committee will please come to order today the committee is holding its second hearing on formaldehyde in fema trailers a year ago the committee examined how theme responded to reports that the families living in government trailers were being exposed to hazardous levels of formaldehyde are hearing the reveal that the fema staff out in the field said that they needed to test these trailers so the dangerous levels of formaldehyde would not diversity affected the families living in these trailers but fema itself in washington refused to do that one female lawyer directed do not initiate any testing once you get results and should they indicate some problem the clock is running on our duty to respond what we learned at that hearing ouch outraged americans all across the country fema had a duty to protect families living in its trailers and it failed them i expected a hearing will also generate a sense of outrage the largest supplier supplier of fema trailers by far was a manufacturer named  gulfstream in the weeks after hurricane katrina struck gulf stream received contracts from fema worth more than five hundred million dollars to supply over fifty thousand trailers for displaced residents of the gulf coast fema failed by ignoring the dangers of formaldehyde and resisted testing gulf streams problem is different the company did test trailers after hearing the first reports of  formaldehyde levels it found pervasive formaldehyde contamination in each trailers and it didn't tell anyone the committee received thousands of pages of internal documents from gulf stream the documents show that gulf stream regarded the high levels of formaldehyde in its trailers as a public relations and legal problem not a public health threat there is a confusing array of formaldehyde standards used by federal agencies here are some of the key numbers tend to thirty parts per billion is the level of from around the high found in most homes exposure at this level does not cause acute health effects like burning in the eyes or short of shortness of breath or nausea one hundred parts per billion is the level at which acute health effects begin to appear in healthy adults the centers for disease control the environmental protection agency the consumer product safety commission the national institute of occupational and nyasha the national occupation of health and the world health organization all recognize one hundred parts per billion as a level that can cause acute adverse health effects of course if it's a vulnerable individual like a child or an elderly person or somebody who's chronically ill they can experience effects even below this level five hundred parts per billion is the level at which osha requires medical monitoring of employees this is an old standard dating back to the first bush administration seven hundred fifty parts per billion is the maximum workplace exposure level allowed by osha is also an old standard nine hundred parts per billion is an e p a standard for hazardous response teams or industrial workers  says that no one should be exposed to more than nine hundred parts per billion for more than eight hours in a lifetime and here's what gulfstream found over two years ago it tested eleven our capacity trailers every single trailer had levels at or above one hundred parts per billion the level at which acute health effects begin to occur four of the trailers had levels above five hundred parts per billion the level at which osha requires medical monitoring gold stream also tested nearly forty unoccupied trailers these were trailers that were sitting in fema lots waiting to be given to displaced families over half of these trailers had formaldehyde levels above nine hundred parts per million the level that e p a says no one should ever be exposed to more than once in a lifetime several had levels over two thousand parts per billion one had levels over four thousand parts per billion gulf stream never told any family living in these trailers about these test results the company did spend a month carefully crafting a letter to fema trailers fall below the osha standard of seven hundred fifty parts per billion gulf stream did not tell themas that all eleven occupied trailers had a levels above one hundred parts per billion it did not tell seam of that four of the eleven occupied trailers had levels above five hundred parts per billion and it did not tell fema that over half of the unoccupied trailers had levels for in excess of seven hundred fifty parts per billion gulfstream did say that it would share its testing results with fema but of course fema didn't want to know and apparently never asked for those results the quote we are not aware of any complaints of illness from our many customers of travel trailers over the years including travel trailers provided under our contracts with seamen and quote gulfstream did not tell the media that in march two thousand and six a month before gulfstream released its statement and argument of a gulfstream trailer in the wheezy anatole the company quote there is an odor in my trailer in louisiana that will not go away it burns my eyes i am getting headaches every day i have tried many things but nothing seems to work please please please help me the fema contract was a lucrative for gulf stream in fact the company's top executives saw their compensation doubled to over a million dollars per year in two thousand and five and two thousand and six but revenue growth does not justify the conduct we have found gulfstream had results that showed its trailers were upon health threat and the company never told the families living in its trailers the company also examine the conduct of  the three other trailer manufacturers one of the company's pilgrim apparently took the fema approach despite widely publicized reports of dangerous formaldehyde levels in fema trailers pilgrim never conducted any testing at all the other two companies forest river and keystone did not test any trailer purchased by seamen but they did do some to limited testing of other trailers and found high levels in one case a contractor hired by forest river reported finding formaldehyde levels of over fifteen hundred parts per billion in a trailer the contractor told the company it should post signs on the outside of the unit stating hazardous do not enter and like gulf stream these manufacturers did not tell the public or fema about their test results my staff is prepared an analysis of the evidence before the committee and at the appropriate time i'll ask that the analysis and the documents it cites be made part of the hearing record what this hearing will show is that no one was looking out for the interests of the displaced families living in fema trailers fema failed to do which job and the trailer manufacturers took advantage of the situation archimedes held many hearings on waste fraud and abuse in one sense today's hearing can be looked at as another example of government procurement gone astray the taxpayers paid two billion dollars for trailers that now have to be scrapped for junk but in this case the health of thousands of vulnerable families was jeopardized during today's hearing the trailer manufacturers will be asked hard questions and i think they understand this but i also went them to know that i appreciate their cooperation with the committee and their willingness to appear voluntarily the documents all being and inserted that were provided to the committee without having a further discussion about whether all those documents need to be released that many of them contain private information well we'll we'll withhold the all the unanimous consent requests and and then see if we has important lessons to teach about emergency shelter and longer term housing for disaster victims the committee's two year investigation into formaldehyde in fema travel trailers could yield important information about the need for a clearer purchase requirements better product safety standards affective trade or storage practices any more rapid coordinated response to public health issues but by narrowly focusing today on four trader manufacturers the committee risks missing the broader cause of variable potentially toxic air quality in emergency housing units the problem was and remains confusion among federal agencies not to some conspiracy by train or makers as we learn from testimony and exhibits that our hearing on these issues a year ago female lawyers advised against a proactive response to questions about formaldehyde raised by the occupants and by the traders vendors in two thousand  to this day far more confusion than clarity emerges from any discussion of relevant formaldehyde exposure standards published guidelines on exposures under various circumstances durations temperatures and atmospheric conditions ranged from eight parts  billion to one thousand parts per billion with nine standards in between and this chart here that illustrates that for the record gulfstream went to thema for guidance when they uncovered problems they didn't covered up from their customer they went to the customer it's the moon that said who is not here today unfortunately it ought to be answerable for the results in this case the didn't want to make an issue of this the closest thing to a standard for travel trailers is one set for larger manufactured housing units by the department of housing and urban development at four hundred parts per billion there isn't even agreement on the appropriately validated testing methodology to determine how to measure indoor formaldehyde levels that might be elevated above whatever standard is being used but the federal agency witnesses who might help explain this formaldehyde tower of babel are here today theme is focusing all its attention on midwest flood relief the occupational safety and health administrat environmental protection agency the national institute of occupational safety and health the consumer product safety commission and hud also had information relevant to our discussion this morning but they were only invited to participate late last thursday as federal offices were closing for the holiday weekend they declined to participate without more time to prepare we should have actually taken this hearing and move it so we could have had i think everyone involved here and had a really discussion over what the standards should have been and what happened and here how the federal government who i think has the largest culpability in this messed this up that's unfortunate because those agencies could help plus interpret results from multiple government sponsored tests of occupied and occupy land unoccupied fema traders and competent materials the test data suggests some wood products attained from new sources including china yielded higher than expected formaldehyde readings under pressure to meet emergency trade or production demand some of that would may have been put into traders before the normal off gassing could occur for ventilation during storage in use particularly in hot climates then trapped and concentrated gases that might otherwise leach off harmlessly so what happens to a trader after it's manufactured may have as much to do with its subsequent safety as the inclusion of one regulated wood products in the first place remember formaldehyde is widely used chemical in consumer products it's also the natural byproduct of many natural processes like combustion and a constant element of basic metabolism metabolic functions it's in our bloodstream each of us releases some formaldehyde in this room when we exhale eliminating formaldehyde isn't the issue the goal is to keep sustained formaldehyde exposure below the level suspected to cause health effects according to some groups that may be one hundred parts per billion or less for most people so words seem a traitor score porting to data recently released by the center for disease control and prevention the average letter level of formaldehyde in occupied traders fell between seventy two and ninety one parts per billion seventy two and ninety one our staff did some random test around the capitol with a handheld meter and we got a reading of eighty parts per billion right next to this committee ante room but some traders tested much higher some lower since the c d c test didn't account for any contribution from background levels like those we found here it's even less clear how much formaldehyde came from the wood in the traders that leaves trader occupants already victimized by one storm caught in a lingering tempest of post katrina political scapegoating bureaucratic finger pointing and litigation once again the committee risk being used as a discovery proxy for plaintiffs suing companies called to testify before us and that's wrong instead we should be asking thema why contract requirements for habitable moto mobile units weren't more specific why inspection procedures weren't consistent and why health concerns didn't trigger standardized testing and where necessary prompt remediation we should be asking federal science and health agencies how to establish and measure workable standards for formaldehyde exposure  realistic settings so that this sad event never occurs again we will have the opportunity today to ask representatives of the travel trailer industry whether they'll be able or willing to ramp up production to meet emergency demand when fema calls again i hope their answer doesn't mean we'll have even fewer options to make critical housing needs after the next inevitable disaster thank you thank you mr davis let me ask unanimous consent that representative donnelly and lamson be permitted to join us at about the documents being put into the record let me just make a unanimous consent consent request that the staff minority and majority reports be made part of the record i will continue to talk to you about the documents he wants without objection by the chair and a ten minute round controlled by ranking member and then for all other witnesses including the second panel we will go back to the five minute rule without objection that will be agreed to our first witness today is dr michael mckeon dr mckee and is the director of environmental hazards and health effects division of national center for environmental health within c d c dr mckee at his work with c d c for nearly thirty years focusing on issues related to environmental health dr mcginn we are pleased to welcome you to our committee hearing today it's a practice of this committee that all witnesses that testified before us do so under oath so if you please ri solemnly swear the testimony you'll get before the committee will be the truth the whole truth and nothing but the record will indicate that the witness answered in the affirmative your prepared statement will be in the record in its entirety we'd like to ask you to proceed and stay as close to five minutes is as you can we will run the clock it will be green for four minutes it will turn orange for one minute and then read when the time is up and we see the red light we'd like to ask you to see if you could conclude at that point there's a button on the base of the mike be sure it's pressed on so that we'll be able to hear  the morning chairman waxman mr davis and other distinguished members of the committee thank you for the opportunity to be here today i am dr michael mcginn director of centers for disease control preventions division of environmental hazards and health effects in the national center for environmental health my testimony today will focus on the results of c d c investigations related to fema supplied temporary housing units following hurricane katrina it will focus on two particular studies a final report of the formaldehyde levels in fema supply travel trailers and the lawrence berkeley national laboratory interim volatile organic compounds report final occupied trailer study from december twenty fourth first two thousand and seven to january twenty third two thousand and eight c d c conducted testing to assess levels of formaldehyde in occupied be misapplied travel trailers and mobile homes in louisiana and mississippi c d c randomly selected five hundred one thousand nine hundred mobile homes for testing these units represented a cross section of the trailer types and manufactures most frequently used by theme in the gulf coast interim results were announced in february two thousand and eight and a final report was released just on july second the final report included additional analyses of data such as temperature humidity and ventilation but did not change the conclusions or recommendations from those in the interim report the average levels of formaldehyde in all the travel trailers and mobile homes tested was seventy seven parts per billion c d c concluded from the study that one formaldehyde levels found in some trailers and mobile homes could affect the health of residents travel trailers had significantly higher average formaldehyde levels than mobile homes temperature humidity trailer type and brand keeping windows open and the presence of mold were associated with formaldehyde levels and the levels measured likely under represented the exposure since the levels were likely higher when the trailers were first issued and during warmer months c d c recommended that female relocate residents before the weather became hot with priority based on those experienced symptoms children the elderly those with chronic diseases and persons living in trailer types at higher formaldehyde levels the large berkeley report c d c hired lawrence berkeley national laboratories to study indoor emissions of volatile organic compounds including formaldehyde in four vacant sima supplied travel trailers the study looked at air levels for the whole trailer and it gases released from specific component parts of the trailers such as the walls floors ceilings tables and cabinets after large berkeley and c d c took measurements of air inside the trailers at fema as purpose mississippi storage yard c d c staff then took each trailer apart collected packaged and shipped the parts to large berkeley national labs or laboratory staff tested the parts in small chambers to determine the type and extent of the o c s that each part emitted the four trailers tested were pilgrim international gulfstream coach cavalier four industries found that amount of formaldehyde given off by each of forty four of the forty five component parts that were tested were usually in ohio or higher than that given off by similar materials used in site built or manufactured homes yet measurements inside each of the four trailers before they were disassembled revealed formaldehyde levels that were higher than those normally found inside built or manufactured homes this may be because the trailers use more composite wood products have more composite wood products in a smaller space or lead in fresh air or a combination of all these factors the new site built their manufactured homes all the results from this study cannot be generalized to the entire fleet of fema supplied travel trailers because of