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Formaldehyde Fumes Felt in Indiana

Armen Keteyian and Michael Rey
CBS News
May 16, 2007, 8:16 PM

Terry Slone, a former employee of Gulf Coast Coach, says he got sick while building trailers for FEMA's Hurricane Katrina recovery effort.

Terry Slone, a former employee of Gulf Stream Coach, spoke to CBS News outside of the factory in Indiana where he says the company built tens of thousands of travel trailers, part of a half a billion dollars contract with FEMA. As he told us in our story, he saw and smelled what he said were poor quality wood products coming into the factory on pallets and leaving the factory as cabinets and flooring in the travel trailers. He installed much of it himself.

But as you will hear in this clip, Slone also thinks he may have gotten sick from the same formaldehyde fumes that could also be making residents of the trailers in the Gulf sick.

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Symptoms of Formaldehyde Exposure:

•	Asthma Attacks
•	Blurred Vision
•	Eye irritiation
•	Shortness of Breath
•	Sinus Infections
•	Skin rashes
•	Coughing
•	Dizziness
•	Headaches
•	Nausea
•	Nosebleeds
•	Wheezing
•	Formaldehyde has been classified as a human carcinogen (cancer-causing substance) by the International Agency for Research on Cancer and as a probable human carcinogen by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

What is Formaldehyde?

Formaldehyde is an important industrial chemical used to make other chemicals, building materials, and household products. It is one of the large family of chemical compounds called volatile organic compounds or 'VOCs'. The term volatile means that the compounds vaporize, that is, become a gas, at normal room temperatures.

What are the short-term health effects of formaldehyde exposure?

When formaldehyde is present in the air at levels exceeding 0.1 ppm, some individuals may experience health effects such as watery eyes; burning sensations of the eyes, nose, and throat; coughing; wheezing; nausea; and skin irritation. Some people are very sensitive to formaldehyde, while others have no reaction to the same level of exposure.

Can formaldehyde cause cancer?

Although the short-term health effects of formaldehyde exposure are well known, less is known about its potential long-term health effects. In 1980, laboratory studies showed that exposure to formaldehyde could cause nasal cancer in rats. This finding raised the question of whether formaldehyde exposure could also cause cancer in humans. In 1987, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) classified formaldehyde as a probable human carcinogen under conditions of unusually high or prolonged exposure (1). Since that time, some studies of industrial workers have suggested that formaldehyde exposure is associated with nasal cancer and nasopharyngeal cancer, and possibly with leukemia. In 1995, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) concluded that formaldehyde is a probable human carcinogen. However, in a reevaluation of existing data in June 2004, the IARC reclassified formaldehyde as a known human carcinogen (2).

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