Yet another situation where corporate wrongdoers are trying to hide behind an incompetent federal agency to immunize themselves for the harm they cause.
As part of Congress' ongoing investigation into FEMA's
toxic trailers
provided to Hurricane Katrina victims, the House Oversight and
Government Reform Committee held a hearing yesterday focusing on the
manufacturers of the trailers.
At the hearing, we got a sense of how manufacturers plan to blame the government for the companies' poisoning of Katrina victims with formaldehyde,
In advance of the hearing, a GOP staff analysis said companies that make recreational vehicles should not be blamed for high levels of formaldehyde in trailers that the Federal Emergency Management Agency set up to house people displaced by Katrina in 2005.
From the New York Times,
Wonder what "Heckofajob Brownie" would have said about all of this?Democrats and hundreds of current and former trailer occupants who are suing the manufacturers do not accept this defense. Some Gulf Stream [one of the manufacturers of the trailers] employees complained they, too, were suffering effects from formaldehyde exposure, including nose bleeds, shortness of breath, dizziness and bleeding ears. One employee told Democratic investigators there was a foul odor in the plant as the trailers were being made.
''FEMA failed by ignoring the dangers of formaldehyde,'' Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform committee Henry Waxman said.
But the California Democrat insists Gulf Stream's failure is different: ''The company did test trailers after hearing the first reports of high formaldehyde levels. It found pervasive formaldehyde contamination in its trailers. And it did not tell anyone,'' Waxman said.
Gulf Stream's Shea said this is not the case. There was no actual ''testing'' of trailers, he said. Instead, there was informal screening with a handheld device that measures the level of formaldehyde in the air called a Formaldemeter, which is not a scientific test. And Gulf Stream asked FEMA if it should test the trailers, but FEMA said no, Shea said.
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