the small sample size c d c study of for travel trailer provide information to help guide future research to understand the effect in this of using materials that emit lower levels of formaldehyde during construction and increasing the ventilation rates in the trailers that is a summary of the two major studies that we have done we have ongoing work and some future work that will be doing it with lawrence berkeley that i'll be happy to talk about during the questions i thank you for the opportunity to present this information to you today we recognize that more needs to be done to understand the health and the issues for all the people living in trailers in parks in mobile homes both in fema temporary housing and in other units bought commercially c d c has initiated discussions with the human heart on these issues since some trailer types had relatively low levels we believe th construction practices are available that could assure a safe and healthy conditions we hope to ride technical input to help achieve that kind of housing for all americans who live learn and work in these units i'd be happy to answer any questions i'd like to add mr chairman that when i flew up here i flew up with your colleague dr john lewis in the coming congressman john lewis in the seat next to me and i told him that i was going to be appearing before this committee and he said well that's good and i said well perhaps and he said i'm sure they'll treat you kindly so i kind of consider that a pro well it's our intention to treat you kindly because all we want to do is get the facts i'll start off the questions mckeon i want to ask you about these regulatory standards because there are a lot of different standards that are out there that apply to for for mild to hide according to the centers for disease control and prevention outside air typically has formaldehyde levels of two or three parts per billion is that right that's what the that's what the information shows us ok and we have a chart that we're going to put on the screen that  and we could add that to the chart a busy city streets generally have formaldehyde levels that range from twenty to forty parts per billion is that right if you are downtown on a corner and you basically are at gridlock you can see those sorts of yes the next level i want to ask you about is one hundred parts per billion at this level some people can suffer acute health effects like burning eyes shortness of breath and nausea is that an accurate statement yes or there's a number of studies that have shown that sensitized individuals have those symptoms can have those symptoms at at levels of one hundred parts per billion how about people who are not sensitized the the data that the studies show that sensitized individuals can nonsense studies individuals can have those symptoms i mean it's possible that they could have symptoms at that level or that's not what the studies have shown it would be at higher levels the c d c is not the only agency that regard to hundred parts per billion as a potentially dangerous level the environmental protection agency and the consumer product safety commission have also identified one hundred parts per billion as a level at which negative health effects can occur and the world health organization has also issued guidelines for for two years ago when it tested nearly fifty fema trailers gulfstream was the largest supplier of fema trailers in fact they received a contract worth more than five hundred million dollars to provide fifty thousand trailers to fema first gulf stream tested eleven occupy trailers and it found that every occupied troy trailer had levels above one hundred parts per billion four of the trailers nearly forty percent of those tested had levels above five hundred parts per billion at that level federal regulations require medical monitoring of workers dr mckee and were you aware of these findings i know so i was not came as a public health expert do these findings concern  you should families be living in trailers with formaldehyde levels above a hundred and five hundred parts per billion so we would recommend that families living in in trailers with above one hundred parts per million five hundred parts per billion that they be offered alternative housing gulfstream conducted this testing in march of two thousand and six more than two years ago and yet the company never told the families living in these trailers do you think the family should have been so i think that people should be aware of the risks that of where they're living yes i'm i'm a firm believer that we should that people should be aware of the of any information that we have that could affect their health if you are living in one of these trailers for two years after the company knew that it might have been formaldehyde levels of over one hundred maybe five hundred parts per billion what would your reaction be if they hadn't told you about it as as a scientist or as a resident would give me either one well sir i would i would think that if if we have information that people may be exposed to levels of formaldehyde that may cause symptoms in sensitized elves and may have an effect on children who are growing up in the in the environment that we should share that with the residents and i think that that should be shared in a way that they understand what we're talking about and so they can make an informed decision go straight also tested  unoccupied trailers the levels of found were even higher nearly half of the trailers had levels over nine hundred parts per billion e p a says that no one should be exposed to that level more than once in a lifetime one traveler had levels above four thousand parts  billion do you believe that these are dangerous levels of formaldehyde i think it's some of those levels just about every person would have symptoms of upper respiratory irritating and those would be levels that we would be concerned about yes the gulf stream never told fema that the unoccupied trailers had such high levels of formaldehyde the result was that fema continued to put these trailers into service thousands of unoccupied gulf stream trailers were given to families after gulf stream knew they contain these incredibly high levels of formaldehyde i suppose once they're occupied they could open the windows and formaldehyde levels would be reduced but given their findings that concern you segment was never informed the families weren't informed fema was never informed again so i'd have to go back to what i had said earlier i think that if we have information that may affect people's health that we should share that information with the people  i don't know what the correspondence was that went back and forth and you you and all the committee knows more about that than i do between fema and the various trailer manufacturers i just i'm not aware of that care what we learned a year ago that seem a failed the families in the gulf coast they refused to test the trailers because they didn't want to know the results and then have to take action to protect these families and i think that's a shameful failure of government today we're learning that the largest maker of travel trailers did some testing and did know that it's trailers had dangerously high levels but it didn't warn anyone and i think that's also a shameful failure i'm going to have three three would prefer my question stick with the science and that we don't speculate politicians speculate lawyer speculate but we need to focus on the science and that there were some assumptions in the questions there that were not science gulfstream did a desiccated test which is not an accurate test more of a snap shot just like taking it from out of high test or in this room snapshot not science and then attempted to raise that question with thema and they went beyond the call of duty to do that but it is not an accurate scientific test that was presented to you as though they had scientific evidence rather than a snapshot which still should have been followed up on but nevertheless is different than having a control group or an actual test with that you know i've had some correspondence and both verbal device staff and in the two hearings at homeland security as well as a previous here with center for disease control and i want to ask on the record why there was not a control group after time to see how much was related to other things in the area as opposed to the trailer the response we got from c d c was there was and it was compared to the national rather than what was happening at katrina at the time or the region is that scientific yes or not have a control group yes or i mean you would have a control group on that i think what we were asked to do was to look at the various types of temporary housing units that were being used and see what the formaldehyde level was the ambient air has been measured in many parts of the country by a number of different researchers and has been found to be consistently at two three and four parts per billion one of one other thing about formaldehyde that i think it's important to remember and that is that no scientists that have looked at formaldehyde consider ambient air a driver of indoor formaldehyde let me ask you this question your office this morning said that you had no reason to question the tulane study that studied the ambient formaldehyde or levels within site built homes in the louisiana average three seventy parts  billion more than four times that found in fema trailers that would suggest since your office is aware of that you know that there are differences in louisiana than elsewhere because i don't believe that site built homes are testing that high nationally and that furthermore you're aware that in the hancock study by your office in mississippi that there was no measurable difference between those people who were in the trailers and were in other that might suggest that other phenomena were occurring other than just the trailers so you have to study suggests that the non trailers had higher levels or at least equivalent levels or the the second study the hancock study did not look at exposure it was tremendously handicapped by the absolute destruction of so many medical records we did not have a  one which we could prepare rates so we were able to do what we could in what's called an f b i investigation which is led by a trainee and is conducted in three week period of time with that in mind it did look at as a as a secondary objective it did look at whether or not we would see a difference in the children's respiratory symptoms those living having reported living in trailers and those who did not live in trailers and we did not see a different do i attribute that at all to formaldehyde levels i do not the first study that you talked about the lemur study i have reviewed that study and it appears to be a well done study it used the nih i sampling method that we use which is the gold standard sampling method it was slightly different than the one we used but it was the nyasha method its results were well reported i thought it was a well written article and its conclusions were again having nothing to with ambient air outside in louisiana the conclusions were doing this from memory but the conclusions were along the lines of we need to increase the ventilation in these homes we need to look at what  furniture products and wood products are being used in these homes its conclusions were strikingly similar to the conclusions that came out of our occupied study so when i was asked to review the lemur study i found that it was a well done study and well written and its conclusions were justified now if you were to ask me why did that study find elevated levels of formaldehyde in those homes when many studies at the same time around the country did not i do not have or i do not have an answer for that and as you suggested in your opening statements and as i responded to chairman waxman i am going to stick to the science i did not know what the correspondence was between the manufacturers and fema so i didn't comment on that and so i don't know the answer congressman as to why those levels were higher than that but i will tell you that the science will tell you that it is you and the air is not a driver formaldehyde an indoor environment let me ask you a couple other questions because in your testimony admit that some of things here are concentration other words there's been this mis notion that somehow like the manufacturers brace formaldehyde on things it's products they put in it's not unique to a trailer it's unique to size and the wood in the wood quality which we're debating now in a site built house or manufactured home you said that they which we learned are apparently at least from this one study different in this particular environment and you don't know why it could be heat it could be a number of people in could be other patterns that occur in the house such as cooking number intensity would would you not think based on your own statement that for example when you put a new kitchen in because much of this cupboards depending on whether it has been near or vinyl can quadruple the parts coming off of that particular piece when you put a new kitchen in the house that for a brief period and tell it dissipates that kitchen area may have higher levels of formaldehyde when you put new carpet in a room particularly if it's a smaller bedroom you're going to go up and down that this is not an uncommon thing even everywhere including in our own offices including elsewhere it's not unique to trailers other than that they're small and any alternative housing that we would use such as a tent a small wood shelter is long and let's use is pure natural wood w adhesive with no repellent the smaller the area and the newer it is the greater problem you're going to have abs absolutely the component parts are what lead to formaldehyde i in my old house i brought this desk in and i put it together  and it was this beautiful desk that i was perfect for the room and i remember smelling the formaldehyde as i was unpacking it which means at that time i was dealing with formaldehyde at least above five hundred parts  are but nyasha is the gold standard and if you look at the literature on the measurement of formaldehyde for all of the studies they almost invariably use an i r standard i'd like to insert into the record the formaldehyde on the knife standard in the reason is because when we start to get down to really fine lines here those variations become very significant and i reserve the balance of the time industry there is for manufactured housing there is for the component parts and i think that there are component parts standards but not an indoor ambient air standards that correct that's true congressman the indoor levels a four hundred parts per billion are target based on wood emission standards as i understand it and these have been in place for twenty four years are you talking about the hud language yes or no that's language and is not a standard and the way you describe it seems accurate to me and that's really not i mean  regulations that would define these so when the government contracts out contractors know what the rules are people who are utilizing the traders know what the rules are c d c been proactive in that all c d c is trying to get government agencies together to address the formaldehyde issue my boss dr howard from leading a group to try to do that i think you know congressman and i think you would agree with this the c d c is not a standard setting raincy i think it's in the best interest of the american public and the congress that c d c never become a standard setting agency because we can go in and look at something soley from a public health perspective however there right now are no standards by which a manufacturer or anyone can say this is the and be an indoor air standard for formaldehyde in the united states so as far as you know then what was delivered here didn't was not not meeting standards because there were no standards on for there there not only are no standards for travel trailers for indoor ambient air for formaldehyde but there are no standards to my knowledge and i've been immersed in this for the last fifteen months there are no standards for travel trailers for component parts because the hud component parts standards only apply to manufactured homes and not to travel trailers they're exempted from that thank you that's my understanding thank you mr davis mr cummings you very much mr chairman one of the things just following up on what was just stated clearly the united states of america should not being purchasing trailers that are going to bring harm to the american people would you agree that with that of course regardless of standard and what we're talking about things like watery eyes burning sensations in extremely high level exposure of the mouth of the hive get immediately the dangerous to the health of one's health and the life no matter what the standard is the american people were purchasing trailers deca bring harm to of american people that that's the face of this in katrina we had people who were victimized at least twice their country failed them except for the coast guard and then they were living in these trailers that was failing them also and i don't know what john lewis said i'm not going to i'm not here to attack you but i want to make i want to make sure we keep the focus on this i've said too many times over and over again our country is becoming mired in a culture of mediocrity and failure to be empathetic to human beings so we can talk about standards here and there and everywhere but the question still remains do we get what we bargained for are we getting something that does harm now i understand it you didn't you're not not familiar with all the letters in the correspondence that went back and forth but d mcginn gulfstream sent a letter to fema that read in part i just need your opinion on this very quickly and this is what the letter said its and it's dated may eleventh two thousand and six it said we want to follow up on our recent conversations regarding travel trailers supplied to fema as we have previously indicated we want to again let you know that we remain committed to providing high quality products no particular information ventilation or standards window air quality including formaldehyde are required by government regulation relating to travel trailers however if if if if if even though not required gulfstream has taken the added step specifying low emission standards and let me say this is what they said we would like to reiterate our willingness to assist you in addressing any concerns about our products out informal testing has indicated that formaldehyde levels of indoor  air of occupied trailers fall below zero points for instance the osha stand it a point seventy five parts per million that would that means that seven fifty watts per billion we are willing to share these informal test results with you and as mentioned during our meeting if beamer wishes to conduct formal