Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Little Rock)
March 1, 2008 Saturday
BYLINE: BY JOHN KRUPA ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
SECTION: FRONT SECTION

Twenty-six "frequently asked questions" and answers offered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to explain formaldehyde testing in its travel trailers and mobile homes range from why the tests were conducted to what will be done with the results.

The list, issued Feb. 14, doesn't ask this: Why is there so much toxic gas inside the agency's housing units to begin with?

Scientists, attorneys, businessmen, lobbyists and residents of the chemical-filled housing still debate this question more than two years after hurricanes Katrina and Rita made landfall.

"There are just a whole lot of unanswered questions," said Rob Schmidt, senior vice president at Arclin Inc., a company that posts $750 million in annual revenue selling formaldehyde across North America. "And, to me, it doesn't seem like there's a concerted effort by anyone in the government to develop an action plan to answer them."

DISASTER STRIKES

FEMA had to find temporary housing for 143,752 families in Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas and Alabama after the destructive hurricanes made landfall in August and September of 2005.

The existing housing supply couldn't accommodate all of those families. To fill the gap, the agency spent at least $1.8 billion on about 145,000 travel trailers and mobile homes, said James McIntyre, a FEMA spokesman. About 14,000 of the units were bought from lots, and 131,000 were made special order by contractors.

McIntyre said some manufacturers had standing contracts with the agency to produce emergency housing after natural disasters.

Tony Buzbee, a Texas lawyer, sued nine manufacturers of the emergency housing in a lawsuit filed in August in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Louisiana. The suit is on behalf of hurricane victims who say they grew ill from the formaldehyde in their housing units.

Starting in 2006, some families living in the travel trailers and mobile homes started reporting ailments such as headaches, nosebleeds and breathing difficulties. These are all symptoms that can be associated with exposure to high levels of formaldehyde, according to the American Lung Association.

In 2007, FEMA acknowledged that some of its travel trailers had high formaldehyde levels but denied that there were any problems with the mobile homes.

That remained the agency's position until FEMA Director R. David Paulison released the results of an independent study of FEMA housing units by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Feb. 14.

Julie Gerberding, CDC director, said the random sample of FEMA mobile homes and travel trailers in Mississippi and Louisiana found an average level of formaldehyde of about 77 parts per billion.

The CDC said long-term exposure to levels in that range may be linked to an increased risk of cancer and respiratory illness.

Indoor levels in all structures range between 10 parts per billion and 20 parts per billion. By comparison, one FEMA trailer had a formaldehyde level of 590 parts per billion.

As of Feb. 1, 38,297 families still live in the travel trailers and mobile homes, according to FEMA documents. The emptied units have been sold off or placed in storage. New ones are stored in towns like Hope and Texarkana, Texas. At least 30 Arkansas families live in FEMA mobile homes provided after disasters that hit the state.

Gerberding said FEMA should move every person out of the mobile homes and travel trailers by the summer, when formaldehyde levels will grow higher as temperatures rise.

Former Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco, in an interview after a speech in Little Rock on Feb. 20, said FEMA should have moved everyone out long ago.

"Putting [formaldehyde] in a small, enclosed environment like that is very treacherous," she said. "These trailers were not designed to be occupied for long terms."

A FAMILIAR CHEMICAL

Formaldehyde is a simple chemical - made of hydrogen, oxygen and carbon - that is literally all around.

Humans breathe small amounts of naturally occurring formaldehyde in the air, break it down metabolically and expel it as carbon dioxide.

The chemical is also produced in mass quantities for commercial use.

Corporations like Schmidt's Arclin and Georgia-Pacific Chemicals manufacture formaldehyde from methanol, an alcohol that is often blended with gasoline.

These companies, in turn, use it or sell it as a building block of more complex chemicals that have valuable attributes. Formaldehyde-based solutions can be used as reservatives, fertilizers and disinfectants.

It can also be used to make a cheap and strong glue.

