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MANUFACTURERS OF FEMA TRAILERS AND

ELEVATED FORMALDEHYDE LEVELS

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT

AND GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

JULY 9, 2008

Serial No. 110–132

Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California, Chairman

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York

JOHN A. YARMUTH, Kentucky

BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

BETTY MCCOLLUM, Minnesota

JIM COOPER, Tennessee

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

PAUL W. HODES, New Hampshire

CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut

JOHN P. SARBANES, Maryland

PETER WELCH, Vermont

JACKIE SPEIER, California

TOM DAVIS, Virginia

DAN BURTON, Indiana

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

DARRELL E. ISSA, California

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

BRIAN P. BILBRAY, California

BILL SALI, Idaho

JIM JORDAN, Ohio

PHIL BARNETT, Staff Director

EARLEY GREEN, Chief Clerk

LAWRENCE HALLORAN, Minority Staff Director

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on July 9, 2008 ................................................................................. 1

Statement of:

McGeehin, Michael, Director, Environment Hazards and Health Effects,

National Center for Environmental Health, Centers for Disease Control

and Prevention .............................................................................................. 66

Shea, Jim, chairman, Gulf Stream Coach, Inc.; Steve Bennett, president,

Pilgrim International, Inc.; Ronald J. Fenech, president, Keystone RV,

Inc.; and Peter Liegl, president and CEO, Forest River, Inc. ................... 117

Fenech, Ronald J. ...................................................................................... 134

Liegl, Peter ................................................................................................. 141

Shea, Jim ................................................................................................... 117

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Burton, Hon. Dan, a Representative in Congress from the State of Indiana, prepared statement of .......................................................................... 94

Davis, Hon. Tom, a Representative in Congress from the State of Virginia, prepared statement of ........................................................................ 17

Fenech, Ronald J., president, Keystone RV, Inc., prepared statement

of ..................................................................................................................... 136

Liegl, Peter, president and CEO, Forest River, Inc., prepared statement

of ..................................................................................................................... 143

McGeehin, Michael, Director, Environment Hazards and Health Effects,

National Center for Environmental Health, Centers for Disease Control

and Prevention, prepared statement of ....................................................... 69

Sali, Hon. Bill, a Representative in Congress from the State of Idaho,

prepared statement of ................................................................................... 181

Shea, Jim, chairman, Gulf Stream Coach, Inc., prepared statement of ...... 119

Souder, Hon. Mark E., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Indiana, information concerning formaldehyde ..................................... 82

Watson, Hon. Diane E., a Representative in Congress from the State

of California, prepared statement of ........................................................... 177

Waxman, Chairman Henry A., a Representative in Congress from the

State of California:

Staff reports ............................................................................................... 20

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 5

(1)

MANUFACTURERS OF FEMA TRAILERS AND

ELEVATED FORMALDEHYDE LEVELS

WEDNESDAY, JULY 9, 2008

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Washington, DC.

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room 2154,

Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Henry A. Waxman (chairman

of the committee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Waxman, Cummings, Kucinich, Davis

of Illinois, Tierney, Clay, Watson, Murphy, Sarbanes, Welch, Davis

of Virginia, Burton, Shays, Souder, Issa, Bilbray, Sali, and Jordan.

Also present: Representatives Donnelly and Lampson.

Staff present: Phil Barnett, staff director and chief counsel; Kristin Amerling, general counsel; Karen Lightfoot, communications director and senior policy advisor; Greg Dotson, chief environment

counsel; Erik Jones, counsel; Earley Green, chief clerk; Jen

Berenholz, deputy clerk; Caren Auchman and Ella Hoffman, press

assistants; Zhongrui ‘‘JR’’ Deng, chief information officer; Leneal

Scott, information systems manager; Rob Cobbs and Miriam

Edelman, special assistants; Mitch Smiley, staff assistant; Lawrence Halloran, minority staff director; Jennifer Safavian, minority

chief counsel for oversight and investigations; Keith Ausbrook, minority general counsel; Ellen Brown, minority senior policy counsel;

Larry Brady and John Cuaderes, minority senior investigator and

policy advisors; Benjamin Chance, Adam Fromm, and Todd Greenwood, minority professional staff members; Patrick Lyden, minority

parliamentarian and member services coordinator; Brian McNicoll,

minority communications director; and Molly Boyl.

Chairman WAXMAN. The 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

FEMA responded to reports that the families living in Government

trailers were being exposed to hazardous levels of formaldehyde.

Our hearing revealed that the FEMA staff out in the field said that

they needed to test these trailers so the dangerous levels of formaldehyde would not adversely affect the families living in these

trailers, but FEMA, itself, in Washington refused to do that. One

FEMA 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.’’

Well, what we learned at that hearing outraged Americans all

across the country. FEMA had a duty to protect families living in

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its trailers and it failed them. I expect today’s hearing will also

generate a sense of outrage.

The largest supplier of FEMA trailers by far was a manufacturer

named Gulf Stream. In the weeks after Hurricane Katrina struck,

Gulf Stream received contracts from FEMA worth more than $500

million to supply over 50,000 trailers for displaced residents of the

Gulf Coast.

FEMA failed by ignoring the dangers of formaldehyde and resisted testing. Gulf Stream’s problem is different. The company did

test trailers after hearing the first reports of high formaldehyde

levels. It found pervasive formaldehyde contamination in its 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:

Ten to thirty parts per billion is the level of formaldehyde found

in most homes. Exposure at this level does not cause acute health

effects like burning eyes, shortness of breath, or nausea.

A 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 Products Safety Commission, the National Institute of Occupational

Safety and Health, and the World Health Organization all recognize 100 parts per billion as a level that can cause acute adverse

health effects. Of course, if it is a vulnerable individual like a child

or an elderly person, or somebody who is 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

adopted during the first Bush administration.

Seven hundred fifty parts per billion is the maximum workplace

exposure level allowed by OSHA. It is also an old standard.

Nine hundred parts per billion is an EPA standard for hazardous

response teams of industrial workers. EPA says that no one should

be exposed to more than 900 parts per billion for more than 8

hours in a lifetime.

And here’s what Gulf Stream found. Over 2 years ago, it tested

11 occupied trailers. Every single trailer had levels at or above 100

parts per billion, the level at which acute health effects begin to

occur. Four of the trailers had levels above 500 parts per billion,

the level at which OSHA requires medical monitoring. Gulf Stream

also tested nearly 40 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 900 parts

per billion, the level that EPA says no one should ever be exposed

to more than once in a lifetime. Several had levels over 2,000 parts

per billion. One had levels over 4,000 parts per billion.

Gulf Stream never told any family living in its trailers about

these test results. The company did spend a month carefully

crafting a letter to FEMA about the test results. The letter told

FEMA there was no problem in Gulf Stream trailers. It said: ‘‘Our

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informal testing has indicated that formaldehyde levels of indoor

ambient air of occupied trailers fall below the OSHA standard of

750 parts per billion.’’

Gulf Stream did not tell FEMA that all 11 occupied trailers had

levels above 100 parts per billion. It did not tell FEMA that 4 of

the 11 occupied trailers had levels above 500 parts per billion, and

it did not tell FEMA that over half of the unoccupied trailers had

levels far in excess of 750 parts per billion.

Gulf Stream 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 press asked Gulf Stream about its formaldehyde levels. Gulf

Stream retained a Washington public relations firm, Porter Novelli,

and spent days crafting a statement. The statement read: ‘‘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 FEMA.’’

Gulf Stream did not tell the media that in March 2006, a month

before Gulf Stream released its statement, an occupant of a Gulf

Stream trailer in Louisiana told the company, ‘‘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 lucrative for Gulf Stream. In fact, the

company’s top executives saw their compensation double to over a

million per year in 2005 and 2006. But revenue growth does not

justify the conduct we have found. Gulf Stream had results that

showed its trailers were a public health threat and the company

never told the families living in its trailers.

The company also examined the conduct of three other trailer

manufacturers. One of the companies, 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 FEMA, but they did do some

limited testing of other trailers and found high levels. In one case,

a contractor hired by Forest River reported finding formaldehyde

levels of over 1,500 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 manufactures did not tell the public or FEMA about their test results.

My staff has prepared an analysis of the evidence before the committee, and at the appropriate time I will 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 its job, and the trailer manufacturers took advantage of the situation.

Our committee has 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

$2 billion for trailers that now have to be scrapped for junk. But

in this case, the health of thousands of vulnerable families was

jeopardized.

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During today’s hearing the trailer manufacturers will be asked

hard questions, and I think they understand this. But I also want

them to know that I appreciate their cooperation with the committee and their willingness to appear voluntarily.

