Washington, D.C.- The CEO and chairman of the company that made the trailers used to house victims of Hurricane Katrina admitted to a Congressional panel that the high levels of contamination was known.
Gulf Stream Coach Chairman Jim Shea, whose company manufactured 50,000 of the trailers for the Federal Emergency Management Agency admitted that his company knew about the high levels of Formaldehyde levels but ignored them.
According to Jim Shea, “FEMA already knew about the high contamination levels.”
Shea claimed that FEMA and his company were looking at ways to improve the ventilation, which he said would eliminate a lot of the health risk.
The House Committee on Oversight and Congressional Reform is made up of both Democrats and Republicans, and they grilled the chairman of Gulf Stream Coach for nearly two hours as they look for the cause of the public health risk that the trailers later posed.
The trailers were moved into New Orleans after the Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005, and the trailers later made many of the refugees and evacuees very ill.
The construction materials that the trailers were made out of gave off high levels of fumes, including potentially toxic formaldehyde gas.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention eventually condemned the trailers and moved the remaining Katrina Residents to other housing.
The House Committee is continuing to investigate and is searching to see if there is culpability and negligence on the part of the manufacturer and on the part of the US Government.
The Committee is also seeking to make sure that the method of taking care of American’s in future Hurricanes and natural disasters is made safer and free from preventable health risks.