The construction industry buys formaldehyde-based adhesive in bulk, for example, to bond together wood products like plywood, particleboard and medium-density fiberboard. These products are used to construct walls, flooring and cabinetry in mobile homes and travel trailers.

There are more-expensive, less-effective alternatives to formaldehyde-based glues, such as soy-based adhesives.

The problem, Buzbee said, is that formaldehyde-based adhesive releases gas over time. This process is called "outgassing." High levels of heat or moisture can raise the rate of outgassing.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which regulates formaldehyde emissions in the wood products inside mobile homes, places a health notice warning of this phenomenon in every unit sold.

Manufacturers do what they can to limit outgassing to safe levels. Outgassing is reduced during the manufacturing process by exposing the glue to extreme temperatures, adding chemicals that eat away formaldehyde and limiting moisture exposure. Giving the glue time to harden also helps.

If the products are manufactured correctly, Schmidt said, formaldehyde-based adhesive will emit the same amount of gas as the chemical reaction that takes place when cabbage is cooked or an apple is bitten into.

"The point is formaldehydebased products, [made] and used correctly, outgas at the very lowest levels possible," Schmidt said. "They can be safe."

INDUSTRY'S FAULT?

If that's the case, then why did the CDC find high formaldehyde levels in large numbers of FEMA's travel trailers and mobile homes?

Buzbee believes its because FEMA's units were poorly constructed.

In his complaint, Buzbee alleges that manufacturers like Gulf Stream Coach of Indiana, Fleetwood Enterprises of Delaware and Thor Industries of Ohio, "recklessly rushed to produce these trailers," which led to the unsafe levels of formaldehyde.

Gulf Stream Coach received the largest trailer contract from FEMA - $521 million for 50,000 units, according to Buzbee.

The lawsuit alleges that some manufacturers hired temporary workers to operate assembly lines over 12-hour shifts, six days per week. Workers were required to produce a trailer in as little as 10 minutes, according to the lawsuit.

Neither the lawyer who represents the companies named in Buzbee's lawsuit nor officials at Gulf Stream Coach could be reached for comment.

"Quality control went out the window," Connie Gallant, president of the RV Consumer Group, said in an e-mail interview.

Gallant said visits to U.S. and Canadian factories, as well as testimonials from sources within the industry, confirm a construction "frenzy" in the wake of the hurricanes.

"The RV industry is not regulated like the auto industry," Gallant said. "In the aftermath of Katrina, some of the RV manufacturers contracted by FEMA scrambled to build a large quantity of trailers in a very short period of time, thus most likely circumventing whatever little regulations they have to adhere to." Confounding the problem, the raw materials used during construction of the FEMA travel trailers and mobile homes were also of a poor quality, said Thad Godish, a professor at Ball State University in Indiana, who has studied formaldehyde levels in mobile homes and travel trailers.

Godish believes the companies were unable to find enough raw materials like particleboard and medium-density fiberboard from U.S. vendors, so they had to look outside the country for supplies.

Manufacturers turned to places like Malaysia and China, which supplied materials that emitted formaldehyde at much higher rates than what's acceptable in the United States.

Particleboard imports from Asia increased by 645 percent from 2005 and 2006, according to RISI, a company that collects global data related to wood products. Medium-density fiberboard imports also grew by 76 percent.

"Asia came out of nowhere in 2006," Godish said. "Something distorted the market." But manufacturers turned to foreign countries for raw materials long before Katrina and Rita.

Becky Gillette, a Eureka Springs resident who headed up the Sierra Club's investigation into the formaldehyde levels in FEMA housing units, said that may mean formaldehyde is an industrywide danger, not simply limited to hurricane stock.

The Sierra Club's investigation found trailers with high formaldehyde levels that were built as early as 1999, six years before Katrina and Rita.

And formaldehyde lawsuits involving manufactured housing date back to the 1980s.

