GULFPORT, MS - Air quality in Mississippi cottages will be tested next week, much later than the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency had stated after independent tests of five cottages in May showed three with potentially unsafe levels of formaldehyde. Becky Gillette, now the Sierra Club's formaldehyde campaign director, helped conduct the independent tests and had previously exposed dangerous levels of formaldehyde in FEMA trailers. After Gillette's tests, MEMA said it would order tests within one to two weeks.
Gillette recently filed a public-records request for the test results, but MEMA told the Sun Herald they hadn't yet been conducted. Meanwhile, local governments have been trying to decide whether the temporary disaster housing should be allowed as permanent structures in some locations. Most leases on the cottages expire at the end of January and they must be removed by March 31 from communities that don't approve them as permanent structures.
Gillette said the cottages contain some of the same pressed-wood products that caused high levels of formaldehyde in FEMA trailers. "We need to know," she said. "Are there problems? Is there something people could do?" Gillette's testing showed unsafe levels of formaldehyde in the Gulfport cottage where Lou Finkle lives. But the levels fell to a level considered safe when the air conditioning was turned on and the windows opened a crack.
Finkle previously lived in a FEMA trailer, one of the first tested. He suffered breathing problems he attributes to formaldehyde levels 28 times higher than what is believed safe. Finkle feels better these days. When he moved into his cottage, he said, "I kept the windows cracked and kept the fan running constantly."
Next week's tests of 36 unoccupied cottages on the Coast are being conducted by a certified industrial hygienist HUD hired. The tests are part of an extensive study of FEMA's alternative housing programs in Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and Alabama. Officials at MEMA said "many decisions were made as part of the (cottage) design to reduce the use of materials known to contain formaldehyde."
The cottages tested will include standard units of different sizes and units equipped with an enhanced ventilation system MEMA and the Federation of Scientists designed, MEMA spokesman Greg Flynn said. "We have no official complaints of anyone being ill from living in a cottage," Flynn said. He also said if tests do show high formaldehyde levels, "we will deal with that when it happens. We wouldn't anticipate toxic levels. It's a 'what if'. We don't deal in 'what ifs'."
Source: SunHerald.com