Earlier this year, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed that trailers the Federal Emergency Management Agency provided to families displaced by Hurricane Katrina were contaminated with dangerously high levels of formaldehyde. Now, a new study suggests that the chemical -- which has already been linked to cancer and respiratory illnesses -- carries another risk: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease.

ALS is a progressive disease that causes damage to nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord and leads to paralysis and death. There is no cure or effective treatment for the condition.

The study's lead author is Marc Weisskopf, an assistant professor of epidemiology and environmental health at the Harvard School of Public Health. He and his colleagues analyzed data from an American Cancer Society study of more than 1 million people who were monitored for 15 years, finding that 617 men and 539 women died of ALS during that time. Only those who reported formaldehyde exposure had a higher risk -- 34 percent -- of developing the illness.

At this time, neither the CDC nor FEMA have any programs in place to help trailer residents with medical expenses incurred as a result of living in unsafe housing.

Labels: CDC, FEMA, formaldehyde, Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch, public health, toxic trailers

A group of people left homeless by Hurricane Katrina is suing the Federal Emergency Management Agency for housing them in trailers contaminated with dangerous levels of formaldehyde. Filed in federal court last week, the complaint adds FEMA to a batch of consolidated cases against manufacturers for allegedly using shoddy materials and construction methods.

After independent tests conducted by the Sierra Club in early 2006 revealed dangerously high levels of formaldehyde, FEMA was slow to respond. In fact, more than a year after the environmental group released its results, FEMA Administrator R. David Paulison told a House committee he was unaware the trailers posed a health threat. The agency was also accused of suppressing health warnings due to liability concerns and meddling into the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's study assessing the trailers' risks, though it insists it's done nothing wrong.

In the end, though, the CDC study confirmed serious problems with the trailers' air quality and sparked a mass relocation of trailer dwellers, with all FEMA-managed group trailer sites to be closed by June 1.

Labels: FEMA, formaldehyde, Gulf Coast, Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch, Hurricane Katrina, lawsuits, toxic trailers

Those of us following the disaster on the Gulf Coast know the Federal Emergency Management Agency gave hurricane-displaced families temporary housing that was later found to be contaminated with hazardous formaldehyde. We also know the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a division of the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, dragged its feet before finally studying the trailer contamination and complied with FEMA's demands not to consider long-term impacts like cancer.

Well, it turns out the toxic trailer debacle is part of a bigger story about the ATSDR's failure to protect public health.

The Washington Independent just published a two-part investigation examining what it calls the agency's "questionable approaches" to communities with environmental health concerns. The first installment posted last week examined evidence of cover-ups in ATSDR's health studies of the Great Lakes region (initially uncovered by the Center for Public Integrity) and an eastern Pennsylvania community with unusually high rates of a rare blood cancer. (I've also been covering the Pennsylvania study on my Hometown Hazards blog.)

This week's installment looks at the agency's actions in two Southern communities -- Midlothian, Tx., and Athens, Ga. In Midlothian, the ATSDR considered health effects of air pollution from several industrial facilities at the request of local residents concerned about the rate of birth defects. The agency came up with "indeterminate" findings, but critics of the study -- among them a former CDC epidemiologist -- say the agency used faulty monitoring data from the state and failed to consider key pollutants.

The Athens case involves a health study requested by resident Jill McElheney, who was living across the street from a petroleum tank farm when her 4-year-old son was diagnosed with leukemia; subsequent lab tests found their well was contaminated with toxic chemicals linked to the cancer. The ATSDR also came up with inconclusive findings in that study -- but failed to consider a facility less than 200 yards from the sick child's home, ignored air emissions, and declined to talk with the families of five other local children with leukemia who McElheney knew.

The series' conclusion?

The ATSDR's approach to public health studies of environmental sources has proven negligent in all the cases investigated by The Washington Independent. Some members of the local communities say the agency expends energy to make sure no health problem is found.

Labels: ATSDR, birth defects, CDC, FEMA, Georgia, leukemia, polycythemia vera, texas, toxic trailers

Several Gulf Coast organizations have purchased two FEMA trailers that are now touring the country to raise awareness about the ongoing nature of the crisis in the region and the government's failure so far to rebuild in a manner that meets the needs of poor and minority residents. The trailers will be making a stop at tonight's CNN Democratic Presidential Debate from the campus of the University of Texas at Austin. At 7 p.m., the debate will be shown live on the side of one of the 32-foot trailers. For more details about the KatrinaRitaVille Express, visit the tour's Web site here.