[The prepared statement of Chairman Henry A. Waxman follows:]

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Chairman WAXMAN. I would like to ask unanimous consent that

the staff report, ‘‘Trailer Manufacturers and Elevated Formaldehyde Levels,’’——

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. Mr. Chairman, we would also ask unanimous consent that the minority staff analysis be put in the record,

as well.

Chairman WAXMAN. We have no objection to your unanimous

consent request.

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. We have none to yours.

Chairman WAXMAN. And let me further ours that we want the

documents, as well, that the report refers to be made part of the

record.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I have a concern about the documents that were and would object to the documents all being inserted that were provided to the committee without having a further discussion about whether all those documents need to be released. Many of them contain private information.

Chairman WAXMAN. Well, we will withhold all the unanimous

consent requests and then see if we can offer it at a later time.

Mr. Davis, I want to recognize you for an opening statement.

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

As the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s landfall approaches, we have the opportunity to focus oversight attachment

non disaster preparedness and effective response. Katrina still has

important lessons to teach about emergency shelter and longerterm housing for disaster victims.

The committee’s 2-year investigation into formaldehyde in FEMA

travel trailers could yield important information about the need for

clearer purchase requirements, better product safety standards, effective trailer storage practices, and a more rapid coordinated response to public health issues. But by narrowly focusing today on

four trailer manufacturers, the committee risks missing broader

causes of variable potentially toxic air quality in emergency housing units. The problem was and remains confusion among Federal

agencies, not some conspiracy by trailer makers.

As we learned from testimony and exhibits at our hearing on

these issues a year ago, FEMA lawyers advised against a proactive

response to questions about formaldehyde raised by the occupants

and by the trailer vendors in 2006. To this day, far more confusion

than clarity emerges from any discussion of relevant formaldehyde

exposure standards. Published guidelines on exposure under various circumstances, durations, temperatures, and atmospheric conditions range from eight parts per billion to one thousand parts per

billion, with nine standards in between. This chart here illustrates

that.

For the record, Gulf Stream went to FEMA for guidance when

they uncovered problems. They didn’t cover it up from their customer. They went to the customer. It is FEMA—who is not here,

unfortunately, and ought to be answerable for the results in this

case—that 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 400 parts per billion. There isn’t even

agreement on the appropriately validated testing methodologies to

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determine how to measure indoor formaldehyde levels that might

be elevated above whatever standard is being used.

The Federal agency witnesses who might help explain this Formaldehyde Tower of Babel aren’t here today. FEMA is focusing all

its attention on Midwest flood relief. The Occupational Safety and

Health Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, the

National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and HUD also have 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 moved it so we

could have had everyone involved here and had a discussion over

what these standards should have been and what happened and

hear how the Federal Government, who I think has the largest culpability in this, messed this up.

That is unfortunate, because those agencies could help us interpret results from multiple Government-sponsored tests of occupied

and unoccupied FEMA trailers and component materials. The test

data suggests some wood products obtained from new sources, including China, yielded higher than expected formaldehyde readings. Under pressure to meet emergency trailer production demand, some of that wood may have been put into trailers before

the normal off-gassing could occur. Poor ventilation during storage

and use, particularly in hot climates, then trapped and concentrated gases that might otherwise leach off harmlessly.

So what happens to a trailer after it is manufactured may have

as much to do with its subsequent safety as the inclusion of unregulated wood products in the first place. Remember, formaldehyde is a widely used chemical in consumer products. It is also the

natural byproduct of many natural processes, like combustion, and

a constant element of basic metabolic functions. It is 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 levels suspected to cause

health effects. According to some groups that may be 100 parts per

billion or less for most people.

So where do FEMA trailers score? According to data recently released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the average level of formaldehyde in occupied trailers fell between 72 and

91 parts per billion—72 and 91. Our staff did some random tests

around the Capitol with a hand-held meter and we got a reading

of 80 parts per billion right next to this committee anteroom. But

some trailers tested much higher, some lower.

Since the CDC tests didn’t account for any contribution from

background levels like those we found here, it is even less clear

how much formaldehyde came from the wood in the trailers. That

leaves trailer occupants already victimized by one storm caught in

a legal tempest of post-Katrina political scapegoating, bureaucratic

finger-pointing, and litigation. Once again, the committee risked

being used as a discovery proxy for plaintiffs suing companies

called to testify before us, and that is wrong. Instead, we should

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be asking FEMA why contract requirements for habitable mobile

units weren’t more specific, why inspection procedures weren’t consistent, and why health concerns couldn’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 in 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 will be able or willing to ramp

up production to meet emergency demand when FEMA calls again.

I hope their answer doesn’t mean we will have even fewer options

to meet critical housing needs after the next inevitable disaster.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Tom Davis follows:]

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Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you, Mr. Davis.

Let me ask unanimous consent that Representatives Donnelly

and Lampson be permitted to join us at today’s hearing and to ask

questions after all members of the committee have had that opportunity.

Without objection, that will be the order.

Mr. Souder, you had some reservations about the documents

being put into the record. Let me just make a unanimous consent

request that the staff minority and majority reports be made part

of the record, and we will continue to talk to you about the documents.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you for your consideration.

Chairman WAXMAN. Without objection, that unanimous consent

will be agreed to.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Chairman WAXMAN. We will, without objection on questions, proceed with our first witness with a 10-minute round controlled by

the Chair and a 10-minute round controlled by the ranking member, and then for all other witnesses, including the second panel,

we will go back to the 5-minute rule.

Without objection, that will be agreed to.

Our first witness today is Dr. Michael McGeehin. Dr. McGeehin

is the Director of Environmental Hazards and Health Effects Division of the National Center for Environmental Health within CDC.

Dr. McGeehin has worked with CDC for nearly 30 years focusing

on issues related to environmental health.

Dr. McGeehin, we are pleased to welcome you to our committee

hearing today. It is it practice of this committee that all witnesses

that testify before us do so under oath, so please rise.

[Witness sworn.]

Chairman WAXMAN. The record will indicate that the witness answered in the affirmative.

Your prepared statement will be in the record in its entirety. We

would like to ask you to proceed and stay as close to 5 minutes as

you can. We will run the clock. It will be green for 4 minutes. It

will turn orange for 1 minute, and then red when the time is up.

When we see the red light, we would like to ask you to see if you

can conclude at that point.

STATEMENT OF MICHAEL MCGEEHIN, DIRECTOR, ENVIRONMENT HAZARDS AND HEALTH EFFECTS, NATIONAL CENTER

FOR ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH, CENTERS FOR DISEASE

CONTROL AND PREVENTION

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Good 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 McGeehin, Director of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Environmental Hazards and

Health Effects in the National Center for Environmental Health.

My testimony today will focus on the results of CDC investigations

related to FEMA-supplied temporary housing units following Hurricane Katrina. It will focus on two particular studies: the final report of the formaldehyde levels in FEMA-supplied travel trailers

and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Interim Volatile

Organic Compound Report Final Occupied Trailer Study.

From December 21, 2007, to January 23, 2008, CDC conducted

testing to establish levels of formaldehyde in occupied FEMA-supplied travel trailers and mobile homes in Louisiana and Mississippi. CDC randomly selected 519 trailers and mobile homes for

testing. These units represented a cross-section of the trailer types

and manufacturers most frequently used by FEMA in the Gulf

Coast. Interim results were announced in 2008, and a final report

was released on July 2nd. The final report included additional

analyses of data such as temperature, humidity, and ventilation,

but did not change the conclusions and recommendations from

those in the interim report.

The average levels of formaldehyde in all the travel trailers and

mobile homes tested was 77 parts per billion. CDC concluded from

the study that: one, formaldehyde levels found in some trailers and

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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 levels were likely higher when the trailers were

first issued and during warmer months.

CDC recommended that FEMA relocate residents before the

weather became hot, with priority based on those experiencing

symptoms, children, the elderly, those with chronic diseases, and

persons living in trailer types that had higher formaldehyde levels.

The Lawrence Berkeley Report, CDC hired Lawrence Berkeley

National Laboratories to study indoor emissions of volatile organic

compounds, including formaldehyde, in four vacant FEMA-supplied

travel trailers. The study looked at air levels for the whole trailer

and gases released from specific component parts of the trailers

such as the walls, floors, ceilings, tables, and cabinets. After Lawrence Berkeley and CDC took measurements of air inside the trailers at FEMA’s Purvis, MS, storage yard, CDC staff then took each

trailer apart, collected, packaged, and shipped the parts to the

Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, where laboratory staff tested

the parts and determined the type and extent of VOCs that each

part emitted.

