Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Toxic Trailers

As if the survivors of Hurricane Katrina didn't have enough to deal with. Now they find out that they have been living in toxic trailers. Apparently, the CDC found that the trailers had unsafe levels of formaldehyde in them. According to the reports, the CDC bowed to pressure from FEMA to suppress those findings. CBS had it on their newscast last night and they have some documents.
This is part of a larger problem, in my opinion. What other products and facilities have unsafe levels of something? Who is suppressing what? I do not want to sound like a paranoid anti-government type but individuals have to start making their voices heard and demanding information or getting it themselves. We rely on the government to regulate everything. Then we end up with the agency that is supposed to help people in an emergency knowingly put them in toxic environments while the largest public health agency sits quiet. Hopefully the people living in those trailers can get out of there.

3 comments:

Cathy said...

Read Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What's at Stake for American Power by Mark Schapiro (Center for Investigative Reporting). You'll get the answers to your questions. It's not fun stuff, but you're right to ask and all of us deserve to know. The EPA is not our friend.

BBC said...

http://www.lemnislighting.com/

http://www.odemagazine.com/exchange/979/ode_s_top_10_positive_stories_from_2007

Toxic World Blog said...

Thank you for the links and book. I'll check my library for the book. What I love about blogging and the internet is that everyone can share information and when we do it makes us all better off. Thanks again.