Air Quality tests to be held by FEMA

Federal Emergency Management Agency is going to conduct air tests in the gulf coast areas especially Louisiana and Mississippi to check the level of formaldehyde.

Recently many reports of formaldehyde caused infection have come from the hurricane affected areas of gulf coast. The authorities are not taking these reports lightly and a joint initiative has been taken by U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and FEMA to control this. For this around 500 occupied trailers and mobile homes are the main targets for checking the formaldehyde levels.

FEMA Administrator R. David Paulison, said that according to initial estimates around 800 Gulf Coast families have moved from the trailers to alternative housing places. FEMA has already started the rehabilitation process and has moved families from trailers to hotel and motel rooms or apartments. The authorities said they received requests from around 6500 families to move them to safer places as a precautionary measure.

Formaldehyde is a commonly used in household products like it is a used as a preservative and embalming fluid found in building materials for manufactured homes. The main problems caused by formaldehyde are the respiratory malfunctions and it has also been linked to cancers by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. Reports have come of the ailments caused by formaldehyde in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas.

According to Henry Falk, who is the director of the CDC 's Coordinating Center for Environmental Health and Injury Prevention, said the task is hectic as they don’t have any existing standards to which they can compare the air levels and the way in which the people get infected is also very random.

'Some people will react at higher levels. Some people might react to formaldehyde at lower levels,' he added.

Results are expected in February after which a tedious process of analysis of data will begin. In Louisiana, the process of shifting of people from trailers to permanent sites is expected to be completed by May as the federal government is helping FEMA move the hurricane victims to move from the temporary shelter.

'Clearly, the travel trailers ought not to be a long-term housing solution,' said Jim Stark, head of the FEMA office in New Orleans.

According to the initial estimates, around 46,700 people are still living in travel trailers or mobile homes along the Gulf Coast, even after two years of the tragic hurricanes Katrina and Rita destroyed thousands of homes in 2005.

Falk said there will be another round of tests in summer as the heightened humidity effects the formaldehyde distribution in the air. The final results can only be given after both the tests have been conducted, he added.

'We want people to understand this is a single test at a single point in time,' he said.