Not My Breasts

FEMA Formaldehyde Cover-up Alleged

FEMA is under pressure again, this time from the House Homeland Security Committee, over an alleged cover-up of formaldehyde exposure from trailers provided to hurricane survivors.

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita set down on U.S. soil in August 2005, displacing hundreds of thousands of people. Two and half years later, FEMA says 40,000 families are still living in "temporary" FEMA travel trailers.

From the beginning, trailer occupants complained of fumes and classic symptoms of over-exposure to formaldehyde: headache, chronic nosebleeds, asthma, bronchitis and sinus infections. It turned out that these government-provided trailers were off-gassing toxic levels of formaldehyde.

Formaldehyde, used as a preservative in plywood and other construction materials, is a known carcinogen. So when it came to light that FEMA continued to distribute the toxic trailers to families even after they knew of the formaldehyde issue, the Breast Cancer Fund asked its supporters to write letters to President Bush in August 2007. Our ask then: an executive order to FEMA to stop distributing the tainted trailers and replace those already in use with formaldehyde-free trailers.

Now, FEMA stands accused of stifling the release of information that formaldehyde in the trailers could be harmful, and of ignoring a CDC recommendation that the trailers were for temporary use only, not to be lived in.

Our hope now: that FEMA comes clean about formaldehyde exposure and moves all 40,000 families out of trailers and into safe, toxin-free environments.

Said Rep. Nick Lampson, who is asking for more information from FEMA and CDC: "Not following good science in advising people to do things as they try to recover from one tragedy is indeed a much greater tragedy this is compounding."

The Link Between Global Warming and Breast Cancer

Say "environment" today, and many brains go straight to global warming and polar bears floating on shrinking islands of ice. And understandably so.

When we say "environment," the Breast Cancer Fund is often talking about a closer, more personal environment: our cosmetics, our plastic containers, pesticides in our food, the stuff we use to clean the counters and dismantle the weeds from our lawns. We speak less about the bigger pollution problems affecting our air, water, oceans and soil.

It's not for lack of evidence. A current example: polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs. They're in the air as a result of combustion, and they're linked to both global warming and breast cancer. (For more on the science of PAHs and breast cancer risk, check back in February when BCF releases our fifth edition of State of the Evidence: The Connection Between Breast Cancer and the Environment.)

So it came as a blow to both the environment and public health when the U.S. EPA--the agency charged with protecting our environment--in December denied California permission to set stricter regulations on tailpipe emissions. With 16 other states in line to adopt California's standards, the proposed state rules would have affected as many as half of all U.S. drivers.

California and 15 states filed suit against the EPA in early January, and some in Congress are asking questions about how EPA could deny California's request--when even the EPA's own experts had advised approval.

You can voice your support for higher state emissions standards--for our personal AND environmental health--by sending an e-mail through our Web site, at www.breastcancerfund.org/emissions.