Labels: Election 2008, FEMA, Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch, Hurricane Katrina

Move comes amid ongoing coverup of key federal health report

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has announced it will make some of the mobile homes sitting empty in an Arkansas field available to victims of the tornadoes that recently devastated the South. Touring the damaged areas last week, FEMA Administrator R. David Paulison said he'd prefer to place victims in rental properties but that this could be difficult in rural areas. The freak winter storms destroyed more than 800 homes in the hardest-hit states of Arkansas and Tennessee.

While there have been widespread reports about dangerously high formaldehyde levels in FEMA travel trailers provided to people displaced by Hurricane Katrina, the agency draws a distinction between those trailers and the larger mobile homes. The agency emphasizes that the mobile homes were manufactured in accordance with federal regulations governing allowable formaldehyde emissions; for more on that distinction, see the FEMA factsheet on the provision of Katrina mobile homes to Indian tribal governments.

However, there have been credible reports that FEMA's mobile homes are also sickening people. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported earlier this month about the plight of a Minnesota couple and their infant daughter who were displaced by last year's historic floods in that state and who moved into a FEMA mobile home originally purchased for Katrina victims. Within three days, they developed serious breathing problems and were ordered by a doctor to remove the baby from the home. People who visited them for brief periods also reported adverse reactions including breathing difficulties and nosebleeds.

Becky Gillette, a Sierra Club activist who has focused on the formaldehyde contamination issue, told the paper that her office has received health complaints from people living in FEMA's mobile homes as well as its travel trailers. "The experience of people we've heard from show that it's just as bad in mobile homes," she said.

We recently reported that FEMA has been accused of meddling into the federal health study of formaldehyde contamination in the trailers and mobile homes it provided to Katrina's displaced. In a more detailed story, Salon reported that in May 2006 FEMA asked the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a division of the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to do a health consultation on the FEMA trailers:

Dr. Christopher De Rosa, chief of toxicology for ATSDR, told FEMA that any report on health risks of exposure to formaldehyde would have to include information on the risk of cancer and other potential long-term problems. At that point, De Rosa was cut out of the loop. Internal ATSDR documents show that FEMA contacted two of De Rosa's staffers, who then prepared the misleading consultation. When, nine months later, De Rosa learned ATSDR had omitted the key health information in its advisory, he drafted a letter to FEMA trial attorney Patrick Edward Preston.

"I am concerned that this health consultation is incomplete and perhaps misleading," De Rosa wrote. "Formaldehyde is classified as 'reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen.' As such, there is no recognized 'safe level' of exposure. Thus, any level of exposure to formaldehyde may pose a cancer risk, regardless of duration. Failure to communicate this issue is possibly misleading, and a threat to public health."

De Rosa also wrote to [ATSDR chief Dr. Howard] Frumkin, noting "FEMA's initial contact came directly to me nine months ago on this issue." "I reviewed the proposed statement and specified that they had neglected to address longer term risk including cancer." After eight months of tense negotiations, a revised report included references to the potentially harmful effects of formaldehyde. But other health information, including the likelihood of other toxic gases, such as toluene, being present, was omitted, as was De Rosa's insistence that ATSDR call for the government to take immediate action to end formaldehyde exposure to trailer residents and monitor them for long-term harmful effects. Records show that following his protests, De Rosa in October 2007 was "reassigned" out of his long-term post as director of ATSDR's divison of toxicology and environmental medicine.

Interestingly, De Rosa and Frumkin are key figures in another alleged coverup of a federal health report. Just last week, the Center for Public Integrity published an investigation describing how the CDC blocked publication of an ATSDR study into environmental hazards in the Great Lakes states reportedly because of alarming findings about pollution-related health problems. Last July, several days before the study was to be released, ATSDR suddenly withdrew it, saying further review was needed.

In a letter to De Rosa, Frumkin said the peer-reviewed study's quality was "well below expectations." After complaining to his bosses that its withholding smacked of scientific censorship, De Rosa was demoted; he's currently trying to get his former position back, claiming the demotion represented illegal retaliation by Frumkin. And there are other examples of ATSDR attempting to squelch inconvenient findings: I've reported elsewhere about the agency's efforts to cover up the conclusions of its own study that linked a rare blood cancer cluster in one Pennsylvania community to environmental factors.

U.S. House Science and Technology Committee members Brad Miller of North Carolina, Nick Lampson of Texas, and Bart Gordon of Tennessee have expressed their concern about improper interference in ATSDR's study of the FEMA trailers and have vowed to investigate further. Gordon has also indicated that the probe will extend beyond FEMA trailers:

"Our Committee has been looking closely at ATSDR for some time and we believe the report on formaldehyde in FEMA trailers may be just the tip of the iceberg. As Chairman, I assure you this will continue garnering the Committee's attention for some time to come."

Labels: ATSDR, CDC, environmental health, FEMA, scientific integrity