testing protocols on any designated units we are willing to participate in the testing now did you hear that all right what impression did you get from the letter no no anything if you were in a position would you have disclosed it as a as somebody who is i mean as as a expecting certain things from brokaw selling things to the american people would be a hard pay taxes would you  expected it i would say i would go back sir to what i said to the chairman that i think that sort of information should be shared and that's a good thing to share that and gulfstream also did not dispose that is testing up on occupied trailers showed even higher levels  large number of these showed levels well over seven hundred fifty parts per billion in an occupied trailers a gulfstream a disclose that information do you think i think if they had that information on formaldehyde that was above seven hundred fifty parts per billion the that that would have been a good thing to let fema know clearly gulfstream spent over a month putting together this letter carefully after that and this is what we came up with and thank you very much again this is about people this is about human beings thank you mr chairman thank you  cummings not the republican side thank you mr chairman dr you're going to be the only scientist we have here the next panel as the ranking member said basically are people being sued as a result of the hysteria  that may or may not be valid around formaldehyde let me ask first question is is there a universal standard or is there a number that you would set here today that say we should make sure trailers never have in them under ordinary conditions so i would think that if we're going to tell no no no no is there a number i'm sure there is it's not one that i get you're not prepared to give it that's true ok  the second one and i want to keep it short because i only have the five minutes so today the government after this you're not prepared to give a number seven hundred five hundred one hundred but let's take hud's number for a moment hud said that  basically you can outguess a three hundred parts per billion out of plywood is that number too high for travel trailers no it's a standard for what it is a standard for would what we have shown in our  lawrence standard for outsourced gassing of wood because once you make the wood it's going to people are going to make a lot of different plywood there's only so much m d f and plywood going to be made once you have a standard for travel trailers and they're going to tend to use the same in these industries is the standard of the you know basically the glue used to bond together either m d f or plywood is that an unreasonable standard or are you prepared to answer is that a good number so i will tell you what our study showed i'm not going to say whether that's an unreasonable number i will show you that forty four of the forty five component parts standard and yet for those four travel trailers the levels were in the multiple hundreds of  so we have a standards problem today based on that in my opinion let me ask another another question you take plywood carpet plastic you name it the components that all can produce formaldehyde you put them in a in a closed air tight of and you heat him up to one hundred sixty degrees are you going to get a concentration formaldehyde inside the air chamber you're going to get a lot of different contaminants probably ok but in fact that's what a closed up trailer is in the hot sun no matter who made it no matter what they use that's what you have one the elevated levels are to be expected in a closed up hot trailer too which means we shouldn't be testing him that way that there has to be a standardized test can the c d c come up with a standardized test or should some agency come up with a standardized test so that we could be comparing apples and apples for levels of ventilation and cetera because it sounds like the government hasn't provided that yet either well i think if an agency moves towards setting a standard they will have to give guidance on how that standard would be measured the trailer manufacturers are going to be here after you and gulf stream is the gold standard by most people's i know you have a gold standard of testing equipment but you know there's a gold standard for trailers commercial off the shelf been around forever well regarded most people know that name more than the other three manufacturers did you find anything in your testing of those or other trailers that showed that these trailers were materially different than what the commercial public buys and happily works with on a regular basis we were unable to look at whether or not these were different from that i mean there were there were there are the awful lot models that were the two and i'll set up the question fairly narrowly louisiana mississippi there's a huge flood stagnant water sitting there unfortunately in some cases with sewage and all kinds of other things it's wet it's rainy it's hot it's humid everything gets wet including the people going in and out to try to salvage things mold is pervasive in fact is that a major contributor in all likelihood to the general on healthy atmosphere that existed in that area the south after katrina i think that mold in an indoor environment is not a good thing i think that what we found in our in our multiple regression was it mold was associated with formaldehyde levels not caus levels there's a difference so you're saying that formaldehyde plywood causes mold no sir i'm saying that the indoor air contamination may be related to both of them at the same time now in your test you tested for  high because you had a large amount of people in a terrible situation post katrina did you test for anything else i can't find any other testing for the effects of mold mildew all the other chemicals including sewage that backed up what tests can you provide us with that shows the other things that may have caused the same symptoms of more or less that are being reported and blamed on only one chemical formaldehyde so we went to the field as rapidly as we could to answer the question that was pervasive at the time which was formaldehyde and this study was aimed at formaldehyde we thought we controlled for smoking and some other factors with a questionnaire but we tested for formaldehyde now if you wanted to look at other v o c as that may be in the area of these trailers we did look for a different deal sees in the lawrence berkeley study found thirty three that were measurable i found three that might be considered elevated and the focus ended up being on formaldehyde thank also tested trailers made by other manufacturers and tested over thirty five new travel trailers that had not yet been deployed displaced residents of those trailers over twenty five were manufactured by gulf stream and seven by all the companies the levels of formaldehyde in the occupied trailers were remarkable over the gulf stream trailers contained mild to hide most studies show that when you get up above eight hundred parts per billion ourselves that most people will have symptoms at that level of formaldehyde and so certainly at nine hundred it would be well i don't i mean the word dangerous has connotations to it that i'm not really comfortable with one of the things that we have tried to do in all our reports is to stay away from words that that cause alarm i would say that at that level we could expect a good proportion of the population to have symptoms that that were described starkly occupied i don't know how those samples were taken but across the board if you have levels like that it would be environment where many people if not all people would have the types of symptoms that we've talked levels of formaldehyde in these trailers in march of two thousand and six thousands of trailers were yet to be deployed gulfstream knew that there was a major problem but they remained silent and as a result those on occupied trailers became occupied trailers families moved in and families live in those trailers and on down at lee many suffer with the consequences i believe that somebody should be held accountable whether it's whether it's gulf stream a boat somebody should be held accountable or not alerting those families that they were moving into has of those situations i thank you very much and thank you dr the nine hundred parts per billion that was talked about in a closed up trailer with what you would consider in a normal healthy environment mobile home travel trailer of air exchange disclosed up amount would drop off to something between the two parts per billion that should be ambient and whatever was in that trailer isn't that true it would drop off and they will open up the trailer to see if you open up a trailer and you have a positive exhaust either through an air conditioner the docks and just in a nutshell if you're exchanging the year you know once every several minutes or let's say to a couple times an hour wouldn't you expect it to drop off to a centrally whatever the constant emission let me everyone i think here is appalled at what happened to some of these poor victims of katrina that they ended up in and traders with the high formaldehyde people became sick and i don't think anybody up here is anything but appalled by this what concerns me today is we only have a small piece the puzzle very much appreciate you being here lending your expertise on this it's a it's a very important part of it but it seemed to me we had a crisis you had to get a lot of product  online very very quickly and the government went out to the private sector and there really no set standards the private sector has a will testify i think had to get to go to new sources to try to bring product online very quick some of it from china and  there was no checking there were no clear standards of what's going on at points when the issue was raised by some of the companies the fema tended to look the other way and it what's so sad today is we're focusing just on the manufacturers and not on the government who i think has a lot of culpability here not the c d c i might add but other agencies who have the time of not promulgated standards who haven't done the appropriate inspections who i think were so concerned about getting product that they didn't look  just appropriate regulation inspection that should have occurred what concerns me is are we this in the future when the next katrina hits and we need to bring a lot of product online i daresay a lot of these companies that have provided this in the past are probably unlikely to respond what is being done to put standards up so everybody knows what they need to meet didn't have any idea dr mcginn you said that the c d c is having discussions at this point right i don't know what that will lead to standards or not but i would like to take this opportunity if i might just to talk about the members of this panel look at things in one way and maybe the public health agency looks in a slightly different way and i look at it from this standpoint being immersed in this since last may i look at it that i think we need to find out what the exposures were and what the effects of these exposures were on the people that were residing in these trailers that is going to stop there you never found any nine hundred parts per billion in any of your inspections correct the highest level that we found sir was five hundred ninety parts per billion in the in the occupied trailer study ok so that's the one thing and the other thing that has kind of driven me over the last few months is to try to figure out a solution for this for the future we went out and we met with the indian i'm probably going to go over and i'm going to mess up everybody's time but we went out and we met with the r v and the other industry in indiana and had a very good eight hour session to talk about what we're doing and what they're doing i think that somehow we've got to solve this problem and i think it's going to have to be a government industry sort of solution to this problem so that we have some sort of temporary housing units for the next time and i hope this doesn't happen for very long the next time we have a katrina size issue hit the idea that we that we don't solve this and that we're faced with this in whatever period of time i think is abhorrent to all of us so pretty much what i have been focused on is trying to assess what happened to the people and we're going to try and do that with the children's health study and then secondly how can we make sure that this doesn't happen anymore and my my solution to that and i'm not in a force  i'm here by myself as a public health agency my solution to that i think it has to be government in history working together to figure this out what concerns me because of the slant of this hearing without having the government here and we've seen this time and time again i've had companies experts global companies where the government will go to them and say we need your help in iraq and this is why are we to do business with the government and risk the exposure of coming before a committee the lawsuits serving us it's a high risk for some of these companies we forget that if we had appropriate standards and oversight this wouldn't happen i hope it doesn't happen again i think it's been very constructive it's not comfortable for any of us are thank you mr murphy you very much mr chairman i take some comfort today in what seems to be a growing bipartisan consensus around this idea that we need to have standards we need to have some level of force ability in that both industry and government have to be part of that solution because it seems to be as mr davis said a very clear example in which the absence of that regulatory structure has led to some very damaging situations for families and a very uncomfortable situation for government agencies and in a town in which there is a lot of derision thrown on to government regulation this seems to be a perfect example of an area in which there is a very appropriate role for the government to step in to make sure that we have the safety of residents especially in a crisis areas such as the gulf at the forefront of our discussions for all of the aspersions cast on the regulatory structures the government may impose we have examples like this which suggest that there are still places in which we need to step up to the plate and i just wanted to get back to the science for a moment we've heard a lot of efforts behalf of members of this committee of some of the companies that produce these trailers to explain away the levels of formaldehyde and understanding as you've said that there are lots of different explanations for why a real world trailer or home might have elevated levels of formaldehyde what we do have is your study and so i want to just get at some of these alternative explanations and to the extent that they were factored into the work that you have done the chairman of gulf stream asserts in his written testimony that we have before us today that cooking fish for instance is a substantial source of formaldehyde an indoor air and i want to go through a couple of potentially alternative explanations in the research that you've done on the trailers have you come across any indication that the formaldehyde levels in these trailers were caused by abnormally high levels of cooked fish or other cooked products that would have been found in these trails for a number reasons we did ask the residents who participated in the study whether or not they had used they had cooked in their trailer for a period of time prior to that not only because the products that were cooking could give off formaldehyde but also the type of gas they use for cooking so we controlled for that and did not find that to be a factor in our analysis the president of stone our states in his testimony that formaldehyde is found in household cleaners antiseptics cosmetics and medicines again any indication in the trailers that you've tested that the that the high levels of formaldehyde are caused by cosmetics or household cleaners you know we did ask about the number of different household cleaners and did not find that to be a factor and finally a suggestion here that again i want to let you restate this that mold and potentially backed up sewage can also lead to some levels of talks a city or high levels of formaldehyde any indication that in the trailers you tested that mold or sewage led to the high levels of formaldehyde we measured mold in two different ways through the walk through with the trained personnel and also we asked the residents about mold and mold was a factor in the in the  multiple multivariate analysis that we did i don't believe mold was the source of the formaldehyde i think the quality of the air that leads to high formaldehyde levels also leads to mold thank you very much dr i understand the nuance conversation here about the different factors that can contribute to high levels of formaldehyde but we are dealing with science here we are dealing with studies that have been done by a trusted agency that is controlled for these very factors and it's a legitimate conversation to have except for the fact that we have a study in front of us which shows us that we have an acceptable level of formaldehyde even controlling for many of these factors have been brought before us back around to my time the gentleman  until thursday before the weekend to come here for this hearing and that's why they declined i still wish they could have been here i think it would have added a lot but i think it would have helped to of been able to get them all here all the same time so i don't think there's really except i do want to point out i think you're misinformed they were invited the same time that the c d c was asked to come here and we have c d c represented here refused to come but we did hear from fema last time around and what we heard from fema  they didn't want to know about the problem they didn't they didn't they just didn't want anybody to do any evaluations because they were afraid they'd find i levels if i can you know myself another thirty seconds of my own time that i reserve  before we heard the statement we had to have government and industry working together to protect the consumers i think we have a good example here of government and industry working together to hurt the consumers government didn't want to know the information families know that they've done tests in these trailers and they find high levels of formaldehyde which they obviously knew were thought of as as excessive in and harmful to people's health so what we have is  government failure and industry failure if we pass laws with standards i think that's great but what we've got to make sure is that the representations that are made to the government are about what's actually happening and the government asked the questions and they work together to make sure the public's protected i think what we can see what we've seen here is no regulation and no self regulation by the industry