Godish was an expert witness for plaintiffs in about 300 formaldehyde-related lawsuits filed against corporations during this time period.

About 95 percent of the cases settled out of court with the defendants paying some monetary amount to the plaintiffs, Godish said.

Gillette tells anyone who mentions formaldehydelike symptoms on her Web-based blog at www.toxictrailers. com to have their mobile home or travel trailer tested for the chemical, regardless of its age.

The 2000 Census counted 8.8 million mobile homes nationwide and about 175,000 in Arkansas.

INDUSTRY REACTION

The Manufactured Housing Institute and the Recreation Vehicle Industry Association both released statements after the CDC results came out.

The statements suggest that the government's findings aren't as dire as the media portray them.

The average level of formaldehyde found by the CDC in the tested housing units fell below the maximum allowable under the HUD standards.

"We believed this to be an aggressive standard, and we adopted it at our own initiative so our customers could safely enjoy our products," the RV industry association's statement read. "The CDC's announcement suggests the government may believe the science is changing and that new standards need to be researched and developed." Kevin Broom, an association spokesman, said he could not comment beyond the statement.

Lemar Wooley, a spokesman for HUD, said in an email statement that the agency is considering implementing stricter standards for particleboard and fiberboard used in mobile homes. The existing standards were enacted in 1986.

One theory is that the formaldehyde levels in the trailers are driven by environmental factors that have nothing to do with the manufacturing process.

Smoking, the use of propane heaters - even certain types of cooking - can all drive up formaldehyde levels.

"A lot of this is pure politics," said Betsy Natz, director of the Formaldehyde Council. "I'm not trying to criticize [the CDC and FEMA], except to say that there are clearly other factors that could be involved in these symptoms, but formaldehyde is the one that's being focused on." The symptoms that residents report are vague enough that they could be caused by other things, said Pat Morris, a Chicago lawyer who has represented manufacturers in formaldehyde lawsuits before.

"There's no easy, one-sizefits-all answer," Morris said. "And when you have a crisis like this, that's what people are clamoring for." Neither the U.S. Government Accountability Office, HUD nor FEMA have announced plans to investigate how the units came to have such high levels of formaldehyde.

"You have to understand that formaldehyde in travel trailers and mobile homes is an industry issue, not a FEMA issue," McIntyre said. "We are just like any other consumer who purchased units. We aren't a medical or science agency, so we can't define or determine why it happened."

Formaldehyde and FEMA trailers

FORMALDEHYDE is a chemical made of hydrogen, oxygen and carbon. It is both naturally occurring and man-made. It can serve many functions when combined with other chemicals. It can be used to make preservatives, fertilizers and disinfectants.

USE IN MOBILE HOMES AND TRAILERS One of its most common uses is in the manufacture of a cheap, strong and safe adhesive. This adhesive is used to create many of the building materials used in construction. For example, formaldehyde-based adhesives help bond together wood products like plywood, particleboard and medium-density fiberboard. Products like these are then used to build walls, flooring and cabinetry in mobile homes and travel trailers.

OUT-GASSING The adhesive in the woods inevitably releases some formaldehyde gas over time. This is called "out-gassing." In a mobile home or travel trailer, high levels of heat or moisture can raise the rate of out-gassing. The amount of out-gassing should decrease over time, and eventually stop, as the formaldehyde in the product depletes itself.

Manufacturers limit out-gassing through the curing process. If the wood is properly cured, out-gassing can limited to safe levels.

There are alternatives to formaldehyde-based adhesives used in construction, such as soy-based adhesives. But these alternatives are often more costly for companies to produce.

EXPOSURE TO FORMALDEHYDE Formaldehyde is a colorless, strong-smelling gas. The levels present in FEMA trailers are high enough to cause watery eyes, burning sensations in the eyes and breathing problems for people who have asthma or sensitivity to air pollutants. Long-term exposure to these levels of formaldehyde may lead to an increased risk of cancer and respiratory illness.