CDC Suppressed Toxic Trailer Warnings

FEMA, oh FEMA... is there nothing you can't fuck up?

An exclusive CBS report reveals that the Center for Disease Control suppressed warnings of dangerously toxic levels of formaldehyde in the trailers that have been used for displaced persons from New Orleans provided by FEMA for two years, unless they've been evicted that is.

...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...

...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... In fact, it wasn't until October 2007 - after eight months and pressure from congressional investigators that the CDC revised its February report and finally issued warnings about cancer and other long-term health risks of formaldehyde.

We all know that FEMA has been a dismal failure when it comes to basically anything they are involved in, from the response to Hurricane Katrina, to the fake news conference regarding the California fires last October. The whole department is a microcosm of the unethical cronyism and broken bureaucracy that has permeated this government to the core under the intrepid leadership of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney; and now we find out that this corrupt administration has so systematically and thoroughly destroyed every governmental agency and department that even the CENTER FOR DISEASE CONTROL has been treated like a crack whore by the pimps in the White House.

This is unconscionable. There are about 40,000 families still living in formaldehyde-laced trailers that have been forgotten not only by the government, but by all of us. They've been displaced for over two years, breathing in toxic, cancer-causing fumes, left to rot while Bush and all his buddies raze low income housing in New Orleans that was only slightly damaged by Katrina in order to cleanse the city of these "undesirables" and dole out the land for high income hotel and construction projects. And now comes word of a CDC report that came out in February of 2007 omitting vital health threatening information but is revised eight months later only after pressure from the Homeland Security Committee?

These criminals should be taken into the main square and shot.