as well i now want to in louisiana and mississippi met the hud and be an air targets for formaldehyde one of the problems here is that that target level is probably too high and it ought to be changed but the customer in ninety frankly now nine percent of cases made it and there were inspections in some of the  other instances so as we take a look at this i think that we need to focus on what the government did as the buyer there was no direct selling between the trader manufacturers and the end users they sold the government and the government had bad standards in some cases and in other cases when the manufacturers went to the government so there was a problem the government said let's not talk about it thank you my permit that hud added a lot of their status not even if i just made that point trailer industry since i was a kid and i haven't seen any evidence that this is a that they violated any rules and haven't done their job to perfection there's over eight million people in this country that live in mobile homes in r v s and travel around the country with no problems with the formaldehyde issue we're talking about today and so instead of beating on the most manufacturers i think we ought to give them a little vote of confidence because they have such a good track record in the past and without i yield to my colleague to apply to people who worked overtime to provide units to people who were in the housing crisis they may have worked their people hard they did it under great pressure we had tremendous hiring challenges in indiana training challenges but they worked overtime to try to meet the standards at half the cost of a normal unit and that i believe the general chairman was more for into a question and i think that as we try to make sure that people live in safe homes and people work in safe plants this debate is not about emotion or rhetoric it is in fact about science and that one of the core fundamentals that's being tossed around here is whether the gulf stream test constitutes science it was a flash test with a desiccated method which is not the way that you test that type of thing we're making big judgments here on the morals of people based on the fact that one company did have concerns with a shipment of wood then did a flash test on that did a range but didn't give all of it because the variation is far too great to be scientific with the method that they use now i also want to make sure that when mister when mr murphy asked some questions that it isn't really scientific to say when he asked did you test to say the individuals were asked because in fact you didn't test to see whether other things cause the standard you asked them whether they did anything we did it was i think i stated that we did it with a questionnaire and that we controlled for it in the analysis i think i exactly said those words that i'd taken here that there was any tests done on other other things that it was a  self dependant referral referral rather than actual scientific test to see what else was there and we come back to this to a study that said the ambient air standard in baton rouge was three hundred ninety parts  billion that was the average which means they had four times what you're finding in these trailers average would you recommend three hundred ninety average which means probably somewhere in the five six hundred range that everybody who lives in that region should move out i would recommend exactly what the authors of that recommended which is that people should look they should look to ventilate their houses more that they should look at what the component parts they're putting in and what additional work they're having done on their houses then your recommendation for the trailers as well not panic i'm sorry sir i didn't hear the other words they're averaging three ninety in louisiana in louisiana in a general site built house which is higher than the average here would you make the same recommendations for emergency fema trailers that you just made to baton rouge why are we having a double standard on this group and not basically the same level of concern about possibly the entire southern region there was congressman we did make that recommendation we recommended that fema move people out of these units before the weather became hot and the levels went back up in the meantime we did recommend that people ventilate their trailers more be careful what you do not smoke inside their trailer taking back my time did you recommend the same thing to the people in baton rouge so we did the ninety we didn't do that studies are ok that was you already testified you felt it was accurate to say the question is why would you make a recommendation to one group and not the other so that was a study that was done nine years ago that that was given to me two days ago i can't go back and recommend to the citizens that are in those homes that they move out i mean that's not what we would do this is a study that i was asked did i think that this was a what did i think about this study and i gave you that assessment gentleman's time has expired   trailer is safe or not safe do you do with the windows closed you do with the windows open you do with the fan running i mean what's the what's sort of the iraq study what we wanted was to pay for people to set their trailers up the way they normally have their trailers when they're sleeping so we asked them to set it up if they keep their windows open three inches if they keep their windows wide open if they keep the air conditioning running however they set their trailers up for that period of time that's how we asked them to set their trailers up and that's how we sampled we wanted it to be the most realistic exposure that we could but that would mean you end up with a different trailer by trailer basis coming up with what  we were interested in what the human beings were being exposed to for formaldehyde ok the second question i have is in terms of the sustained exposure show day after day after day is somebody who's exposed to let's say two hundred fifty parts per billion for fifty days at a higher risk of some kind of harm and somebody who's exposed to two hundred fifty parts per billion for ten days in a row and then are not exposed to that subsequent essentially what you're doing when you look at human exposure to any contaminants is in one way or the another you're basing it on an index and the the index is based on the intensity of the exposure in this case the level of formaldehyde that you're mentioning and the  and when you're dealing with contaminants i think the rule of thumb is to try to decrease either of those components as much as you can either decrease the intensity by decreasing the amount of exposure that they have to  and or decrease the duration of exposure you don't want people being exposed to a contaminant that causes symptoms and the more you can decrease either one of those you decrease the exposure index so there dimension to there's a cumulative dimensional harm that can come particular when you get into the potential of formaldehyde formaldehyde by the inner international agency for research on cancer i arc is considered a human carcinogen and when you when you have human carcinogens you really want to try to decrease a person's exposure as much as possible so it becomes relevant for which a trailer is being put we absolutely believe that one of the recommendations when we were talking the famous is that while you don't want to get into a specific number when people are living in a unit one of the issues is how is that unit being used if you have a family with young children and they're in the unit twenty four hours a day as some of the families in the parks work that's different than a person who has a unit parked outside their home who spends eight hours at work and  comes home and spends four and a half hours repairing the roof to try to move back into their home so the the use of the trailer is an important part of the level of exposure people keep referring to the emergency circumstances excuse last explanation for folks being put in harm's way where there was these high formaldehyde levels  leaving that aside for a minute would you agree that if the alarm had been sounded earlier and more consistently by both the manufacturers and seem that we would have gotten started much earlier on doing the kind of thinking you say you've been doing about how we can fix this problem going forward and think about the kinds of housing that should be available to people in disaster recovery situations i think it's fairly easy to imagine the timeline that we currently have being moved up of housing opportunities in these disaster situations we could have gotten started much earlier on if people have been come clean earlier with the information on these these kinds of exposures back my time thank  third that's last thursday inviting him to come to testify before the committee and i understand there was a letter slightly earlier than that to fema but they told us they didn't get it until thursday the manufacturers have been on the hook here for a month of knowing that they were coming here so trying to get everybody together one table to discuss this this was almost an afterthought and as a result of that we have an incomplete hearing this was a tragedy what happened here to some of the families that had these high levels it shouldn't happen it shouldn't happen it should never happen again and we ought to focus on what we can do but the government is a prime responsibility here for not appropriate inspections not reacting to what some of the manufacturers had told them early on that there were problems not going through improper inspections even with a moving and very uncertain standard and so that is the difficulty here and when you have lawsuits outstanding against some of these companies we know how this works we're all adults we're going to have lawyers put in testimony from some of the members of congress and some of the staff reports into the record before juries to try to get high words and so they're trying this and we've seen this happen before unfortunately we understand the politics of sixteen we weren't we weren't asked congressman to comment on that before fema came out with that i think i know on which that is based which is based on an standard that was based on formaldehyde being considered safe and healthy or not there were other factors involved what would c d c has done from the beginning of this is to look at the literature and to go by what the literature says where various symptoms occur and i don't think we need to adjust that particular graphic because we've been consistent in what we said from the very beginning that one hundred parts per billion sensitive individual show symptoms there's a number of studies that the emission level of violence calls from the component parts of the trailers and these tests showed that formaldehyde was being a emitted inside the travel trailers from the component parts is that right yes ma'am they also show that formaldehyde was the only volatile chemical in the travel trailers that was at a level high enough to negatively impact documents that were obtained by this committee it appears that they did and the company actually hired another company called progressive engineering to test individual samples of the paneling and gulfstream itself appear to have tested the fiberboard via know and the drawers to determine their formaldehyde levels that's similar to the test that you conducted is that so yes it does the pending on what type of chamber testing they do but yesterday let me tell you what this company found as a result of its testing progressive engineering found elevated levels formaldehyde admitting from the paneling and if we were reading gulfstream notes correctly they found high levels from the other components as  well if you had been informed of this information two years ago would it have raised concerns for you well again i go back to whatever reiterated yes ma'am any information that shows levels of formaldehyde levels  information when it began investigating this issues and i've heard you say earlier that if we've had that information we could have moved on and correct i think any information early on would have been a great benefit ok so the problem is that the company did not tell fema about these component tests and gulfstream had a contract with fema that was worth five hundred and fifty million dollars to manufacturers these travel trailers and when it learned in two thousand and six that there was a five mile the high problem with the trailers it manufactured the company chose to remain silent and so fema has been rightly criticized for its response to hurricane katrina and its response to the film out a high problem but it should not bear all the blame so we need to be talking to each other openly honestly and a transparent way that's the reason why we have these oversight committee hearings so a those if those data are available we would love to see them because one of the things that we want to do and follow up to the work that we did with lawrence berkeley is to try to get some of the original component parts and see what they offer gas and see if we can model to see what happened  at you and some of these you what familiar with that gulfstream test was a desiccated test not a chamber test there was no chamber test done that they did a which your agency says has to be done multiple times  they hired a firm to try to do this test to do because they suspected that the would might have a problem they tried to alert they told him general range because it's not scientific you use the word chamber do you agree that chamber testing is the way you do scientific testing that would be the gold standard for this and and would you agree that the other probably not even a bronze particular you just do it once in the flesh test because number of people what may have been happening that day you said yourself one hundred to a thousand because there may be temporary things occurring was there i don't i don't know what the i don't know whether or not it has been compared to the standard but if if there were data that showed whatever testing they did was compared to the standard then we could make that right of center which we don't have that i don't i certainly don't well they didn't either because they didn't do chamber testing right all they were alerting fema to is hey there may be some problem now the standard that the lawrence berkeley labs can said this is containing high levels of formaldehyde probably resulted from cheap wood used by the manufacturers under permissive government standards do you think from your own testing that the variations because most of them fell here were resulting from probably a certain type of wood are you willing to agree with how lawrence berkeley is probably the best we can come up with there i think the lawrence berkeley report is the best data that we have on the component parts used so that that while there may be other variables that  to the degree we had a problem there it appears to have been aggravated at least by the would you use a very understated term you said it probably be pretty hard to achieve sixteen level right that's probably true since the average rooms that have been tested here are not in chamber tests are between thirty and seventy which means that we better not put anybody in our house office buildings in emergency so probably  difficulty with that because we've been going back and forth here today between the chamber test nine chamber test different agencies using something from a a flash test that's nowhere near a gold standard that was was used in coding some high figure that and we go back and forth between ambient air and testing of the would we go back and forth between people once people living in and once that have been packaged up with no ventilation some new some old we don't have the  agencies don't appear to have those numbers to be able to match up it appears the numbers to match up right in some of the cases with the manufacturers that there are significant problems and i want to come back because in hancock were tested a that with the limitations there wasn't a difference between the trailers and the housing and in the tulane study which is not a bash and what you said was gold standard that the average was three ninety where the average in these trailers was seventy seven or eighty seven now why to come back to this it's not your agency and you didn't do that study you only review two days ago but if we're panicked about what we keep hearing  four hundred two hundred could be exposure one hundred could be wouldn't that be suggesting that c d c and others ought to be checking everything in the state of louisiana and elsewhere since there are four times the average standard of these trailers the average is four times higher why isn't there panic about the whole region if we're panicking about one hundred two hundred there most of there must be something unique about the houses that were tested in that study  air is not a driver for formaldehyde in a memory let me ask the question do you have any scientific evidence that there was anything unusual about their test no i think the testing process that they used a cording to the article that i read was wrong your answer was not scientific in saying it must be something else because in fact they were site built homes that in fact we could have a problem with all site built homes you don't know the answer to the question except that i am familiar with formaldehyde sir and formaldehyde outdoor air is not a driver for indoor formaldehyde well it doesn't get there tested suggested but there are a few if you read their conclusions or they are not suggesting that it's ambien area either they are suggesting that it is some product inside the either a ventilation issue or the products that are used inside the home which is the same question that we have here absolutely trailers isn't that the ambient air i'm sorry if i confused the air because that was a question a little more potentially over and hancock that the question is that if they got the results are four times higher which could be the wood which could be the ventilation why are we concerned in looking at those houses like we're concerned about these houses because it might not just be the poor people here it may be the poor people all over that zone and it may be the poor people in other types of of homes because we're making in my opinion taking on one industry without gentlemen having  was a question did you have a response that well i just i want everybody in a panel to know that the c d c and i are not picking on an industry at all i mean we've had good conversations with the r b i and other industry we've had they've attended our  our scientific oversight panel meetings twice i think that our people have gone out to their factories to see how they operate from our standpoint there's no industry bashing going on with c d c in any way shape or form i  simply state as i stated