The four trailers tested were Pilgrim, International; Gulf Stream

Coach Cavalier; Four Industries Dutchman; and Coachman’s Spirit

of America. Analysis at the LBNL Labs found 33 VOCs, volatile organic compounds, in the air of the trailers. Of those, only formaldehyde, phenol, and TMPDDIP, a substance used to make plastic,

were found at higher levels in trailers than commonly found in

site-built or manufactured homes. Neither phenol nor TMPDDIP

were found at levels that are considered to be health hazards.

LBNL found that the amount of formaldehyde given off by each

of 44 of the 45 component parts that were tested were usually no

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 in site-built or

manufactured homes. This may be because the trailers used more

composite wood products, have more composite wood products in a

smaller space, or let in fresh air, or a combination of all these factors than the site-built or manufactured homes.

While the results of this study cannot be generalized to the entire fleet of FEMA-supplied travel trailers because of the small

sample size, CDC’s study of four travel trailers provides information to help guide future research to understand the effectiveness

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 we will be doing

with Lawrence Berkeley that I will 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 safety issues for all the people living in trailers and

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parks and mobile homes, both in FEMA temporary housing and in

other units bought commercially.

CDC has initiated discussions with FEMA and HUD on these

issues. Since some trailer types had relatively low levels, we believe that construction practices are available that could ensure

safe and healthy conditions. We hope to provide technical input to

help achieve that kind of housing for all Americans who live, learn,

and work in these units.

I would be happy to answer any questions.

I would like to add, Mr. Chairman, that when I flew up here I

flew up with your colleague, 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 is good. And I said, well,

perhaps. And he said, I am sure they will treat you kindly. So I

kind of consider that a promise. [Laughter.]

[The prepared statement of Mr. McGeehin follows:]

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Chairman WAXMAN. That is our intention to treat you kindly, because all we want to do is get the facts.

I will start off the questions.

Dr. McGeehin, I want to ask you about these regulatory standards, because there are a lot of different standards that are out

there that apply to formaldehyde. 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?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. That is what the information shows.

Chairman WAXMAN. OK. And we have a chart that we are going

to put on the screen that shows the outdoor air, but conventional

homes, most homes have formaldehyde levels that typically range

from 10 to 30 parts per billion; is that correct?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. In the more recent studies, yes, sir.

Chairman WAXMAN. And we could add that to the chart. Busy

city streets generally have formaldehyde levels that range from 20

to 40 parts per billion; is that right?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. If you are downtown on a corner and you basically are at gridlock, you can see those sorts of levels, yes, sir.

Chairman WAXMAN. The next level I want to ask you about is

100 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?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Yes, sir. There are a number of studies that have

shown that sensitized individuals have those symptoms, can have

those symptoms at levels of 100 parts per billion.

Chairman WAXMAN. How about people who are not sensitized?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. The studies show that sensitized individuals can.

Non-sensitized individuals can have those symptoms. I mean, it is

possible that they could have symptoms at that level. That is not

what the studies have shown. That would be at higher levels.

Chairman WAXMAN. OK. CDC is not the only agency that regards 100 parts per billion as a potentially dangerous level. The

Environmental Protection Agency and the Consumer Product Safety Commission have also identified 100 parts per billion as a level

at which negative health effects can occur. And the World Health

Organization has also issued guidelines for formaldehyde saying

that in non-occupational settings people should not be exposed to

formaldehyde at 100 parts per billion for more than 30 minutes;

isn’t that correct?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. That is true, sir.

Chairman WAXMAN. Now, I want to ask you about the test results that Gulf Stream found over 2 years ago when it tested nearly 50 FEMA trailers. Gulf Stream was the largest supplier of

FEMA trailers. In fact, they received a contract worth more than

$500 million to provide 50,000 trailers to FEMA. First Gulf Stream

tested 11 occupied trailers and it found that every occupied trailer

had levels above 100 parts per billion. Four of the trailers, nearly

40 percent of those tested, had levels above 500 parts per billion.

At that level, Federal regulations required medical monitoring of

workers.

Dr. McGeehin, were you aware of these findings?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. No, sir, I was not.

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Chairman WAXMAN. As a public health expert, do these findings

concern you? Should families be living in trailers with formaldehyde levels above 100 and 500 parts per billion?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Sir, we would recommend that families living in

trailers with above 100 parts per billion, 500 parts per billion, that

they be offered alternative housing.

Chairman WAXMAN. Gulf Stream conducted this testing in March

2006, more than 2 years ago, and yet the company never told the

families living in these trailers. Do you think that families should

have been informed about formaldehyde risks?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Sir, I think that people should be aware of the

risks of where they are living, yes. I am a firm believer that people

should be aware of any information that we have that could affect

their health.

Chairman WAXMAN. If you were living in one of these trailers for

2 years after the company knew that it might have been formaldehyde levels of over 100 and maybe 500 parts per billion, what

would your reaction be if they hadn’t told you about it?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. As a scientist or as a resident?

Chairman WAXMAN. Give me either one.

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Well, sir, I would think that if we have information that people may be exposed to levels of formaldehyde that may

cause symptoms in sensitized adults and may have an effect on

children who are growing up in the environment, that we should

share that with the residents, and I think that it should be shared

in a way that they understand what we are talking about and so

they can make an informed decision.

Chairman WAXMAN. OK. Gulf Stream also tested unoccupied

trailers. The levels it found were even higher. Nearly half of the

trailers had levels over 900 parts per billion. EPA says that no one

should be exposed to that level more than once in a lifetime. One

trailer had levels above 4,000 parts per billion. Do you believe that

these are dangerous levels of formaldehyde?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. I think that some of those levels, sir, just about

every person would have symptoms of upper respiratory irritation,

and those would be levels that we would be concerned about. Yes.

Chairman WAXMAN. Well, 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 contained these incredibly high

levels of formaldehyde. I suppose once they are occupied they can

open the windows and the formaldehyde levels would be reduced,

but, given their findings, would that concern you that FEMA was

never informed, that families weren’t informed, FEMA was never

informed?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Again, sir, I would 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 and all the committee knows more about that

than I do—between FEMA and the various trailer manufacturers.

I am not aware of that.

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Chairman WAXMAN. OK. Well, we learned a year ago that FEMA

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. I think that is a shameful failure of Government. Today we are learning that the largest maker

of travel trailers did some testing and did know that its trailers

had dangerously high levels, but it didn’t warn anyone, and I think

that is also a shameful failure.

I have 31⁄2 minutes, and I am going to reserve that and now recognize Mr. Davis.

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. Mr. Chairman, I am going to start with

Mr. Souder, yield him as much time as he may consume.

Mr. SOUDER. I thank the ranking member.

I would prefer my questions stick with the science and that we

don’t speculate. Politicians speculate, lawyers speculate, but we

need to focus on the science.

There were some assumptions in the questions there that were

not science. Gulf Stream did a desiccator test, which is not an accurate test, more of a snapshot, just like taking a formaldehyde tester

in this room is a snapshot, not science, and then attempted to raise

that question with FEMA. They went beyond the call of duty to do

that, but it is not an accurate, scientific test, and it 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.

Now, I have had some correspondence, both verbal through my

staff and in the two hearings at Homeland Security as well as the

previous one here, with Centers for Disease Control. I want to ask

on the record why there was not a control group at the time to see

how much was related to other things in the area, as opposed to

the trailer. The response we got from CDC was it was compared

to the national rather than what was happening at Katrina at the

time or the region. Is that scientific——

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Yes, sir.

Mr. SOUDER [continuing]. To not have a control group?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Yes, sir. I mean, you wouldn’t have a control

group on that, I think. What we were asked to do was to look at

the various types of various 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 other thing about formaldehyde that I think is important to

remember, and that is that no scientists that have looked at formaldehyde consider ambient air a driver of indoor formaldehyde levels.

Mr. SOUDER. 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 air levels within site-built

homes in Louisiana that averaged 370 parts per billion, more than

four times that found in FEMA trailers. That would suggest, since

your office is aware of that, that you know 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

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are aware that in the Hancock study by your office in Mississippi

that there was no measurable difference between those people who

were in trailers and were in other. That might suggest that other

phenomena were occurring other than just the trailers.

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Sir——

Mr. SOUDER. You have two studies——

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Right.

Mr. SOUDER [continuing]. That suggest that the non-trailers had

higher levels, or at least equivalent levels.

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Can I answer?

Mr. SOUDER. Yes.

Mr. MCGEEHIN. 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 base on

which we could compare rates, so we were able to do what we could

in what is called an EpiAid investigation, which is led by a trainee

and is conducted in a 3-week period of time. With that in mind, as

a secondary objective, it did look at whether or not we would see

a difference in the children’s respiratory symptoms, those having

reported living in trailers and those that did not live in trailers,

and we did not see a difference.

