GULFPORT, MISS. — The Federal Emergency Management Agency said Thursday that it would accelerate efforts to get victims of hurricanes Katrina and Rita out of government-supplied trailers after tests showed that the temporary residences contain unhealthy levels of toxic formaldehyde.
Tests in a statistically sampled selection of 519 trailers showed that formaldehyde levels averaged five times higher than levels in new housing, and in some cases much higher than that.
There are no federal standards for formaldehyde levels, but Dr. Julie L. Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said at a news briefing Thursday that about a third of the homes had levels high enough to create problems for children, the elderly and adults who already have respiratory problems. About 5% of the homes had formaldehyde levels high enough to make even healthy adults sick.
Gerberding and FEMA Administrator R. David Paulison said they feared that warmer weather this summer would raise levels inside the trailers as the chemical was baked out of fiberboard, plywood, rugs and other materials used in construction.
Paulison said the agency would move people into hotels and apartments, with the elderly, families with children and people with asthma or other chronic conditions getting priority -- as well as occupants of units with high formaldehyde levels.
"The real issue is not what it will cost, but how fast we can move people out," he said. "We have to be very aggressive about it."
FEMA said that as of Feb. 1, there were about 38,297 households still in trailers and mobile homes on the Gulf Coast. About 5,000 to 6,000 of those were families living in group sites, and they will be among the first to be relocated.
Most of the rest, Paulison said, are in trailers parked in their own driveways while they are rebuilding homes. At the peak of the crisis, about 144,000 families were living in the FEMA-supplied trailers.
The agency has been moving 800 to 1,000 households per week out of the temporary residences, Paulison said.
However, he said, the agency would proceed with plans to supply trailers and manufactured housing to victims of recent tornadoes in Arkansas and Tennessee, and perhaps also Alabama and Kentucky.
He noted the shortage of apartments and other facilities in those areas and said that trailers would be checked for formaldehyde levels before being made available to storm victims.