before that we're trying to get the answers for this we're trying to provide good data i quite frankly think that the l b l study that we just completed and just published should be something that industry jumps on and looks at very carefully because i think it gives a lot of guidance as to what the problems might be and how they might be solved and i just want to make that i think that's an excellent point gentleman's time has expired mr attorney no question with the gentleman  we'll do the chair with some of his time i want to point out the situation because we've heard complaints about some other witnesses from other agencies not being here the manufacturers were invited  as a result of our first hearing with fema over a year ago and as a result of our hearing where we questioned why fema didn't do anything about this problem fema so we're going to ask c d c to do an evaluation so staff said well let's invite seamen back as well as c d c so we sent an official invitation to fema and the c d c on july one and this was an official invitation to come sometime later in the week the minority then said well wait a second we ought to have hud as well to come in to talk about the standards and in order to get all the relevant witnesses regarding standards staff repl this isn't a hearing about standards this is a hearing about whether the manufacturers had this information that they should have shared with the government fema and whether they should have shared it with people living in the trailers but nevertheless we sent an invitation to hud nyasha e p a c p s c and osha on july fifth three now it's awfully late and they said they weren't available to come report was final i think july second we had information july one but that was the final report the interim report was in february as i understand it and there wasn't a substantial change was there between the two so this is been common knowledge we've had plenty of time to plan for this i mean the difficulty here is when a contractor work response to standards from the government doesn't meet those standards they ought to be held accountable because you have standards we know this case we didn't have standards you had conflicting standards throughout government over what matt what where an ambient air standards between heard an e p a and everybody else but if i could become a my time but that's that's a audi issue to raise it is confusing because we have so many different standards but when we have different standards we can look and see what does that make sense to have the standards we have but what we're concerned about is the health and well being of people living in these trailers and the center for disease control which does not establish standards just giving us their professional judgment about when it's a risk for people living in those trailers and even if we took the report from the manufacturers of over one hundred parts per billion dr mcginnis testified over and over again that he thinks that's awfully high amount of formaldehyde for people to be living with now hud has a different standard and it's a lower it's a different number and it's  it was only a flash study i don't know we'll go into that with the next panel but what they knew from their evaluation however complete it was is that there was a problem going on that they were getting very high ratings of formaldehyde in these trailers and knowing that they misled i believe actually misled simo when they said we're not getting complaints when in fact they were and we have done some studies but that the impression was it's not a big problem but we'll our studies with you so they had some sense that maybe theme of isn't going to ask and they would share and i presume if they were asked but fema didn't ask which is not a good point for fema and the trailer excess of that they should have had some suspicions that maybe in fact i believe they had some suspicions that people were at risk with him i do believe and i mean in the next panel there the companies they can take care of themselves we are asked as questions there but there is also ample evidence that in many of these cases they passed on this information to thema and female either ignored it or didn't want to address the situation as i noted before almost ninety nine percent of the temporary units that were tested by the c d c in the louisiana mississippi met the hood and being air targets for formaldehyde seizures and the standards i think were bad standards and we ought to focus on but not what kind of an argument is that to make that the manufacturers knew they met a standard that wasn't a good standard and the standard i don't think you'll ever get anybody to do business with the government again and that that's why there's a wholesale ended and i think a manufacturer of a product has a responsibility not to harm the people we all agree with that there's no question about that but the question here is if you're meeting a standard and it's the wrong standard is that the government's fault for setting the wrong standard or is it the contractor's problem for meeting a standard and i think we can have that argument but you seem to have want to put ex post facto standard into account and i don't think that anyone can all agree to that in your expert opinion with the formaldehyde levels the c d c discovered in the winter about haven't have been even higher during the summer temperature and humidity are direct drivers of formaldehyde levels so i would say yes  the c d c study provides us with a snapshot of what families were exposed to last winter when we account for the passage of time and temperature fluctuations these families were likely found that it had as high as five hundred parts per billion and we all know that famous fail miserably in the wake of hurricanes katrina and rita but these poor hurricane victims  now been subjected to a second disaster and years of unnecessary and harmful exposure to carcinogen do you think they should have been different yes or dramatically different have you documented any other no but i mean again when you go back to what you're looking at exposure to environmental contaminants which i have done for the last twenty five years you're looking at two basic things the intensity of exposure  the duration of exposure these units weren't designed or built for people to live in for two and a half years and somebody going with their fly rods with their children up to fish for a weekend obviously your duration of exposure is much less and also most of the time those people are spending outside of the unit they're outside they're hiking they're camping if we're talking about these units being used on large lots where people who are living with their children twenty four hours a day both both the intensity and duration of exposure is high thank you for your response dr mr chairman i deal with the gentleman you just for full disclosure since you said it be good for us to know and i think you're right i want to reiterate that in the room we're in right now we're at eighty parts per billion based on measuring with your gold standard meter so the parts per billion so please be aware that you are breathing at that level and if you need to leave let us let us know if if anyone needs to leave early so what what sampling methodology was  i don't know what sampling methodology that was a directory it instantly methodology that we're being told it was a methodology as gulf stream and that was the reason our staff did it and got the forty to eighty depending upon what part of the capital you're in  i just wanted everyone to be aware that you know we could be plus or minus nineteen percent but we do want people to know that this carpet apparently along with anything else that's been put in this here over the years that it will emit you know we apparently are well beyond the sixteen and i think it's i think full disclosure you're actually right this chairman the people in the ante room will be relieved they're not here and maybe gentleness time has expired all members of the committee of ask questions and mr donnelly is with us so that what i give him any opportunity he wishes to take at this point i want to thank the chairman for letting me be present today and i have will submit a written statement for the record and i want to thank the ranking member as well and  guess i want to thank the chairman also for inviting fema i think females absence here to explain their standards and their actions that that they really have eliminated a part of the answer here and i wish that they were in fact present and dr mcginn what i want to ask you is when you did your testing for the trailers did you do any comparison tests by taking trailers off the lots from places here in maryland or virginia that were built in regular production we had depends on which which you're talking about the the occupied trailer study had parts of trailers in it that were the lot and the the lawrence berkeley national labs had to spec trailers into off the lot trailers ones that were just being sold that maryland trailer sales are nothing special that was built for fo but in fact was regular production off the lot trailers that's my understand did you test those we did as they were part of both studies did you find any difference between off the lot trailers and trailers that were designed for fema well let me just i want to be cautious in this we did a study with lawrence berkeley that only had four trailers and so therefore i don't want to make any generalizations from this we did look at the two spec trailers and the two off the lot trailers and the two spec trailers on the whole whole unit levels of formaldehyde were higher and the two off the lot trailers were lower but this study was not designed to look at that difference and i don't want that generalize because that would be a mistake and it would be taking the science beyond what it would do you know of any different production standards for i don't know about railroads that were used for families in louisiana  mississippi or trailers that were simply shipped to dealers who have been dealers for years of these companies i have no knowledge about any separate manufacturing process for the spec trailers versus the off the lot i don't know anything about that but let me ask you this forty four components were tested forty five forty five forty four met all had standards right and did seem a provide as far as you know any standards to these companies in regards to formaldehyde to follow it seems that everybody on the committee is more familiar with the correspondence between fema and the manufacturers and so i really can't answer that i'm not aware of that and you're all probably more aware of it the not so you don't know of any standards that were violated in any way in regards to formaldehyde i can't really comment on that i don't know of anything about that at all let me ask you this in regards to the tulane study do you know anything unique that would have been about the site built homes that were tested in this study and i do not know anything unique about the site built homes and the results of three hundred seventy parts per billion is in fact higher than what some of the trailers were at isn't that correct oh sure yes so i guess one other question is why didn't we test site built homes also well there's been a number of very large studies to test its site built homes around the country well done in regards to the katrina situation was doesn't have to be in regards to the katrina situation there site built homes and they were tested with the same methodology that we used and those results are comparable well what i'm asking is in regards to holmes in the katrina region at the same time that mr chairman thank you very much sir thank you mr donnelly and dr mcginn thank you very much for your testimony we very much appreciate it and if there are further questions we may submit them in writing to you for a response for the record thank you for the opportunity our our next panelists will consist of the following individuals mr jim shea jr mr sze is the chairman of gulf stream coach has been with gulfstream for more than three decades and is responsible for the company's housing division mr steve bennett is the president of pilgrim international mr ronald  president and chief executive officer of keystone r v keystone r v is a subsidiary of four industries and then mr peter legal mr legal is president ford's river he founded the company in turn green for four minutes yellow for the last minute and then turn red when the time is up and when you see that it's red you should realize your time is up and try to make your concluding comments it's a practice of this committee you solemnly swear that the testimony that you will give before the committee will be the truth the whole truth and nothing but record will indicate that each of the witnesses answered in the affirmative mr sze why don't we start with you there is a button on the base of the mike be sure to push that hand so that the microphone will take up your your statement my name is jim and i'm chairman of gulf stream coach i appreciate the opportunity to discuss the travel trailers that our company produced and sold to fema i have some rip up any remarks but ask that my full statement be made part of the hearing record gulfstream is a small town american company committed to manufacturing quality recreational vehicles for its customers our trail chairs are built by hardworking dedicated americans in the heartland of our nation safety is a key component to our critical requests because at the time we're the only manufacturer approved for well real shipment of travel trailers almost every year since one thousand nine hundred two pm has purchased gulfstream products from independent dealers to respond in natural disasters in two thousand and five for the first time the i'm a contractor directly with gulf stream divide a total of fifty thousand emergency travel trailers is important that demas specifications did not include any requirement with respect to formaldehyde initial levels the fema travel trailers we manufactured follow the same specifications as those we delivered to hurricane victims in two thousand and four in order to meet themis urgent request gulfstream wrapped up its production capacity and realigned its plant operations immediately upon receipt of the purchase order we took special care to provide a safe and quality product for the hurricane victims who temporarily were going to live in travel trailers are finian its head for emergency eat rest windows instead of the required minimum of two it was gallstones practice to do additional life safety systems testing including electrical gas supply smoke detection and carbon monoxide detection beyond what we would do our regular production for regular customers in addition to what was routinely performed on units for the manufactured public and team inspectors are onsite at our indiana plants during the manufacturing process and team a performed inspections at the hurricane zone staging areas for the more gulf stream had representatives on site  louisiana to do additional inspections after shipment today just as when produce travel trailers for thema there are no federal standards governing formaldehyde in the manufacture of travel trailers the lack of such a standard these are industry with no clear definitive guidance on the issue although there are still no for metal height standards for covering travel trailers gulfstream in two thousand and seven voluntarily adopted the stringent product standards for formaldehyde emissions proposed by the california  resources board to our knowledge gulfstream is the first rb company to receive a third party certification of our ethical would materials documentation control processes and related verification testing even without a federal standard gulfstream has had a longstanding policy to purchase wood products to satisfy the hard low formaldehyde emissions levels for manufactured housing even though hud standards do not apply to the manufacture of travel trailers so design aspects of our tra tears also increase ventilation beyond what is required by the fema specifications gulfstream are free to receive the first complaint regarding formaldehyde concerning these thema travel trailers in march two thousand and six obviously we were concerned about the complaints and try to be as proactive as possible by taking the following steps first we sought information regarding complaints received by fema second we addressed the few complaints gulfstream received regarding its travel trailers trusted by fema in may two thousand and six not to directly contact trailer occupants third we attempted to gather information on ways to identify and reduce ambient levels of formaldehyde to better ventilation solutions and processes for we provided fema representatives with information related to ventilation of travel trailers and other measures to reduce formaldehyde levels for sensitive people we offered to participate with vehement in joint testing of the travel trailers d m a did not accept our offer to do so and six we offered to share with them a the results of some informal nonscientific screenings of occupied travel trailers performed in late march and april two thousand and six sima did not accept our offer gulfstream has demonstrated its commitment to quality and safety for the residents from the beginning our record shows that we were ready willing and able to assist with any resident concerns my name is ron flanagan i'm proud to be here this morning to represent the three thousand men and women who work the summing work ration of vehicles for keystone r v thousands of customers after the gulf coast hurricanes of two thousand and five as with all americans our employees sympathize with the  standard has been developed we hope the home construction industry will join us in adopting together these actions can lead to a workable national approach to this issue we join with others in applauding the hundreds of thousands of americans needed temporary shelter and i'm proud to say that our industry was part of the solution and i sincerely hope that there will never again be another disaster that requires our vehicles to be used under such extreme conditions for such a lengthy period of time but if there is the lessons learned from this process will inform both industry and government to ensure a sound response to any need them in iraq without a thank the committee for the opportunity to appear here today to answer any questions that you m chairman as a button on the bass thank you mr chairman and members of the committee my name is peter label i am president of forest river on behalf of more than five thousand employees thank you for the chance so we can tell you about what our company does i'm especially proud to tell you how forest river workers pitched in to help the victims of hurricane katrina we started forest river in one thousand nine hundred six it began in the party indiana where people of different backgrounds share