Do I attribute that at all to formaldehyde levels? I do not.

The first study that you talked about, the Leamer study, I have

reviewed that study and it appears to be a well-done study. It used

the NIOSH sampling method that we used, which is the gold

standard sampling method. It was slightly different than the one

we used, but it was the NIOSH method. Its results were well reported, I thought. It was a well-written article. And its conclusions

were, again, having nothing to do with ambient air outside in Louisiana. The conclusions were—and I am 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 Leamer study I found that

it was a well-done study and well written and that 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 an answer for that.

As you suggested in your opening statement 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. But I will

tell you that the science will tell you that ambient air is not a driver of formaldehyde in indoor environments.

Mr. SOUDER. Well, let me ask you a couple of other questions, because in your testimony you suggested that some of the things here

are concentration; in other words, there has been this mis-notion

that somehow, like, these manufacturers spray formaldehyde on

things. The products they put in, it’s not unique to a trailer. It is

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unique to size and the wood and the wood quality, which we are

debating.

Now, in a site-built house or a manufactured home, you said that

the thing which we learned 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 the number of people in it. It

could be other patterns that occur in the house such as cooking, the

intensity. Would you not think, based on your own statement, that,

for example, when you put a new kitchen in, because much of this

is cupboards, depending on whether it has veneer or vinyl, can

quadruple the parts coming off of a particular piece? When you put

a new kitchen in a house, for a brief period until it dissipates, that

kitchen area may have higher levels of formaldehyde?

When you put new carpet in a room, particularly if it is a smaller

bedroom, you are going to go up and down, that this is not an uncommon thing even everywhere, including in our own offices, including elsewhere? It is not unique to trailers other than that they

are small, and any alternative housing that we would use, such as

a tent, a small wood shelter, unless it uses pure, natural wood with

no adhesive, with no repellant, the smaller the area and the newer

it is, the greater problem you are going to have?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Absolutely. The component parts are what lead

to formaldehyde. In my old house I brought this desk in and I put

it together, and it was this beautiful desk that 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

of at least above 500 parts per billion. So what you bring into a

house can definitely affect the formaldehyde levels. Absolutely true.

Mr. SOUDER. I also want to establish for the record you said

NIOSH is the gold standard. Is it true that their plus or minus is

19 percent?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. I don’t know what their numbers are, but

NIOSH 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 the NIOSH standard.

Mr. SOUDER. I would like to insert into the record the formaldehyde on the NIOSH standards. The reason is because when we

start to get down to really fine lines here, those variations become

very significant.

We will reserve the balance of the time. I yield back.

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. How much time do we have, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman WAXMAN. You have 1:47.

Did you want to put something in the record, Mr. Souder? Without objection, your request will be granted.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Chairman WAXMAN. Mr. Davis.

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. Dr. McGeehin, again thanks for being

here.

What is the Federal standard for indoor ambient air levels of

formaldehyde in trailers?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. In residences?

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. In travel trailers?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. There is none.

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. There is none. Are there formaldehyde

standards for the manufacturing housing industry?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. There is for manufactured housing. There is for

the component parts.

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. And I think that there are component

part standards but not an indoor ambient air standard; is that correct?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. That is true, Congressman.

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. The indoor levels of 400 parts per billion

are target levels based on wood emission standards, as I understand it, and these have been in place for 24 years.

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Are you talking about the HUD language?

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. Yes, sir.

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Yes, that is language and is not a standard. The

way you described it seems accurate to me.

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. And from the CDC that is not an appropriate standard, is it?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. It is not a standard, right. It is, from what I understand from HUD—and it is lonely at this table—the language,

when they announced their component part numbers, the language

said 400 parts per billion. I have had many discussions with HUD,

and they do not consider 400 parts per billion a standard.

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. In your discussions have you worked toward promulgating any standards, any levels, any regulations that

would define these so when the Government contracts out contractors know what the rules are, people who are utilizing trailers

know what the rules are? Has the CDC been proactive in that at

all?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. The CDC is trying to get Government agencies

together to address the formaldehyde issue. My boss, Dr. Howard

Frumkin, is leading a group to try to do that. I think you know,

Congressman, and I think you would agree with this, that CDC is

not a standard-setting agency.

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. Right.

Mr. MCGEEHIN. I think it is in the best interest of the American

public and the Congress that CDC never become a standard-setting

agency because we can go in and look at something solely from the

public health perspective.

However, there right now are no standards by which a manufacturer or anyone can say this is the ambient indoor air standard for

formaldehyde in the United States.

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. So as far as you know, then, what was

delivered here was not not meeting standards because there were

no standards, unfortunately?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. They are not only are no standards for travel

trailers for indoor ambient air for formaldehyde, but there are no

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standards to my knowledge—and I have been immersed in this for

the last 15 months—there are no standards for travel trailers for

component parts because the HUD component part standards only

apply to manufactured homes and not to travel trailers. They are

exempted from that.

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. Thank you.

Mr. MCGEEHIN. That is my understanding.

Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you, Mr. Davis.

Mr. Cummings.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank 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 be purchasing

trailers that are going to bring harm to the American people.

Would you agree with that?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Of course, sir.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Regardless of standards. We are talking about

things like watery eyes; burning sensations in the eye, nose, and

throat; nausea; coughing; test tightness; wheezing; skin rashes and

allergic reactions. Formaldehyde exposure may also trigger attacks

of those with asthma. Extremely high levels of exposure to formaldehyde can immediately be dangerous to one’s health and life. No

matter what the standard is, the American people were purchasing

trailers that could bring harm to other American people. That is

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

living in these trailers was failing them also.

I don’t know what John Lewis said. I am not here to attack you.

But I want to make sure we keep the focus on this. I have 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, there, and everywhere, but the question still remains: do we get what we bargain

for, or are we getting something that does harm?

No, I understand you are not familiar with all the letters and the

correspondence that went back and forth, but, Dr. McGeehin, Gulf

Stream sent a letter to FEMA that read in part—and I just need

your opinion on this very quickly—this is what the letter said. It

is dated May 11, 2006. It said: ‘‘We wanted to followup on our recent conversations regarding travel trailers supplied to FEMA. As

we have previously indicated, we wanted to again let you know

that we remain committed to providing high-quality products. No

particular information on ventilation or standards for indoor air

quality, including formaldehyde, are required by Government regulations relating to travel trailers; however, even though not required, Gulf Stream has taken the added step of specifying lowemission standards.’’

Now listen to what they said. ‘‘We would like to reiterate our

willingness to assist you in addressing any concerns about our

products. Our informal testing has indicated that formaldehyde levels of indoor ambient air of occupied trailers far below, for instance,

the OSHA standard of .75 parts per million—’’ now what that

means is 750 parts per billion—‘‘we are willing to share these informal test results with you and, as mentioned during our meeting,

85

if FEMA wishes to conduct formal testing protocols on any designated units, we are willing to participate in that testing.’’

Now, did you hear that?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Yes, sir.

Mr. CUMMINGS. All right. What impression did you get from the

letter? Does it sound like Gulf Stream is aware that its trailers

have high formaldehyde levels? I mean, from what you just heard?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. No, sir.

Mr. CUMMINGS. And let me tell you that Gulf Stream did not disclose it in that May 11, 2006, letter. This is what they didn’t disclose. Gulf Stream did not disclose that, of 11 occupied trailers it

tested, every one of them showed formaldehyde levels at or above

100 parts per billion. It did not disclose that four of the eleven occupied trailers had formaldehyde levels over 500 parts per billion,

which is OSHA’s regulatory action level. OSHA requires medical

monitoring of employees exposed to levels over 500 parts per billion. Should Gulf Stream have disclosed that information to

FEMA?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Sir, that is very hard for me to talk about, a correspondence that I had nothing to do with and don’t know anything

about.

Mr. CUMMINGS. If you were in their position, would you have disclosed it, as somebody expecting certain things from folk who are

selling things to the American people with their hard-paid tax dollars, would you have expected it?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. I would go back, sir, to what I said to the chairman, that I think that sort of information should be shared and

that is a good thing to share that.

Mr. CUMMINGS. And Gulf Stream also did not disclose that its

testing of unoccupied trailers showed even higher levels of formaldehyde. A large number of these showed levels well over 750

parts per billion in unoccupied trailers. Should Gulf Stream have

disclosed that information, do you think?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. I think if they had that information on formaldehyde that was above 750 parts per billion that would have been a

good thing to let FEMA know.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Clearly, Gulf Stream spent over a month putting

together this letter. They carefully crafted it, and this is what they

came up with.

