Democracy for Vancouver

Our fair Chimperor is treating the population of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast like a litter of unwanted kittens:

“It was not until Dec. 21 that the Centers for Disease Control actually began testing formaldehyde levels in travel trailers and mobile homes,” said [House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie] Thompson. “That is over a year and half after the first reports of high formaldehyde surfaced. This delay is unacceptable.”

Thompson challenged officials from FEMA and the CDC to explain how the two agencies suppressed information.

“Even more troubling is the recent discovery that FEMA directed the CDC to not investigate, or communicate, the health effects associated with prolonged exposure to formaldehyde,” said Thompson.

Dr. Henry Falk, director of CDC’s Coordinating Center for Environmental Health and Injury Prevention, was increasingly uncomfortable under questioning …

Thompson, who noted repeatedly that many Coast residents have spent two and a half years in trailers, asked if it wasn’t appropriate “for CDC to tell FEMA of the long-term health consequences of living in trailers?” “You’re absolutely right,” said Falk.

And, from CBS comes the news that the CDC had already determined that there was “no safe level of exposure” to formaldehyde:

…[T]he Centers for Disease Control, the nation’s top public health agency, suppressed repeated warnings from one of its top scientists, raising questions about whether the CDC bowed to pressure from FEMA to conceal the long-term health risks of formaldehyde in the trailers it distributed to hurricane victims - health risks like cancer and birth defects…

…Dr. Christopher De Rosa, director of the CDC’s Division of Toxicology and Environmental Medicine, told his superiors “there is no safe level of exposure” to formaldehyde in trailers. That warning never made its way into any public report about the trailers.

In addition, Dr. De Rosa wrote in an email that two of his staff members had been directed by FEMA officials to not “address longer term health effects” of formaldehyde in this February 2007 report.

The CDC didn’t come around to testing for formaldehyde in the trailers until last month, only after repeated reports of illnesses and death in FEMA trailers related to formaldehyde fumes. Back in the summer of 2006, FEMA couldn’t be bothered to even test for toxins in the trailers:

On June 16, 2006, three months after reports of the hazards surfaced and a month after a trailer resident sued the agency, a FEMA logistics expert wrote that the agency’s Office of General Counsel “has advised that we do not do testing, which would imply FEMA’s ownership of this issue.” A FEMA lawyer, Patrick Preston, wrote on June 15: “Do not initiate any testing until we give the OK. . . . Once you get results and should they indicate some problem, the clock is running on our duty to respond to them.“

It’s almost enough to make you believe Ron Paul when he says federal agencies do more harm than good.

Not only do we need Democratic presidents for the next two decades to straighten out everything this President has fucked up, we need a kickass attorney general to prosecute the criminal malfeasance that has taken place across the executive branch since January 2001. Let’s just hope that all this talk about “looking forward, not back” will not include forgetting about all of the very real victims of Bush, Cheney and all of their many minions:

One man in Slidell, La., was found dead in his trailer on June 27, 2006, after complaining about the formaldehyde fumes. In a conference call about the death, 28 officials from six agencies recommended that the circumstances be investigated and trailer air quality be subjected to independent testing. But FEMA lawyers rejected the suggestions, with one, Adrian Sevier, cautioning that further investigation not approved by lawyers “could seriously undermine the Agency’s position” in litigation.

[emphasis added.]