a strong work ethic and what we call hoosier values we think that because of what we do lots of american families are able to get closer to the outdoors and to travel and explore this great country today twelve years later we're currently have five thousand employees who work in more than sixty locations forest ever has plants in indiana california michigan texas georgia in oregon last year we built and sold over one hundred thousand units we're still learning and we're still improving our folks still work hard still care what they do they cared in two thousand and four one here when hurricanes hit florida forest river employees built eight specifications and our folks were proud we never received a complaint about one of them they carried in two thousand and five when hurricane katrina and rita devastate the gulf coast like other americans forest member employees wanted to help and again they did this time we were asked to build thirty five thousand of these we had to decide what made sense for our workers our suppliers our dealers and our customers so our team of forest river came up with a production schedule that would allow us to build five thousand trailers to help the victims and forest river workers built those trailers on the same production line using the same materials the same components the same quality standards the same inspectors as i do for the product they build every day the quality was the same as all the other units we've built the units we've built for the gulf coast receive the r b i a because they met r b i standards of course our folks couldn't build these five thousand units for free like every business we have to pay our workers and our suppliers we have to earn enough to keep things going but we never thought about charging higher prices we sold the fema trailers at the same modest profit levels as our normal sales our overall profit that year was about the same as it was in the years before in the years after katrina today hearing involves formaldehyde we all know there is some formaldehyde in what products carpeting fabrics used in the r v s is also used in building homes apartments and office buildings we all agree we don't want formaldehyde or for that matter any other substance to reach levels or it is a serious health threat most of us aren't doctors or scientists and those people who are doctors and scientists don't agree on the level of personnel the hives that are safe or not say there isn't an agreement on how to measure formaldehyde levels no one has all these answers yet certainly i don't but what i can tell you is for us rivers experience first formaldehyde has not historically been an issue over t dozen years we've been in business we have made and sold over one million units are those million plus units i think we only had three instances where customer concerns actually required our testing of the vehicles in two of the cases the per mile the high level tested quite low in the third it was pretty clear at the end of the day that whatever the problem was coming from it wasn't on the manufacturers and given out experience literally less than a handful of instances of this sort of a million units i think you can understand why i say that formaldehyde has not historically been an issue with force over products and customers the second point is we have not been setting i waiting for doctors a scientist to figure out the answers we may not know the answers but we know that it can't hurt by moving closer to the california structure from the highest standards for wood products even before it was recommended in the industry which we have done in closing i want to thank you again for a bit of you are allowing us to share for us river story our employees are proud of the product we made and the company they have helped build i must also tell you candidly thank you mr chairman and the committee for letting me tell you my story i'll answer any questions you might have thank you very much mr legal we're now going to recognize members ask questions for five minutes apiece and i'll start off the questions  mr shape i wrote a gulfstream in february on february fourteenth of this year and i asked your company's help in understanding why a gulf's dream travel trailer sold to fema would have high levels of formaldehyde and aren't want to read what the gulfstream said in response to my question on march seventh here's what they said gold stream respectfully disagrees with the premise of the committee's question that formaldehyde levels in the trailers it sold to fema following the gulf coast hurricanes of two thousand and five were high now given what we know now i find this response astonishing in march two thousand  trailer occupants began to complain about formaldehyde on march twenty one two thousand and six steven miller of fema e mailed your brother dan shea and asked him if gulfstream had quote the capability to put this to bed and quote were you aware of this email be sure to push the button on the mike obs your brother responded that he would send a person to baton rouge to test units from the end of march until may two thousand and six gulf stream vice president scott poland tested fema trailers he tested approximately fifty trailers including eleven archaea pipe trailers mr poland's test indicated formaldehyde levels at or above one hundred parts per billion within every occupied trail that travel trailer he tested four of the eleven occupied trailers had levels above five hundred parts per billion mr paul and also tested over twenty five new gulf coast trailer travel trailers that had not yet been deployed for displaced residents and over ten of these trailers contain formaldehyde levels in excess of nine hundred parts per billion one gulfstream trailer had formaldehyde levels of two thousand six hundred ninety parts per billion in two thousand and six gulf stream knew better than anyone that formaldehyde levels in the trail travel trailers it made for fema were high and just last week the centers for disease control confirmed that even in the winter of two thousand and seven and two thousand and eight fifty six percent of go streams travel trailers had elevated levels of formaldehyde i have one question for you mr straight mr sze do you still disagree that formaldehyde levels in philo's gulf stream trailers were high mr chairman when i review the c d c report the most sir ok yes i would just like to repeat sir that what we saw in the occupied unit testing that the c d c did it was that our units fell in what they would term the intermediate level but how about your own testing we did not do testing sir we did do that we used in the informal device a screening device it's not a scientific device it's not accepted by nyasha it's not accepted by any organization it could have been used by anyone any company any agency it's not testing sir it's a screen divisive picks up many other component but the chemical components whatever that device whatever the validity was of that test it certainly gave you an indication of very high levels of formaldehyde in your own trailers didn't it well let me tell you we were practive companies here and one of the first things we did in fact mr paul in a long time technical employer vice president of this company was into the field was in the field on other matters and he can bask in talk to other occupy and two very trailer residents asked them what their experience was and they said they were very happy with their trailers they weren't having any problems they were enjoying their trailers there were no issues where now at the time that he did that he did quickly take a snapshot deployment with this tool it was not screening it was not testing it was a quick snapshot it would have reflected anything that the residents would have done in the unit at the time and i have to remind you that they were not complaining there were not symptoms he also when you get back some complaints we had i just read the one of the complaints in fact one of the people said it like to set the record straight there sir we we communicated with thema we actually we asked him a do you have any complaints we wanted to assist we wanted to visit people we wanted to to lend whatever we could percent to div individuals we had three complaints coming directly to ourselves in that march period after the new initial news reports and we investigated all three of them and then in mid march in after we'd es four what complaints they had which they directed two people to us two of those people none of them had formaldehyde complaints what they had was one what complained on odor from improperly hooked up sewer the other was concerned about wanting to buy her unit and she had security concerns those are the two complaints that we received in my time is up but i do want to tell you that if you've done some kind of testing and you see the kind of high levels even over two thousand parts per billion in some of your trailers that the response i think of a responsible businessman should have been to to test further to find out what's going on to take some kind of responsible action and not to come before congress and say see my didn't tell me they had complaints of course they didn't know what you knew and therefore you didn't have to do any more testing yourself even though you got these alarming results that's what you didn't do you didn't you didn't do more tests you didn't tell fema there's a problem and you didn't take the action that i would think would be the responsible actions of a responsible business i would love to respond to that sir so there's a difference here between testing and screening there's a difference between an occupied units and i keep idea that we did on occupied units screening to better be able to inform fema how to properly ventilate units we also were utilizing some optional devices that we were using in the an occupied screenings because we could generally screen for the how indoor air quality change that i would remind you there are many components is as dr mcginn said indoor air at this this unit would have been sensitive to many of them so what we were unable to do is we could advise them a better our council asked us to make sure what we said if it was as accurate as possible we tested these the performance of the ventilation systems that we provided with the unit plus some optional systems to help with sensitive individuals and there is a difference between what we did with occupied units versus the screenings of unoccupied units i'm going to my time is over i'm just going to say it sounds  people who are getting already hundreds losing their jobs because of gas prices the mileage restrictions ability to get vehicles that can tow ten percent of americans have some sort of vehicle most are from northern indiana  these kind of jobs to china where they don't need these kind of and where they are there is no conscience and we wonder why we lose american jobs it is it is incredibly frustrating we all want to find out what the truth is mr  manufacture they had an inspector in each plant every day receiving units as they came off line and and inspecting them without getting into confidential information i'm not asking you to disclose this but the type of test you did on meter it's not a scientific tool it's not really what they would call a desiccate or test another imprecise type of testing no this is a quick snatch method and it's just a screening tool if you look at the directions to the piece of equipment it's a screening tool it doesn't claim to be a testing tool it tells you that there's other components that it absorbs our individual wasn't experienced in using it it did provide some benefit in terms of seeing how indoor air changes occurred but it's certainly not testing and we we didn't employ that as certainly at our plant location with team inspectors there was no issue about that was never an issue with them inspectors this is during the time when we were producing these units then expensive tests for fame of the conduct well well anybody shows in march late march after this became an issue so i think those results are available and those so they knew what closed up sealed up units had been cycled eighty to one hundred degrees of hot boxes would do i mean any any structure that was closed up even a house that was closed up and sealed up and cycle to a hundred degrees would have decreased indoor or air quality there's just no two ways about it well this is the scary thing about if we're not careful in hearings and we are trying to to to look at fundamental questions with with accurate science one of our challenges here is is that i met with nine of the ten companies named in the early lawsuit told they had the three complaints that you had talked about that then the lawsuits started and all of a sudden legal liability starts now you're being criticized for doing a very simple test that could have been done by the government and the question comes what employer in america is going to expose themselves to voluntary cooperation not not on any science as we're learning the three ninety parts per billion and we keep sliding between parts per million parts per billion you don't have any standards you are trying to cooperate instead you get your head beat in do you plan to ever deal with the government again so this is an incredible quandary we've seen a specification it's not a standard put forth by team and their latest standards it's sixteen parts per billion courses very recent studies with new technology show that this isn't within the range of human breath this is within the range of normal human breath what people normally breathe out from their normal metabolism your respective of what's in the air how can a company why would a company take on that kind of liability it would be so easy for something to occur either naturally or sources that would double or triple the specification except this company would never take that liability answer within the broad definitions of five minutes i have one more two in the came directly to us and asked us for a direct quotation and proposal at the beginning of this hurricane before the hurricane actually actually hit new orleans thank you mr souter your time has expired mr cummings thank you getting headaches every day i have tried many things but nothing seems to work please please help me are you familiar with that are you not ashamed it would be helpful to me to see the exact customer that you refer to sir that would read w and then you heard the words if that was your that if that was your wife would you be concerned about her living in a trailer i can give you the letters only responded to certain team out when we got that report and we communicated with  tina my recollection is it was with regard to a mr rhys or ok here's what we said if i could quote if it were very briefly because i've got a lot of question i'll give you a little bit of time yes or yes or i do not want to i do want to take the opportunity to reinforce our position previously communicated to thema that gulfstream is ready willing and able to work with sienna with regard to any complaint including sending a representative within twenty four hours to work with your contractors to inspect good action or do whatever is reason enough to turn to you coming right where i want you to be because i want to talk about some of your correspondence and not in addition to what you just read i'd like to share with you what gulfstream recent conversations regarding the travel trailer survive to thema we would like to reiterate our willingness to assist you in addressing any concerns about our products our informal testing has indicated from our levels of indoor ambient air  of occupied trailers fall below forty four and since that osha standard point seventy five parts a million seventy seven fifty parts per billion we are willing to share these informal test results with you and as mentioned during our meeting if the mother wishes to conduct formal testing protocols on any designated unit we are willing to participate in that testing now you spent a lot of time i'm sure in drafting that letter the documents that we received show that you spent over a month getting the wording right how do you interpret your own letter and are you saying that your testing showed up from out of the hard problem or are you saying that your testing did not show a problem well sir going back to the framework of the time there was to regulate regulatory standards that i was familiar with one was the osha permissible exposure level for workers that would be  exposed for their working life the other was the hud target regulatory level those are the two those are the two now there was one that came up in the press that was referenced as a point one e p a quote safety level by some activist groups but when i looked that up it said above this level sensitive individuals may experience symptoms that was in a safety level and i did ask some experts what did the  standard they told me that e p a didn't have an outdoor standard from formaldehyde at the time didn't have an indoor standard for formaldehyde at the time so so on to in terms of how you're going to find it before you sent that took a position the original a t s d our position was that after the e p a testing that was done in the fall was that point three parts per million was except the they changed that later but that was well after this time sir that was in that was in  thousand and seven that was and like february two thousand and seven after repeated testing of an occupied units in september of zero six so this is not corrected on april twenty fourth two thousand and six six gulf streams outside counsel sent both g levels above point one p p m it can cause watery eyes burning sensations in the eyes nose throat nausea coughing chest tightening wheezing sick skin rashes and allergic reactions you're saying that's not accurate is that what you're saying that's the language that came off of the e p a sensitive sensitivity recommendation as i recall sir that's for sensitive individuals and we've always been concerned to help with any individuals that had in a court of law it's up it's some people may be more accurate than others are our individual wasn't well trained in this or our training calibrating it so it was a it's an indicator but it's not really scientific is an indicator that formaldehyde is likely present now in the eleven units that were checked with the four mile the meter there were four that were five hundred but the other seven were below that below the five hundred level that's correct sir but that wasn't scientific no it wasn't scientific and of course we recognize that if anybody had smoked a cigarette an hour before cooked or so then that influences the level but what our main thing was these people were very one person was described by mr paul as being ecstatic that he finally had a place where he could go to a refuge something was air condition a totally self contained living unit and everyone was happy there was some people that were older people there were