Thank you very much.

Again, this is about people. This is about human beings.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you, Mr. Cummings.

Now to the Republican side. Mr. Issa.

Mr. ISSA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Doctor, you are 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 the first question. Is there a universal standard, or is there a number that you would set here

today to say we should make sure trailers never have in them

under ordinary conditions?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Sir, I would think that if we are going to talk

about——

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Mr. ISSA. No, no. Is there a number?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. I am sure there is. It is not one that——

Mr. ISSA. OK. You are not prepared to give it.

Mr. MCGEEHIN. That is true.

Mr. ISSA. OK. The second one—and I want to keep it short because I only have the 5-minutes—so today the Government, you

are not prepared to give a number, so 700, 500, 100. But let’s take

HUD’s number for a moment. HUD said that basically you can

outgas at 300 parts per billion out of plywood. Is that number too

high?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. For travel trailers?

Mr. ISSA. No. It is a standard for wood.

Mr. MCGEEHIN. It is a standard for wood? Well, we have shown

in our——

Mr. ISSA. No, it is the standard for outgassing of wood, because

once you make the wood, people aren’t going to make a lot of different plywoods. There is only so much MDF and plywood going to

be made. Once you have a standard for home, travel trailers, they

are going to tend to use the same in these industries. Is the standard of basically the glue used to bond together either MDF or plywood, is that an unreasonable standard, or are you prepared to answer is that a good number?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Sir, I will tell you what our study showed. I am

not going to say whether that is an unreasonable number. I will

show you that 44 of the 45 component parts met the HUD standard, and yet for those four travel trailers the levels were in the

multiple hundreds of parts per billion.

Mr. ISSA. OK. So we have a standards problem today, based on

that, in my opinion.

Let me ask another question. You take plywood, carpet, plastic,

you name it, the components that all produce formaldehyde, you

put them in a closed, air-tight oven, you heat them up to 160 degrees. Are you going to get a concentration of formaldehyde inside

the air chamber?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. You are going to get a lot of different contaminants, probably. Yes.

Mr. ISSA. OK. But, in fact, that is what a closed-up trailer is in

the hot sun, no matter who made it, no matter what they used.

That is what you have. One, the elevated levels are to be expected

in a closed-up, hot trailer, which means we shouldn’t be testing

them that way. There has to be a standardized test. Can the CDC

come up with a standardized test, or should some agency come up

with a standardized test so that we can be comparing apples and

apples for levels of ventilation, etc.? Because it sounds like the

Government hasn’t provided that yet, either.

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Well, I think if an agency moves toward setting

a standard they will have to give guidance on how that standard

would be measured.

Mr. ISSA. OK. The trailer manufacturers are going to be here

after you, and Gulf Stream is the gold standard by most people. I

know you have a gold standard of testing equipment, but they are

the gold standard for trailers, commercial, off-the-shelf trailers,

been around forever, well regarded. Most people know that name

more than the other three manufacturers. Did you find anything in

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your testing of those other trailers that showed that these trailers

were materially different than what the commercial public buys

and happily works with on a regular basis?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. We weren’t able to look at whether or not these

were different from that. I mean, there are the off-the-lot models

that were sold to FEMA and used, and there are the spec models

that were sold to FEMA and used.

Mr. ISSA. OK. Now, in your opening statement you said something that I think was very significant that I hope we can all focus

on here today. You talk about mold creating formaldehyde, the relationship between the two. I will set up the question fairly narrowly. Louisiana, Mississippi, there is a huge flood, stagnant water

sitting there, unfortunately in some cases with sewage and all

kinds of other things. It is wet. It is rainy. It is hot. It is 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 unhealthy atmosphere that

existed in that area of the south after Katrina?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. I think that mold in an indoor environment is

not a good thing. I think that what we found in our multiple regression was that mold was associated with formaldehyde levels,

not causative of formaldehyde levels. There is a difference.

Mr. ISSA. So you are saying that plywood causes mold?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. No, sir. I am saying that the indoor air contamination may be related to both of them at the same time.

Mr. ISSA. I see. Now, in your test you tested for formaldehyde.

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 test can you provide us with

that shows the other things that may have caused the same symptoms more or less that are being reported and blamed on only one

chemical, formaldehyde?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Sir, we went to the field as rapidly as we could

to answer the question that was pervasive at the time, which was

formaldehyde. The study was aimed at formaldehyde. We controlled for smoking and some other factors with a questionnaire,

but we tested for formaldehyde.

Now, if you wanted to look at other VOCs that may be in the air

of these trailers, we looked for 80 different VOCs in the Lawrence

Berkeley study, found 33 that were measurable, found 3 that might

be considered elevated, and the focus ended up being on formaldehyde.

Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you, Mr. Issa.

Mr. ISSA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman WAXMAN. Mr. Davis.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I want to talk specifically about unoccupied trailers. Between

March and May 2006 Scott Pullin, one of Gulf Stream’s vice presidents, tested occupied and unoccupied FEMA trailers for formaldehyde. All totaled, he tested about 50 trailers. He tested Gulf

Stream trailers, and he also tested trailers made by other manufacturers. Mr. Pullin tested over 35 new travel trailers that had not

yet been deployed for displaced residents. Of those trailers, over 25

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were manufactured by Gulf Stream and 7 by other companies. The

levels of formaldehyde in these unoccupied trailers were remarkable. Over 10 Gulf Stream trailers contained formaldehyde levels

in excess of 900 parts per billion.

Dr. McGeehin, is there any question that exposure to formaldehyde at that level is dangerous?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Sir, most studies show that when you get up

above 800 parts per billion or so that most people will have symptoms at that level of formaldehyde.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. And so certainly at 900 it would be dangerous?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. The word dangerous has connotations to it that

I am 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 cause

alarm. I would say that at that level we could expect a good proportion of the population to have symptoms that were described earlier.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Then let me just go on. The Environmental Protection Agency has established 900 parts per billion as

an acute exposure guideline level. This level is designed to guide

emergency responders in understanding the risks from a once in a

lifetime exposure such as might occur after a chemical spill. According to EPA, a one-time exposure to formaldehyde at levels exceeding 900 parts per billion could lead to irreversible harm.

Let me ask you, would it be appropriate to allow families to move

into an unoccupied trailer that had formaldehyde levels of 900

parts per billion?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. I would say, Congressman, a family should not

reside in a trailer that has 900 parts per billion formaldehyde.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. One Gulf Stream trailer had formaldehyde levels of 2,690 parts per billion. Other makes of travel trailers

contained similarly high levels of formaldehyde, with seventeen

trailers having formaldehyde levels over 900 parts per billion and

one trailer having levels of 4,480 parts per billion.

Is it safe to allow families to move into trailers with these levels?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Those levels are starkly higher than what we

measured in our occupied trailers. I don’t know how those samples

were taken, but across the board, if you have levels like that, it

would be an environment where many people, if not all people,

would have the types of symptoms that we have talked about.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Well, Dr. McGeehin, I have been informed that Gulf Stream did not inform FEMA that it had tested

unoccupied trailers, nor did it disclose the remarkably high levels

of formaldehyde in these trailers. In March 2006 thousands of trailers were yet to be deployed. Gulf Stream knew that there was a

major problem, but they remained silent, and as a result those unoccupied trailers became occupied trailers. Families moved in and

families lived in those trailers, and undoubtedly many suffered the

consequences.

I believe that somebody should be held accountable. Whether it

is FEMA or whether it is Gulf Stream or both, somebody should

be held accountable for not alerting those families that they were

moving into hazardous situations.

I thank you very much and I yield back the balance of my time.

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Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Davis.

Mr. Jordan.

Mr. JORDAN. Mr. Chairman, I have questions for the second

panel, so I would be happy to yield my time to Ranking Member

Davis.

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. Thank you very much.

I would start by yielding to my friend, Mr. Issa.

Mr. ISSA. Doctor, the 900 parts per billion that was talked about

in a closed-up trailer, with what you would consider in a normal

healthy environment—home, mobile home, travel trailer—of air exchange, this closed-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?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. It would drop off when you opened up the trailer, to some extent.

Mr. ISSA. So if you open up a trailer and you have positive exhaust, either through an air conditioner that ducts in outside air

or an exhaust fan which trailers always come with, what would you

expect 900 parts per billion and outside of 2 to equalize at when

it was properly ventilated?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. I have no idea.

