So let’s recall the chain of events, in an appropriate style: The scene is an elegant office, where cuds are being chewed elegantly by stunning, comprehensively inbred, overbites, and the general ethics and noble bearing of the feed lot is evident: “Golly gosh, Billy Bob Misanthrope Necrosis, all they folks in New Orleans gonna be done needed somewheres to live, by gar.” “Now don’t you worry, Flouncy Freddie Audit Garglebutt. We’s a-been and done got them some of they there trailer things wherefore they’s a-gonna be a-dwellin’ fer years to come.” And so the saintly fellows went about their errand of mercy, asking for no more than a government job and little stocking caps with bells on them to wear, to add that air of authority so necessary to good government. Merry and joyful were the inhabitants of these petrified palaces, dotting the landscape of bureaucratic oblivion, and wondrous the social abysses of the South. Makes you wonder why Shakespeare bothered, doesn’t it? The poor man, trying so hard to give some character and dignity to insanity, when history was going to produce this extravagance of descriptors, just a few centuries later. There’s a famous phrase in the English language: “Expletive deleted”. Sounds like good administrative policy to me.