The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention failed to act for at least a year on warnings that trailers housing refugees from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita contained dangerous levels of formaldehyde, according to a House subcommittee report released Monday.
Instead, the CDC's Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry demoted the scientist who questioned its initial assessment that the trailers were safe as long as residents opened a window or another vent, the report said.
That appraisal was produced in February 2007 at the request of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which had received thousands of complaints about fumes since providing the trailers to families left homeless by the devastating 2005 hurricanes. One year later, FEMA and CDC reversed course and acknowledged that formaldehyde levels in the trailers were five times higher than are typically found in new housing.
Formaldehyde is known to cause cancer, chronic bronchitis, eye irritation and other ailments. It was used in glue for rugs, plywood, fiberboard and other materials.
"FEMA was more concerned about legal liability than they were about people living in the trailers," said Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.), chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee's Investigation and Oversight Subcommittee. "It certainly appears that [the agency] was more interested in giving FEMA what FEMA wanted, amazingly, than it was in its mission of protecting the public."
The subcommittee's report came three days after a federal judge in New Orleans ruled that FEMA can be sued by hurricane victims who claim they were exposed to toxic fumes.
The CDC issued a statement Monday saying that the subcommittee report focused on the February 2007 assessment and not an October revision or other CDC efforts to address formaldehyde exposure.
"CDC also shares the desire of advocates and congressional investigators to ensure the best public health processes and science are used to understand the health effects associated with exposure to formaldehyde," the statement said.
The subcommittee report noted that the agency took eight months to revise its initial finding and did so only after Christopher De Rosa, then director of the CDC agency's Division of Toxicology and Environmental Medicine, publicly flagged scientific errors.