Mr. ISSA. OK. But in a nutshell, if you are exchanging the air

once every several minutes, or a couple times an hour, wouldn’t

you expect it to drop off to essentially whatever the constant emission is at the highest, that it would be whatever is being outgassed,

because your ambient of two is coming in. You would end up down

in the less than 100, wouldn’t you?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Eventually you are going to achieve an equilibrium with the gasses that are coming off the component parts.

Mr. ISSA. Thank you.

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. Thank you.

Everyone here is appalled at what happened to some of these

poor victims of Katrina, that they ended up in trailers with high

formaldehyde, people became sick. I don’t think anybody up here

is anything but appalled by this. What concerns me today is we

only have a small piece of the puzzle. We very much appreciate you

being here lending your expertise on this. It is 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 were really no set standards. The private

sector is able to testify, I think, they had to go to new sources to

try to bring the product online very quick, some of it from China

and the east. There was no checking. There were no clear standards of what is going on at points when the issue was raised by

some of the companies. FEMA tended to look the other way.

What is so sad today is we are focusing just on the manufacturers and not on the Government, which I think has a lot of culpability here. Not the CDC, I might add, but other agencies who,

through time, have not promulgated standards, who haven’t done

the appropriate inspections, who I think were so concerned about

getting product that they didn’t look through appropriate regulation and inspection that should have occurred.

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What concerns me is: are we changing this in the future when

the next Katrina hits and we need to bring a lot of product online?

I dare say 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? Do you have any idea, Doctor? You said that CDC

is having discussions at this point.

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Right. I don’t know if that will lead to standards

or not, but I would like to take this opportunity, if I might, just

to talk. The members of this panel look at things in one way, and

maybe the public health agency looks at it in a slightly different

way. 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 residing in these trailers. That is what——

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. Just stop there. You never found any 900

parts per billion in any of your inspections, correct?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. The highest level that we found, sir, was 590

parts per billion in the occupied trailer study.

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. OK.

Mr. MCGEEHIN. So that is 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. I am probably going to go over and I am going to probably

mess up everybody’s time, but we went out and we met with the

RVIA and the other industry in Indiana and had a very good 8-

hour session to talk about what we are doing and what they are

doing. I think that somehow we have to solve this problem, and I

think it is 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 a

very long time—the next time we have a Katrina-size issue hit.

The idea that we don’t solve this and that we are 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 are going to try to do that

with the children’s health study; and, second, how can we make

sure that this doesn’t happen any more.

My solution to that—and I am not an enforcement agency and

I am here by myself as a public health agency—my solution to that,

I think it has to be Government and industry working together to

figure this out.

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. I agree.

Let me just say, Mr. Chairman, what concerns me is, because of

the slant of this hearing, without having the Government here—

and we have seen this time and time again—I have had companies,

experts, global companies where the Government will go to them

and say, we need your help in Iraq. And they say, why are we to

do business with the Government with the exposure of coming before a committee, the lawsuits, and everything else? It is 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 has been very constructive. Thank

you.

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Mr. MCGEEHIN. It is not comfortable for any of us, sir.

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. Yes. Thank you.

Chairman WAXMAN. Mr. Murphy.

Mr. MURPHY. Thank 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 enforceability, and that both industry

and Government have to be part of that solution. Because this

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 and its affiliated agencies.

And in a town in which there is a lot of derision thrown onto

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 area such as the Gulf, at the forefront of our discussions. For all of the aspersions that get 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.

Mr. McGeehin, I just wanted to get back to the science for a moment. We have heard a lot of efforts on behalf of members of this

committee and of some of the companies that produce these trailers

to explain away the levels of formaldehyde. Understanding, as you

have 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. I want to just get at some

of these alternative explanations, to the extent that they were

factored in to 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 in indoor air. I want to go

through a couple of these potentially alternative explanations.

In the research that you have 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 trailers?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. No. For a number of reasons, we did ask the

residents who participated in the study whether or not they had

cooked in their trailer for a period of time prior to that, not only

because the product that they are cooking could give off formaldehyde, but also the type of gas they use for cooking may, so we controlled for that and did not find that to be a factor in our analysis.

Mr. MURPHY. The president of Keystone RV states in his testimony that formaldehyde is ‘‘found in household cleaners,

antiseptics, cosmetics, and medicines.’’ Again, any indication in the

trailers that you have tested that the high levels of formaldehyde

are caused by cosmetics or household cleaners?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. No. We did ask about use of a number of different household cleaners and did not find that to be a factor.

Mr. MURPHY. Finally, there is a suggestion here that—again, I

wanted to let you restate this—that mold and potentially backedVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:19 Apr 06, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00095 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\47995.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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up sewage can also lead to some levels of toxicity or high levels of

formaldehyde. Any indication that in the trailers you tested that

mold or sewage led to the high levels of formaldehyde?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. We measured mold in two different ways,

through the walk-through with trained personnel, and also we

asked the residents about mold, and mold was a factor in the

multi-varied 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.

Mr. MURPHY. Thank you very much, Doctor. I understand the

nuance conversation here about the different factors that can contribute to high levels of formaldehyde, but we are dealing with

science. We are dealing with studies that have been done by a

trusted agency that have controlled for these very factors, and it

is a legitimate conversation to have except for the fact that we

have a study in front of us that shows us that we have unacceptable levels of formaldehyde, even controlling for many of these factors that have been brought before us.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you very much.

If the gentleman would permit me.

Mr. MURPHY. I would yield to the chairman.

Chairman WAXMAN. I do want to point out, because we have had

several complaints that we haven’t had Government witnesses

here, we invited other Government witnesses. We invited FEMA.

We have invited all the Government agencies that have been requested by Mr. Davis and other members of the committee. They

did not agree to come here. But we did have a hearing on this subject with FEMA.

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. Mr. Chairman.

Chairman WAXMAN. Yes.

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. My understanding from FEMA and HUD

is they didn’t get the invitation until Thursday before the weekend

to come here for this hearing, and that is 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 have been able to get them all

here at the same time.

Chairman WAXMAN. I don’t disagree with you, except I do want

to point out I think you are misinformed. They were invited at the

same time that CDC was asked to come here, and we have CDC

represented here, and FEMA refused to come. But we did hear

from FEMA last time around, and what we heard from FEMA is

they didn’t want to know about the problem. They just didn’t want

anybody to do any evaluations because they were afraid they would

find high levels.

If I can yield myself another 30 seconds of my own time that I

reserved before, we heard the statement we ought 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. FEMA didn’t want to know what levels

of formaldehyde were in these trailers. And then we have Gulf

Stream trailer manufacturers who don’t feel any moral or other responsibility to let FEMA and the families know that they have

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done tests on these trailers and they find high levels of formaldehyde, which they obviously knew were thought of as excessive and

harmful to people’s health.

So what we have is Government failure and industry failure. If

we passed laws with standards, I think that is great, but what we

have to make sure is that the representations that are made to the

Government are about what is actually happening, and the Government asks the questions, and they work together to make sure the

public is protected.

I think what we have seen here is no regulation and no self-regulation by the industry, as well.

I now want to yield to Mr. Burton 5 minutes.

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. Would the gentleman yield me just 20

seconds?

Mr. BURTON. Yes.

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. Let me just note again for the record I

ask unanimous consent, this is a chart from our minority report,

98.8 percent of the temporary housing units tested by the CDC in

Louisiana and Mississippi met the HUD ambient air targets for

formaldehyde. One of the problems here is that target level is probably too high and it ought to be changed. But the customer in practically 99 percent of the cases met 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 trailer manufacturers and the end users; they sold to

the Government, and the Government had bad standards in some

cases. And in other cases, when the manufacturers went to the

Government and said there was a problem, the Government said,

let’s not talk about it.

Thank you.

Chairman WAXMAN. If the gentleman might permit, that HUD

standard is not an adequate standard. It is not even——

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. I just made that point, Mr. Chairman.

It is not an adequate standard, but why beat up on the customer.

Mr. BURTON. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman WAXMAN. Mr. Burton, your time.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you.

I am not going to take very much time. I would like to have my

whole statement presented for the record.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Dan Burton follows:]

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Mr. BURTON. I have been familiar with the travel trailer and

trailer industry since I was a kid, and I haven’t seen any evidence

that they have violated any rules and haven’t done their job to perfection. There are over 8 million people in this country that live in

mobile homes and RVs and travel around the country with no problems with the formaldehyde issue we are talking about today, and

so instead of beating on the manufacturers I think we ought to give

them a little vote of confidence because they have such a good

track record in the past.

With that I yield to my colleague, Mr. Souder from Indiana.

Mr. SOUDER. I thank my friend from Indiana.

