katrina + fema + formaldehyde =

Don Quixote

Don Quixote

cancer survivor
Contributor
seems that the trailers that fema provided for katrina victims had 6 times the recommended safe level of formaldehyde fumes

there now appears to be a link between those fumes and several chronic diseases that have appeared subsequently in children that lived in those trailers

our government in action :(

only about 10,000 of them, but :gives: bushco? - nah
 
DonQuixote said:
seems that the trailers that fema provided for katrina victims had 6 times the recommended safe level of formaldehyde fumes

there now appears to be a link between those fumes and several chronic diseases that have appeared subsequently in children that lived in those trailers

our government in action :(

only about 10,000 of them, but :gives: bushco? - nah
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Is there some evidence that you could provide us with proving 'Bushco' doesn't care or are you just stuck on " Bush Bad"--"Dems good"
 
DonQuixote said:
seems that the trailers that fema provided for katrina victims had 6 times the recommended safe level of formaldehyde fumes

there now appears to be a link between those fumes and several chronic diseases that have appeared subsequently in children that lived in those trailers

our government in action :(

only about 10,000 of them, but :gives: bushco? - nah
Click to expand...

Hey they are doing fine for poor people. If they had a degree they would have already bought a new house somewhere. And if they had and education and were smart they would not live in NO in the first place ;)


Gumbo flakes :clink:
 
Dilloduck said:
Is there some evidence that you could provide us with proving 'Bushco' doesn't care or are you just stuck on " Bush Bad"--"Dems good"
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Well, I'm sure they sat in rooms and said, "Get the formaldehyde covered trailers!"

Just before they danced in a nekkid circle and invoked Satan.

You know how those Republican meetings go...
 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/24/AR2008052401973.html


Within days of Hurricane Katrina's landfall in August 2005, frantic officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency ordered nearly $2.7 billion worth of trailers and mobile homes to house the storm's victims, many of them using a single page of specifications.

Just 25 lines spelled out FEMA's requirements, with little mention of the safety of those to be housed. Manufacturers produced trailers with unusual speed. Within months, some residents began complaining about unusual sickness; breathing problems; burning eyes, noses and throats; even deaths.

Today, industry and government experts depict the rushed procurement and construction as key failures that may have triggered a public health catastrophe among the more than 300,000 people, many of them children, who lived in FEMA homes.

Formaldehyde -- an industrial chemical that can cause nasal cancer, may be linked to leukemia, and worsens asthma and respiratory problems -- was present in many of the FEMA housing units in amounts exceeding the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's recommended 15-minute exposure limit for workers, the limit at which acute health symptoms begin to appear in sensitive individuals.

Weak government contracting, sloppy private construction, a surge of low-quality wood imports from China and inconsistent regulation all contributed to the crisis, a Washington Post review found. But each of the key players has pointed fingers at others, a chain of blame with a cost that will not be known for years.



Its no wonder cons think government cant do anything right. They dont believe in that manby pamby stuff like thinking things through to take in all the angles like Human health and safety.
 
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Damocles said:
Well, I'm sure they sat in rooms and said, "Get the formaldehyde covered trailers!"

Just before they danced in a nekkid circle and invoked Satan.

You know how those Republican meetings go...
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No, the didn't say that. Instead they ignored the problem after it was brought to their attention, which is just as bad.
 
Dungheap said:
No, the didn't say that. Instead they ignored the problem after it was brought to their attention, which is just as bad.
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Gotta love the nekkid circles though.

I believe that they thought the trailers would be very temporary and that state and local governments would use the aid given to make more permanent homes back in the city for these people. I do not believe that they willfully poisoned the people who lived there, nor expected them to wind up staying as long as they have.
 
Damocles said:
Gotta love the nekkid circles though.

I believe that they thought the trailers would be very temporary and that state and local governments would use the aid given to make more permanent homes back in the city for these people. I do not believe that they willfully poisoned the people who lived there, nor expected them to wind up staying as long as they have.
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As I said, they didn't willfully poison people, but they intentionally ignored that people were being poisoned.
 
Dungheap said:
As I said, they didn't willfully poison people, but they intentionally ignored that people were being poisoned.
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I don't necessarily think they did. Again, I believe that the expectation was that the people responsible for new infrastructure would solve this one. FEMA doesn't build houses they provide temporary shelter. Those who were supposed to get the aid the government said into new permanent shelter for those people were at the very least dragging their feet.

I don't think they willfully ignored the problem either. I think they tried to light a fire under those people who were supposed to build permanent shelter and were unfortunately unsuccessful.
 
Damocles said:
I don't necessarily think they did. Again, I believe that the expectation was that the people responsible for new infrastructure would solve this one. FEMA doesn't build houses they provide temporary shelter. Those who were supposed to get the aid the government said into new permanent shelter for those people were at the very least dragging their feet.

I don't think they willfully ignored the problem either. I think they tried to light a fire under those people who were supposed to build permanent shelter and were unfortunately unsuccessful.
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Well, I think you are woefully ill-informed on the matter and would do well to read up about the House hearings on the matter, particularly concerning the response from FEMA and other government agencies after health issues were brought to their attention.
 