some young children toddler age they were happy with their units they were not complaining about their units they were not experiencing symptoms we went back in that proximate time to to mr poland to revisit with these people in that late april period know i don't see you can answer this question any of you but if i to produce house i had founded house and there's an awful lot of around this country right now that are vacant and you close it up and you're left to close in very hot weather for say a couple of weeks or longer would be with the parts per billion be acquittal into what you saw in a mobile home mattapan manufacturer i do know this or any structure you close it up seal it up cycle the temperature to eighty to one hundred degrees you're going to have a reduction in indoor air quality to be higher levels of chemical constituents especially if you have attached garage with a car in a i just went to a lean building seminar the presenter said one of the best things you could do for indoor air quality was to have a detached garage so any structure if you put it under these kind of conditions is going to have decreased indoor air quality and the kind of materials that are used  in just about any kind of construction and these and then if you go with the highest users of these composite products like particle board m d f hardwood plywoods if you look at the reports most of it goes into the remodeling industry if you go into these large remodeling stores these products are stacked to the ceiling so the r v industry and manufacturing housing is an industry all use less than one percent of the point i'm trying to make is that you're not using anything out of the ordinary in producing these these products you're doing using much normal and construction these projects using furniture making cabinetry home building well let me just say amen to yield to my as their business honorable way in indiana i don't represent that area but i want you to know that i don't think they would ever do anything intentionally to harm the health of any individual without a healthy mistry so i think the gentleman  information i've received we only have two people who have made complaints both about your company and they seem to be about only one thing which is the question about nor board being made in china and that being the source of a lot of this  problems earlier people talk about imported chinese products you know where nor board is made and do you know if it could be just cause of the problem nor board is a product that's made in deposit in new york it's an american product it's made to what they call an anti standard which is equivalent to the hud standard for particle board but we asked this company provide testing documentation on their product and their product actually tests well below the standard that they they build to it's actually about over thirty percent below the standard and it's almost what the upcoming car standard is for m d f that's upcoming for two thousand and ni process sir we had two contracts each was for twenty five thousand units or did you actually below and supply a beam of those twenty five thousand units three expressions of concern one which turned out to be next of a sewer line sir i'm not sure it's far as the c n n report the time frame that i was referring it was a report that came out of base st louis on an individual that was in one of our units and we contacted on that individual they told us because we wanted to assist or see what we could do they said that they had they couldn't discuss it for privacy reasons with us but that they had addressed his concerns by exchanging for a different trailer no i'm not including that that customers are but ok but you had no information with any fema unit our travel trailers that it has not been this kind of a concern so this was surprising to us very surprising to us when this became an issue in the state of mississippi at that time thirty five that is correct and you decided not to do that is already right but you tell us why well number one we cut doing what we were told to do or the five thousand that you actually built and did you make any difference in the profit that you probably would have made  it do you believe that you ought to pay for great question probably not want to pay for that as well my point is that if there were trailers that that it could be a whole separate hearing but i'm selling out well you know and we don't know today unfortunately whether or not this is an example of fifty thousand one hundred twenty five thousand apples being bought and we have a couple of bad apples i would i want to have several questions but i would i would want to make sure we understand here today there is no test going on in every one of these trailers in the field there is no standard if there was a  test just told us that in fact they only are looking for looked at one item and there is no standard for what level we should move people out of these trailers or how much would be enough to reduce it and they weren't familiar with the high levels inside fixed homes in the in these areas of south dakota louisiana so having said that i'm going to look at for business people and i'm going to try and i'm not saying provide you relief i think that you'll provide that for yourself in due course but lest you be the last victims of katrina let's just put it that way today do any of you have a standard in front of you other than the proposed standard that would cause you to make your trailers different in other words has fema come back to you other than this adopting of sixteen parts per billion and given you any new guidance on how to make trailers if in fact a hurricane of parts per billion that's roughly equal to inhaling and exhaling and dramatically less than if one cat pees on the carpet which would be far greater parts per billion just based on a kitty accident  only thing you know of is something that could cause you to say no bit is that correct that if in fact sixteen parts per billion becomes the standard you're going to have to know bit because you can't meet that standard because of even if you tested something in where we produce an indiana the time you moved it to louisiana totally different atmosphere it's much more humidity much more heat on a constant basis there's no way and that doesn't even include residents different and their use you know i'm an electronics manufacturers so my background is one in which we have standards for absolutely everything and i was i was the chairperson of the standard and trade association the electronics association before i came to congress now you all for i believe you're all members of the trade association for travel trailers is that correct correct and is your association prepared to participate in standards setting if in fact the government is willing to set standards yes absolutely you know if your association has reached out to try to have that engagement any one of you wants to think that's very important to the industry and they said so they're very interested in being able to have the kind of standard they can conform to and i'm sure they will be leading the parade as far as attaining that standard so again in the spirit of lest we have katrina have one more set of victims all of you are saying today that you do not have new standards on which to make trailers differently than you made them before and after katrina the only discussion of a new standard the sixteen parts per billion is not achievable and your association stands ready to work with on a uniform basis meeting the standards both for that matter of fact the consumer public is that all correct absolutely so we called you all in here to talk about the standards the didn't exist that you couldn't meet because it didn't exist it doesn't exist today and we're asking you to defend yourselves because you might a made a profit making a trailers that in many cases right or actually were off the shelf trailers because many of would be a bought were off the shelf trailers is that my questions really goes to the duty to disclose in a democratic free market society when when a business wants to avoid letter from gulf stream where gulf stream was testing thirty five on occupied trailers now the test leave aside the controversy about no standard what standard these tests showed levels in some of these trailers well over two thousand more about per billion and i don't think there's much controversy about that level by anyone's standards that is a dangerous standard and i don't think that that is subject to dispute or has been subject even here  when you were testing actually continued to activate trailers bows and which of course ended up in the gulf with the results that are under scrutiny here today let me ask you did the gulf stream provide steam with the vehicle identification numbers did you reveal the two thousand four thousand parts per billion in the occupied trailers i'm simply trying to get whether you did or not and we rode back and we didn't disclose this information were not we that of course would reinforce the continuing purchase and activation of trailers understand what you provided i'm asking you why you thought it was irrelevant  closed up tightened up heated up unit what what what they were what they would have been testing up because they had niosh testing certified persons that went out and did testing well before were not supplied trailers about to be distributed to actual human beings on the gulf coast did you believe if you had to do it over again would you disclose the information on the thirty five on occupied trailers to thema anything that would have been helpful to public health and in any kind of retrospect on this we would have we would have loved to been able to shed more light on you know we support public health but this is looking at it in a retrospective in our perspective at the time was you haven't tested you haven't been able to tell us why it was irrelevant and did you testified information but was whether or not the companies have learned anything from this experience i don't know that it's i will try to conclude that your first answer about irrelevant is not your final answer and that if scientific test it was a snapshot and it was a snapshot of which could test any different range that in retrospect perhaps it would have been helpful for c d c to know but in fact they probably would have had it be relevant either other than potentially to do more testing because the test was inaccurate is that what you're trying to say yes and if you'll remember the testing certified testing in several months after we would have done these screenings in september and they showed levels above these levels equal to these levels that were shown by the screenings which of course picked up all kinds of other chemical constituents but it wasn't treated by government as being relevant they didn't say because we have these closed up heated up february two thousand and seven it wasn't until occupied unit testing was done eighteen months after this approximately letter that ms norton is referring to that there was a move to what the c d c he said quickly relocate residents it was an after the e p a testing that was done well before that that the job results in these sealed up units i wanted to make a comment and if any of you want to add to this there's a kind of a misunderstanding in applying the type of industry that's developed predominately in elkhart county from from other industry associations and why the industry hasn't been more proactive it's basically a start up industry that was a collection of small companies mr legal when you started how what size is your company well we began it was in ninety six and began with twenty thirty people and force river is now one of the biggest how many acquisitions would you say you've made in the last twenty four months was yet another word picking up other facilities we primarily group from being organically  and through acquisition mr panic keystone came out of other for companies in the area it was one of most dynamic young companies born now has bought a whole number of companies in the district including  mr bennett historically has been more typical fairly small company that as government pressure comes in and as we have more countability one of the byproducts of this is it's getting harder and harder for somebody to start a company  operating in one building because buildings get shuttered because things are cyclical that's would be the wide range mr a little different because your company historically has more with thema as it always been a significant as hurricane relief this is the largest number we will ever produce and you know obviously since that time the industry's gone downward in terms of its overall production we've had to adjust to that this is going to be a very difficult year for the industry i've heard five or six companies already go out of business long term companies and some of the industry segments are down fifty six percent so we do have to make the kind of adjustment that are of most things to try to preserve manufacturing jobs but then do everything we can quick follow up to that two thousand figure was what would be the range of your appointment you could range between one and two thousand  standard setting agency so there's you know it's a tough situation that you guys are have happen to deal with here but i want to go to i think mr legal and reference i didn't catch all your opening statements on this illegal his opening statement talked about his assistance to never had a contract and there's been some products supplied it's been through the dealers you push the button on your mi which was approved supplier ok and so i mean it was and they don't feel with the amount ok but in your past dealings where your units have assisted fema in dealing with disaster relief have there have there been any problems with with those you know in the past absolutely none and mr sze we've got a very excellent relationship with bhima over the years we've got have laudatory write letters relative to our performance units by rail so our units do have differences beyond what would be normal for regular production there are some differences but all the products use composite with products like particle board and m d f and hardwood plywood them that's very much the same for for all of them the questioning by the members of the committee and i do want to recognize mr donnelly i want to thank the chairman again for having the grace to let me be present at this hearing and i want to welcome all of the gentlemen here  participating there are headquarters located in our district you have to cilla t's located in our in our district and i think the the other story that is here is a story of a number of families of the gulf coast region who were able to receive shelter from your products when they had nowhere else to put their head at night and who because of the workers  your companies were able to have their family have a place to stay and be able to shower and to eat and have somewhere that they could put their family unit back together and that the workers of your company the other untold story is the overtime work that was put in on a constant basis the weekend work that was done because of the commitment of your workers and your companies to the people who live there fellow americans down in the gulf region i travel highways of our district as you know and day after day almost every two or three minutes you could see another unit heading down to the gulf region for another family and so the one question i have is for you mr sze and it is that the government scientific agencies have not seem to be able to successfully come to a consensus formaldehyde level for your products in absence are you voluntarily implementing any standards and what would they be yes congressman we moved in spring of two thousand and seven we started implementing products that were equivalent to the upcoming carbon standards for product emissions to go into effect in two thousand and nine and beyond that we've moved now to actually two thousand and eleven compliant products so what we're producing now is two and a half years in from the marketplace as far as i know and that's where we like to be we like to be ahead of the curve we've been ahead of the curve in terms of using l s d products starting in the ninety's and we also to my knowledge are the only manufacturer who has a third party organization that ensures our our material acquisition our supplier processes and does ventilation  verification testing on products that we receive from vendors thank you very much i have no other questions  chair thank you very much mr donnelly some members wish a second round and i see mr wells just arrived he has done his first round but let me recognize myself and then we'll get to mr welch down the road last week c b c issued this report and we heard from c d c this morning in their testimony and they said to us that levels of formaldehyde where elevated in these trailers and some exceeded five hundred parts per billion which is a level that osha requires mandatory medical monitoring it's that it's that high that they require medical monitoring as a result of its testing c d c recommended everyone currently living in these trailers be evacuated immediately not just some residents but all of the c d c said that government should prioritize evacuation evacuation first to take out the elderly and children those are most sensitive the c d c recommended that these persons be quickly relocated despite the levels the levels were as low as three parts per billion sir and they ranged upwards of that so my question my question is we're being told that if people are living in trailers that exceed five hundred parts per billion that they be ripped they be put into some other trailer that they be relocated do you disagree with that i think that there should be all consideration for the safety of the persons there are some statistical lookers there's very few of the units that i know where that at that level they average if we're at that level do you agree with that recommendation yes or not above that level with the concerns that are measured by the c d c i would agree for public health ok how about you mr bennett i would agree and mr bennett i think that there are really some unusual circumstances in louisiana and absolutely i mean if it's unsafe they should be moved out mr legal yes  sir now since you agree with this statement let me ask you this why should the federal government have to pay you for these trailers the american taxpayers spent two billion dollars in trailers that can't be  used should we get that money back if those trailers exceed that very high level i don't see any of you jumping in to say yes i would i would answer that question sir the c d c testing totally depends on use anybody that would have smoked a cigarette or otherwise use the unit it wasn't a protocol that was universal they were totally dependent on what people did whether they cooked fish whether they smoked a cigarette