While there may be differences of opinion, I really am deeply concerned about the use of the word moral to apply to people who

worked overtime to provide units to people who were in 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. I believe the chairman

was more referring to a question, and I think that as we try to

make sure that people live in safe homes and that people work in

safe plants, this debate is not about emotional rhetoric, it is, in

fact, about science.

One of the core fundamentals that is being tossed around here

is whether Gulf Stream’s test constitutes science. It was a flash

test with a desiccator method, which is not the way that you test.

Now, should FEMA have responded to then do scientific tests?

We can’t pretend and keep asking Dr. McGeehin how he would

have reacted to something that was a flash warning test like you

do with the formaldehyde test or that type of thing. We are 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 say a range but didn’t give all of it because

the variation is far too great to be scientific with the method that

they used.

Now, I also want to make sure that 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 caused the standards,

you asked them whether they did anything.

Mr. MCGEEHIN. 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.

Mr. SOUDER. It shouldn’t be taken here that there was a test

done on other things. That was a self-dependent referral rather

than an actual scientific test to see what else was there.

We come back to this Tulane study that said the ambient air

study in Baton Rouge was 390 parts per billion. That was the average, which means they had four times what you were finding in

these trailers average. Would you recommend that 390 average,

which means probably some of them were in the 500–600 range,

that everybody who lives in that region should move out?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. I would recommend exactly what the authors of

that recommended.

Mr. SOUDER. Which is?

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Mr. MCGEEHIN. People should look to ventilate their houses

more, that they should look at what component parts they are putting in and what additional work they are having done on their

house.

Mr. SOUDER. And that is then your recommendation for the trailers, as well, not panic?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. I am sorry, sir. I didn’t hear that.

Mr. SOUDER. In other words, if they are averaging 390 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.

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Congressman, we did make that recommendation. We recommended that FEMA move the 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, do not smoke inside their trailers——

Mr. SOUDER. Taking back my time, did you recommend the same

thing to the people in Baton Rouge?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Sir, we didn’t do that——

Ms. SOUDER. It’s 390.

Mr. MCGEEHIN [continuing]. Study, sir.

Mr. SOUDER. OK. You already testified you felt it was an accurate study. The question is why would you make a recommendation

to one group and not the other?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Sir, that was a study that was done 9 years ago

that was given to me 2 days ago. I can’t go back and recommend

to the citizens who are in those homes that they move out. I mean,

that is not what we do. This is a study that I was asked what did

I think about this study, and I gave you that assessment.

Chairman WAXMAN. The gentleman’s time is expired.

Now Mr. Sarbanes.

Mr. SARBANES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

You may have covered this. I apologize if you have. But when

you do a test to determine if the standard is being satisfied whether a trailer is safe or not safe, do you do it with the windows

closed? Do you do it with the windows open? Do you do it with the

fan running?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. For our occupied study what we wanted was for

people to set their trailers up the way they normally have their

trailers when they are sleeping, so we asked them to set it up, and

if they keep their windows open 3 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 is how we

asked them to set their trailers up and that is how we sampled.

We wanted it to be the most realistic exposure that we could.

Mr. SARBANES. But that would mean you would sort of end up

on a trailer-by-trailer basis coming up with what——

Mr. MCGEEHIN. We were interested in what the human beings

were being exposed to for formaldehyde.

Mr. SARBANES. OK. The second question I have is in terms of

sustained exposure, so day after day after day. In somebody who

is exposed to, let’s say, 250 parts per billion for 50 days in a row

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at a higher risk of some kind of harm than somebody who is exposed to 250 parts per billion for 10 days in a row and then are

not exposed to that subsequent?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Essentially what you are doing when you look at

human exposure to any contaminant is, in one way or another, you

are basing it on an index, and the index is based on the intensity

of the exposure—in this case, the level of formaldehyde that you

are mentioning—and the duration of exposure, how long they are

exposed. When you are 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 formaldehyde, 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.

Mr. SARBANES. So there is a cumulative dimension of potential

harm that can come?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Particularly when you get into the carcinogenic

potential of formaldehyde. Formaldehyde by the International

Agency for Research on Cancer [IARC], is considered a human carcinogen, and when you have human carcinogens you really want to

try to decrease the person’s exposure as much as possible.

Mr. SARBANES. All right. So it becomes relevant the use for

which a trailer is being put?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Well, we absolutely believe that.

Mr. SARBANES. Yes.

Mr. MCGEEHIN. One of the recommendations when we were talking to FEMA 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 are in the unit 24 hours a day, as some of the families

in the parks were, that is different than a person who has a unit

parked outside their home who spends 8 hours at work and then

comes home and spends 41⁄2 hours repairing the roof to try to move

back into their home. So the use of the trailer is an important part

of the level of exposure.

Mr. SARBANES. You know, people keep referring to the emergency

circumstances as an excuse/explanation for folks being put in

harm’s way where there were these high formaldehyde levels. But,

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 FEMA, that we would have gotten started much earlier on doing the kind of thinking you say you have 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 these disaster recovery situations?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. I think it is fairly easy to imagine the time line

that we currently have being moved up.

Mr. SARBANES. Yes.

Mr. MCGEEHIN. And then moving everything up whatever number of months that may have been.

Mr. SARBANES. I mean, I am running out of time, but FEMA has

only just recently come up with a national disaster housing plan.

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Actually, it is just a preliminary blueprint, I guess, and Congress

called for it 2 years ago. That would have included and should have

recommendations on creating different kinds of inventory of housing inventories in these disaster situations. We could have gotten

started much earlier on that if people had come clean earlier with

the information on these kinds of exposures.

I yield back my time.

Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you, Mr. Sarbanes.

Mr. Shays.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

I will first yield to my ranking member, and then I will take the

rest of the time.

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. Mr. Chairman, we had talked about notification. I have letters from you to Steve Preston, the Secretary of

HUD; Steve Johnson, the Administrator of EPA; John Howard

from OSHA; Ed Faulk from OSHA; and Nancy Nord from the U.S.

Consumer Product Safety Commission July 3rd—that is last Thursday—inviting them to come to testify before the committee.

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, have known

that they were coming here.

So this isn’t trying to get everybody together at 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 have

happened. It should never happen again. And we ought to focus on

what we can do. But the Government bears the 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 proper inspections, even with a moving

and very uncertain standard.

So that is the difficulty here. When you have lawsuits outstanding against some of these companies, we know how this works. We

are all adults. You are 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 awards, and so they are

trying this. We have seen this happen before, unfortunately. We

understand the politics of that, but that is so unfortunate here

about not having the Government here and working toward a solution instead of trying to frame a lawsuit. That is my major concern

with this.

What happened was a tragedy. It shouldn’t happen again.

Thank you, Mr. Shays.

Mr. SHAYS. Happy to yield.

First, Doctor, thank you for coming. Thank you for your good

work. This is a very important issue, and we appreciate your expertise and talents.

I would like to ask about what happens in the future. FEMA has

specified a new procurement specification of 16 parts per billion regarding formaldehyde in FEMA trailers. First, do you think this

new procurement number of 16 parts per billion is reasonable?

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Mr. MCGEEHIN. We weren’t asked, Congressman, to comment on

that before FEMA came out with that. I know on which that is

based, which is based on a NIOSH standard that was based on

formaldehyde being considered a carcinogen, and at that point 16

parts per billion I believe was the lowest level that could be detected by the analysis of air sampling at that time. I think 16 parts

per billion across the board for temporary housing is going to be

a difficult mark to make.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

Let me ask you, in your interim report figure two depicts 100

parts per billion of formaldehyde as an intermediate range and

1,000 parts per billion as a higher range. Does CDC still stand by

the figure? In light of the mean result from the CDC trailer study

being 77 parts per billion, wouldn’t it be inappropriate and misleading to classify trailer formaldehyde levels as high?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. What we tried to do with that was have a sliding

scale so that people understood that it wasn’t just a one-time measurement of formaldehyde that determined whether or not an environment was safe and healthy or not, that there were other factors

involved. What CDC has done from the beginning of this is to look

at the literature and to go by what the literature says, that levels

of formaldehyde in an indoor environment may cause symptoms,

and at those levels that is how we basically have approached this

problem.

Mr. SHAYS. Right. But in your interim report it is basically 100

to 1,000, but 100 being kind of the low range, which is still higher

than the 77 parts per billion. So do you need to adjust that number

down of 100?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. No. I think that was done by the graphics people

because it made some sense to have 100 and 1,000. If you are looking at the colored version of that you will see a gradation in that

between 100 and 1,000 where various symptoms occur. I don’t

think we need to adjust that particular graphic, because we have

been consistent in what we have said from the very beginning that

at 100 parts per billion sensitive individuals show symptoms. There

are a number of studies that show 300 parts per billion, and at 100

parts per billion there are a number of agencies—WHO, EPA,

ASHRAY—that talk about that as the level that action should be

taken. So I am very comfortable at the 100. If you are concerned

about the 1,000——

Mr. SHAYS. No, I am not concerned; I am just making the point.

