Reuters Health, February 14, 2008: Many of the government-supplied trailers housing thousands of people displaced by Hurricane Katrina contain potentially dangerous levels of the chemical formaldehyde, U.S. federal health officials said on Thursday.

“In some of these situations, the formaldehyde levels are high enough where there could be a health hazard to the people who are living there,” U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Julie Gerberding said.

Gerberding told reporters in New Orleans, which was devastated by the 2005 storm, and by telephone link that the CDC is urging the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency to get people out of the trailers “as quickly as possible and certainly before the warm summer months arrive.”

For more information: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_61146.html

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