but it is other things that raise these  we're in favor not just of a standard but we're we need also a protocol of testing to follow so that we know what we're comparing let me interrupt you two years ago you tested trailers and found that forty percent of them you know based on the information that we're hearing today you would say that no that doesn't sound like at this level however please let me complete my thought if i might but the implication then is that  hundred twenty parts per billion do you think that's safe for people to leave live in i would have to state you know this is why after the fact a you're the chairman of the gulfstream company you provided the most trailers to feel your company was paid over a half a billion dollars c c found that one of your trailers had formaldehyde levels five hundred ninety the highest level of any of the trailers that it examined the point that i'm getting to is i don't think that a manufacturer of any product should say well if there's no standard i don't have to meet it i think you have an obligation to try to find out if your product is going to harm people i think that's just the responsibility of any manufacturer that sells a product no matter what it is whether it's a toy or a trailer and when we hear from c d c that everyone living in these trailers at that level should be evacuated as soon as possible nobody should live in those trailers with them out the high that high it sounds like the companies who sold of these vehicles i question is anybody know what the formaldehyde exposure is on a new automobile in the united states left in the noonday sun for a few hours and is there a federal standard  maximum exposure for new automobiles i would say as far as i know no there isn't and it is a concern and has been a concern of the air resources board since since the late  to new car dealers and new car purchasers because i haven't bought a new car in a long time and frankly that new car smell is something that people talk about but at the air resources board we were addressing my question is  formaldehyde emissions in these trailers and in my family i was in mississippi i had a family home damage in mississippi i saw the trailers come in in the manufacturing products that were put in these trailers are they products that are available in the open market at any home depot at any lumber yard or are these unique particle board and materials that are i'd be happy to answer that it is off the shelf standard stuff that's used every day in the house building for all intensive purposes maybe we might get a different set of material versus the standard you know half an inch done to new construction exposed to the southern sun for basically cause more aggravated emissions coming out of these particles board and other products just like the new automobile left in the sun is there and these records what kind of application how old were the units and what was the premolars and with which the tests were made they came up with these high numbers you guys have any idea of what kind of parameters the sierra club used in doing these testing club and raise these concerns and the testing done the big question is there is that do we now go go to all construction material and start addressing the issue of formaldehyde in all construction material and is that the way we could reduce  exposure basically say particle board may be outlawed in the united states or may not be used in construction where you have been in the potential for indoor pollution which is a to be standards certainly for our industry in using these common wood products they need to be applied to home building remodeling apartments furniture everyone needs to be on the same because it's more difficult to  insure when there's all kinds of different products out there so it would be helpful to have a national standard for these kinds of products and then remember too that the use of this particle board is actually been encouraged to the recycling of waste products from lumber activity so that when products that would normally have been burned or thrown away are now recycled and put into this this stream to be able to use it as construction material rather than environmental preferable products and it has special standards but to be an environmentally probable product it has to be a sustainable product and taken from the kinds of products you're talking about in a lot of ways it's a green product mr chairman i just ask that when we look for a minimum standard here for exposure in a travel trailer which really does not apply to the mobile home because the the exposure rate was assumed to be different and i think there's a legitimate argument there that maybe we need to look at our own but again just as we had did with implants medical implants and stuff there's really got to be a line drawn here of what's the exposure what's the responsibility of one person as opposed to another and where the source of the formaldehyde came from and was it reasonable for somebody to feel that generally available construction material that is used universally across the construction industries in many different fields was not a not appropriate at this location i think that's a debate but i think there's a degree of backseat driving here hindsight twenty twenty that it's not a trailer that was newly constructed that was in minnesota during the winter where there might not have been any exposure at all it happened to be a brand new trailer that was produced and then put into the sun in mississippi and louisiana in the middle of august which really changes the whole dynamics there that real life application is something that we know now postscript but to perceive that that was going to be a problem somewhere in the future i think is you know really second guessing people to an extreme especially the fact that i still would say why are new automobiles exempt from the environmental air pollution exemption except for the fact that they're in the same clause here and i say publicly if you own a new car don't jump into it after it's been sitting in the sun roll the windows down and let it air out unless you want to get a good dose of the mollified and that is something that i think that consumers need to talk about back and forth but we ought to be talking about that before the incident rather than coming back now and pointing fingers after the the heart of the quality of the trailers and whether people in your trailers were getting sick   put this up on the board we are not aware of any complaints of illness from our many customers of cavalier travel trailers over the years including travel trailers provided under our contract with  your company make that statement and we were speaking retrospectively prior to the march issue and when it started and march we're talking about our experience with florida hurricanes and we've been building these since one thousand nine hundred two you recall did your company statement and i think we can get that up here as well there is an odor in my trailer that will not go away it burns and i am getting headaches every day i have tried many things but nothing seems to work please please help on the trip to its destination somebody let it get soaked in water or anything else that causes it to be materially different than the ten thousand other ones produced the same year you take them back you repair replace them you make them right and that had a myriad of problems that had been used and you were part of that evaluation of why did it have this level or why did mold produce and so on so you're familiar with some trailers that got a year or two down the road and have problems correct ok so you've cooperated with fema the government agency that you sold to you would take back the products if they were defective in material or workmanship and in fact you've not been asked to nor have you been given a year of any part that lemon laws and so on is these things do the norm is you make it right your distributor network your dealer networks to make it right if it's in the field without bringing it back and in fact even though we're having this hearing today and we're talking about the people suffering and so on which i'm not disputing that people have had health problems well living in these trailers but in no way shape or form has the government come to you and said you did this wrong as of today no allegations against any of the four of you other than what you mississippi they may be continuing to fail them by not setting standards for the travel trailers or living accommodation by not having ongoing testing that may all be very true and certainly as a californian you and share eating edge of air quality that california is known for but none of that is here today so i'm not defending anyone but i'd like to thank all four of you for coming here today for testifying honestly and in fact for the fact that nothing has been said here that causes you to have done anything wrong you may have tested and come up with higher or lower different levels but again as we heard from the c d c these are all things we'd like to do but government as of today hasn't done it so mr chairman since we're the government oversight and reform committee now that we've i think completed most of our oversight i would hope that we would join on a bipartisan basis to do the reform of making sure that the government agencies responsible for air quality however whether it's in manufactured items or in the air itself do their job and set appropriate standards and testing procedures so that we don't again  companies who as of today have not had one product returned as defective or in somehow inappropriate to design and rather make sure that we have standards for the next one so that these four will competitively bid on a product that would be improved once we decide what improve means so mr chairman i thank you for holding this hearing but i do very strongly hope that on a bipartisan basis we will do that second leg and ensure that we set standards that people can manufacture to and with that i thank you and of four hundred parts per billion is based on component standards for plywood and particle board in the an occupied as testing revealed baseline formaldehyde levels were at one thousand and forty parts per building billion but fell to an average of three hundred ninety when the air conditioner was turned on the averages fell even lower to ninety parts for billing for billion when the windows were open the baseline average is probably attributable to the fact that on occupied trailers were sealed up in storage they were in the sun and had little or no air conditioning or exiting in all occupied units the average the average level was seventy seven parts per billion and eighty one parts per billion for travel trailers specifically i kind of disappointed that we have you for here beating up on you because i don't think you've done anything wrong you use standard materials off the shelf that's used in any kind of home construction or remodelling i had done in my house the location of the mobile homes in question was in an area that was extremely hot they were sealed up and nobody was in them and so when somebody went in them obviously the parts per billion would be much much higher and it would take a while for them to cool off and if they didn't open the windows it would probably take even longer for them to get all the parts per billion down to where they should be and then you have to take into consideration how the occupants lived if they had a dog in the house if they bought additional furniture or different kinds of other things in that might have formaldehyde in them did they smoke how did they cook did they like higher temperatures in their house or lower temperatures in their house there's all kinds of imponderables that you have to take into consideration when you're talking about the parts per billion and you know in all of our houses we have carpet we have furniture we have construction material that you use in your products and i'm going to go home and try to find out how much i've got in my house and i want to when i exercise downstairs where i have it all closed up i'm going to open the doors because i'm concerned about my health just unconscionable and i want to thank you for being here for being so forthright and providing an industry that helps people when they're in need and suffering like they did in florida during the hurricane and like they've done in places like katrina in the south on the gulf i obviously as the chairman has a right to call a hearing on almost anything but i'm disappointed and much of the question is going on today because of questions your integrity and i don't think you should have been these documents be part of the reserving the right to object i merely want to say that while i have some concerns i really appreciate the majority working with us and i withdraw my objection thank you this is our second hearing on this issue of formaldehyde in the trailers and i thought it was hearing of the congress but it turned out that during the course of today's hearing we got a phone call and that phone call was from a staff person who works for this committee in one thousand nine hundred eighty one and he told us there was a hearing at that time on the question of formaldehyde in trailers and at that time at the conclusion of the hearing the members of congress said  hundred eighty one so i agree with my republican colleagues when they say this is a failure of government government should have set standards government should have protected the public from the dangers from formaldehyde and the government failed but i also think this is a failure of industry because some of you did testing and you found that there was a problem and then that was the end of it we didn't hear any more some of you didn't want to test at all even though reports were coming out in the press about high formaldehyde levels in trailers causing people to be sick and i do want everyone to understand when we heard about the fellow who said the smell is too bad come help me i'm wheezing and having all sorts of medical problems or symptoms please please please help me i was rare most people don't don't smell anything but suddenly they have symptoms they don't go to the manufacturer and say i've got symptoms take your trailer back they don't even know what's causing it so government should know what's causing it because it's well established a formaldehyde can cause these symptoms and i believe industry has a responsibility as well to know that if they're if they're selling this product that it may cause problem says those who are buying it testing by mr shays showed high levels some of these levels were far above even the highest standard where there was a regulatory standard they were in the hundreds and thousands of parts per billion and i think a manufacturer knowing this information had an obligation to make the product safer and to understand that perhaps there was a problem that needed to be corrected i think the rest of you also had an obligation to do some testing not to act as if if if you didn't know therefore there's nothing required of you now i'm pleased that the four of you are in business i'm pleased that you have employees that have jobs with you i'm pleased that you have members  fema contract mr shave for you in your i think with your brother your title to that i don't begrudge any of that i want you to be in business but i think that when we have to abandon trailers that it's not just the government that should pay for it i think there's some responsibility for the manufacturers as well because these levels should have been of concern i know that some members of acted like your victims because you're simply asked to come here and answer questions i think that they that those who are really suffering where the people who are getting sick from from out of the hide in these trailers i think they're victims of incompetence they were victims of manufactures or didn't disclose what they knew about the formaldehyde dangers as well and we'll see where all of this goes i'm willing to entertain ideas for legislation that's the purpose of our oversight hearings but also to get to find out what really happened and i think that what happened is a disgrace on the part of the government particularly but it is not an exoneration for the manufacturers who knew or should have known or in fact did know that were not safe for those who are inhabiting them and now the taxpayers have to be stuck with the bill so those are my concluding comments i thank you all for being here but i appreciate that because this industry is really critical to my district as well as to mr donnelly's i was at the goshen air show saturday and just people kept coming up do you think we're going to get our jobs back really want to work they love working in this industry we need to keep this industry going they've worked hard to meet the merchants the demand we clearly today have kind of confused all sorts of things but basically nobody wants to defend somebody getting sick the challenge here is is there is no evidence even though it's a carcinogenic at this point of beyond basically coughing wheezing type things this may be like peanuts different people have allergic reactions that clearly we need to be moving towards some sort of a warning same standard as we do this research that different people react differently to this that's a very minimal that that should be there that hard had a standard they met the standard as far as they knew questions came up in a company volunteered to try to test even though have done those tests even though fema was at the plant from morning to afternoon the test was not prohibitive sixteen parts which is not achievable for emergency housing i want to reiterate again that the three hundred ninety that was tested scientifically not by the type of formaldehyde meter but scientifically to the gold standard  in louisiana in southern louisiana trying to convert the six point six milligrams per meter which is their high point appears to convert to four thousand and we need to have a scientific approach to this and that given the fact that we do not have that evidence of how much is even in the particular wood here versus in other homes in that region given the ambient air standard on the hancock study which itself was not precisely the same type of thing it is is my belief unfair to suggest that the manufacturers bear responsibility when the science is it very least very conflicted and it's not clear that every home in the region is in hitting certainly of three ninety's the mean that means the average that a significant percentage of every house in the least given what we know now in louisiana doesn't meet the standard we are asking for all our houses to be back private owners are asking you back and that's been my concern with this industry not that we should be trying to learn the danger to individuals and look forward to working with the chairman thank you thank you very much mr souter thanks for all the