Damo they ordered these things with a 25 sentance document.

They specified next to nothing about their safety.

They allowed products in them that were substandard.

THEY DID NOT DO THIER JOB WELL!

They put very little thought into what they were doing because they just wanted the problem to GO AWAY.

Government should not be run by people who dont care.

Republicans make caring into some horrible laughable thing. "bleeding heart" , "weak", "mamby pamby" and the like are what you get when you talk about caring for the needs of people in any situation.

Its time they STOP doing that and realize we are a country made up of people. People are supposed to matter to each other. Every fricking religion in the world believes that one.
 
Desh said:
Damo they ordered these things with a 25 sentance document.

They specified next to nothing about their safety.

They allowed products in them that were substandard.

THEY DID NOT DO THIER JOB WELL!

They put very little thought into what they were doing because they just wanted the problem to GO AWAY.

Government should not be run by people who dont care.

Republicans make caring into some horrible laughable thing. "bleeding heart" , "weak", "mamby pamby" and the like are what you get when you talk about caring for the needs of people in any situation.

Its time they STOP doing that and realize we are a country made up of people. People are supposed to matter to each other. Every fricking religion in the world believes that one.
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They tried to get shelter for them as quickly as possible with the expectation it would be temporary.

I agree that they made mistakes, but they certainly didn't willfully attempt to poison, or try to continue poisoning them. Instead they tried to get the Local and State governments to speed up producing a permanent solution.

Nobody was celebrating what happened to these people or willfully trying to poison them. That is what I object to.

Suggesting they sucked at their job. Cool. They did, IMO, put the priorities awry in the name of expediency. But suggesting that they were somehow willfully evil is total rubbish.
 
Desh said:
Damo they ordered these things with a 25 sentance document.

They specified next to nothing about their safety.

They allowed products in them that were substandard.

THEY DID NOT DO THIER JOB WELL!

They put very little thought into what they were doing because they just wanted the problem to GO AWAY.

Government should not be run by people who dont care.

Republicans make caring into some horrible laughable thing. "bleeding heart" , "weak", "mamby pamby" and the like are what you get when you talk about caring for the needs of people in any situation.

Its time they STOP doing that and realize we are a country made up of people. People are supposed to matter to each other. Every fricking religion in the world believes that one.
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Well Desh, you have a bunch of homeless people that need housing immediately. FEMA could have gathered a bunch of lawyers and spend a lot of time arguing and debating coming up with the best legal document to protect people's safety that could take weeks to come up with. In the meantime people in New Orleans are homeless for that entire month.

I'm not trying to justify FEMA and a 25 sentence order or whatever it was but your off base trying to say its a "bleeding heart" thing. No, it's a matter of how do you get housing here as quick as possible as best as possible. And anyone who has worked with large groups of lawyers or government buracrats knows that nothing gets accomplished in a quick manner with them. So it was not a perfect situation.
 
Damo the exposurer limmit on these chemicals is 15 minutes for a worker.

You can not live in a trailor if you cant stay it it for more than 15 minutes at a time.

You dont EVER build anything that people are going to have contact with out of deadly materials.

This was a total Fuck Up. They did not plan they just jotted some words down and dropped some money and wanted to forget about these Americans as if they didnt matter. They did a shitty ass job. YOU would not have done it the way they did Damo. I know you, you are a decent and bright man and if this had been your task you would have taken more than the 10 minutes they must have took to specify a product that was safe for children to live in. Dont make excuses for these people they dont deserve defending.
 
The issue with formaldhyde in manufactured housing has been going on for years. Standards should have already been in place. The manufacturers voluntary methods did not work. As usual.
 
uscitizen said:
The issue with formaldhyde in manufactured housing has been going on for years. Standards should have already been in place. The manufacturers voluntary methods did not work. As usual.
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And regardless of whether getting the trailers in the first place was a good idea, ignoring the problem after residents complained of serious health issues was criminal.
 
cawacko said:
Well Desh, you have a bunch of homeless people that need housing immediately. FEMA could have gathered a bunch of lawyers and spend a lot of time arguing and debating coming up with the best legal document to protect people's safety that could take weeks to come up with. In the meantime people in New Orleans are homeless for that entire month.

I'm not trying to justify FEMA and a 25 sentence order or whatever it was but your off base trying to say its a "bleeding heart" thing. No, it's a matter of how do you get housing here as quick as possible as best as possible. And anyone who has worked with large groups of lawyers or government buracrats knows that nothing gets accomplished in a quick manner with them. So it was not a perfect situation.
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Immediate housing doesnt have to be deadly housing does it?


There was no fucking reason on the face of the earth to build these trailors out of deadly materials.

What happened was they wanted it to go away and they just trusted the market.

This is what you get when you just trust the market to do the right thing.

You get what you ordered without any thought as to what you really need.
 
uscitizen said:
The issue with formaldhyde in manufactured housing has been going on for years. Standards should have already been in place. The manufacturers voluntary methods did not work. As usual.
Click to expand...
I agree. There should be standards in place that they expected to be followed.
 
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