I think you have answered it. The 100 to 1,000 is an illustration,

but 1,000 is pretty low, and there are some symptoms that show

at that point.

Mr. MCGEEHIN. You mean 100.

Mr. SHAYS. It does suggest that it is certainly higher than 16 or

77.

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Right. The 77 was the geometric mean that we

found across the board. I think what you need to do when you look

at that study is that you also have to look that for some manufacturers 56 percent of theirs were above 100.

Mr. SHAYS. OK.

Chairman WAXMAN. The gentleman’s time has expired.

Ms. Watson.

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Ms. WATSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want to thank Dr.

McGeehin.

I would like to ask you about a CDC study where you worked

with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. As I understand

it, you actually deconstructed four travel trailers that were purchased by FEMA, and these trailers were taken apart so you could

test the emission level of volatile organic chemicals from the component parts of the trailers. These tests showed that formaldehyde

was being emitted inside the travel trailers from the component

parts; is that right?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Yes, ma’am.

Ms. WATSON. Yes. They also show that formaldehyde was the

only volatile chemical in the travel trailers that was at a level high

enough to negatively impact human health; is that correct?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Yes, ma’am.

Ms. WATSON. Yes. Were you aware that the Gulf Stream also

conducted the test of its component parts 2 years ago?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. No, I was not.

Ms. WATSON. OK. Based on 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 Gulf Stream, itself, appeared

to have tested the fiber board, vinyl, and the drawers to determine

their formaldehyde levels. That sounds similar to the tests that you

conducted; is that so?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Yes, it does, depending on what type of chamber

testing they did, but yes, it does.

Ms. WATSON. Yes. Let me tell you what this company found as

a result of its testing. Progressive Engineering found elevated levels of formaldehyde emitting from the paneling, and if we were

reading Gulf Stream’s notes correctly, they found high levels from

the other components, as well.

If you had been informed of this information 2 years ago, would

it have raised concerns for you?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Well, again, I will go back to what I have reiterated. Yes, ma’am, any information that shows levels of formaldehyde at levels that can cause symptoms would have been of concern

to us.

Ms. WATSON. I know some of this is redundant, but I am trying

to move forward.

Mr. MCGEEHIN. No, that is fine. That is fine. I understand.

Ms. WATSON. Would it have been beneficial for FEMA or CDC to

have this information when it began investigating these issues? I

have heard you say earlier that if we had that information we

could have moved on it, correct?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. I think any information early on would have

been of great benefit.

Ms. WATSON. OK. So the problem is that the company did not

tell FEMA about these component tests, and Gulf Stream had a

contract with FEMA that was worth $550 million to manufacture

these travel trailers. When it learned in 2006 that there was a

formaldehyde 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

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formaldehyde problem, but it should not bear all the blame, so we

need to be talking to each other openly, honestly, in a transparent

way. That is the reason why we have these Oversight Committee

hearings, so a tragedy like this and our response will not have been

as flawed as it was.

Mr. Chairman, I will yield back my time, but I wanted to make

that point.

Thank you, Doctor.

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Can I ask a question?

Chairman WAXMAN. Go ahead.

Mr. MCGEEHIN. If those data are available, we would love to see

them, because one of the things that we want to do in followup to

the work that we just did with Lawrence Berkeley is to try to get

some of the original component parts and see what they off-gas and

see if we can model to see what happened over the 2-year period.

Ms. WATSON. Mr. Chairman, through the Chair if we can ask

staff to provide the Doctor with that information.

Chairman WAXMAN. We will certainly try to make that available

to you.

Ms. WATSON. Great.

Chairman WAXMAN. I think it is a reasonable request, and I

would assume the manufacturers would agree with that.

Mr. MCGEEHIN. OK. Thank you.

Ms. WATSON. Thank you. I yield back.

Chairman WAXMAN. Mr. Souder, you have not taken your 5 minutes. Do you want to proceed now?

Mr. SOUDER. OK. I thank the Chair.

I think it is really important, because I know that you get questions directed at you, and some of these you weren’t familiar with,

that the Gulf Stream test was a desiccator test, not a chamber test.

There was no chamber test done, which your agency says has to

be done multiple times. They hired a firm to try to do this test, because they suspected that the wood may have a problem. They

tried to alert FEMA. They told them a general range because it is

not scientific.

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Yes.

Mr. SOUDER. You used the word chamber. Do you agree that

chamber testing is the way to do scientific testing?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. That would be the gold standard for this.

Mr. SOUDER. And would you agree that the other is probably not

even a bronze, particularly if you just do it once and you flash test,

because number of people, what may be happening that day? You

said yourself 100 to 1,000 because there may be temporary things

occurring.

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Well, sir, I don’t know whether or not it has

been compared to the standard, but if there were data that showed

whatever testing they did was compared to the standard, then we

could make that assessment.

Mr. SOUDER. Right. In other words, we don’t have that assessment?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. I certainly don’t.

Mr. SOUDER. Well, they didn’t either, because they didn’t do

chamber testing.

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Right.

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Mr. SOUDER. All they were really alerting FEMA to is hey, there

may be some problem. Now, Lawrence Berkeley Labs said this: as

containing high levels of formaldehyde probably resulted from

cheap wood used by the manufacturers under permissive Government standards. Do you think, from you own testing, that the variations—because most of them fell here—were resulting from probably a certain type of wood, or are you willing to agree with how

Lawrence Berkeley is probably the best we can come up with

there?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. I think the Lawrence Berkeley report is the best

data that we have on the component parts used.

Mr. SOUDER. So, while there may be other variables, to the degree we had a problem there, it appears to have been aggravated,

at least, by the wood.

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Yes.

Mr. SOUDER. You used a very understated term. You said it

would probably be pretty hard to achieve a 16 level?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Right.

Mr. SOUDER. That is probably true, since the average rooms that

have been tested here, not in chamber tests, are between 30 and

70, which means that we had better not put anybody in our House

office buildings in an emergency, so probably saying 16 is a pretty

under-stated statement. I appreciate you pointing that out.

I want to come back, because the Hancock study and the Tulane

study were not by you. Well, the Mississippi one was. You explained the difficulties with that, because we have been going back

and forth here today between chamber tests, non-chamber tests,

different agencies, using something from a flash test that is nowhere near a gold standard that was used in quoting some high

figure, and we go back and forth between ambient air and testing

of the wood. We go back and forth between ones that people are

living in and ones that have been packaged up with no ventilation,

some new, some old. We don’t have the VIN numbers. The agencies

don’t appear to have those numbers to be able to match up. It appears that the numbers didn’t even match up right in some of the

cases with the manufacturers, that there are significant problems.

Now, I want to come back because in Hancock, where it tested

ambient air, with the limitations, there wasn’t a difference between

the trailers and the housing. And in the Tulane study, which is

NIOSH and what you said was gold standard, the average was 390,

where the average on these trailers was 77 or 87.

Now, to come back to this, it is not your agency and you didn’t

do that study. You only reviewed it 2 days ago. But if we are panicked about what we keep hearing of 400, 200 could be exposure,

100 could be, wouldn’t that be suggesting that CDC and others

ought to be checking everything in the State of Louisiana and elsewhere since they 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 are panicking about 100 and 200?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Well, sir, there must be something unique about

the houses that were tested in that study. Ambient air is not a

driver for formaldehyde in indoor air.

Mr. SOUDER. Let me ask the question. Do you have any scientific

evidence that there was anything unusual about their test?

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Mr. MCGEEHIN. No. I think the testing process that they used,

according to the article that I read, was fine.

Mr. SOUDER. Then 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-build

homes. You don’t know the answer to the question.

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Except that I am familiar with formaldehyde,

sir, and outdoor air is not a driver for indoor formaldehyde.

Mr. SOUDER. Well, their test didn’t suggest it was.

Mr. MCGEEHIN. But if you read their conclusion, sir, they are not

suggesting that it is ambient air, either. They are suggesting that

it is some product inside, either a ventilation issue or the products

that are used inside the home.

Mr. SOUDER. Which is the same question that we have here——

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Absolutely.

Mr. SOUDER [continuing]. With these trailers.

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Absolutely.

Mr. SOUDER. My point isn’t that the ambient air—I am sorry if

I confused the ambient air, because that was questioned a little

more potentially over in Hancock—that the question is that if they

got these results that are four times higher, which could be the

wood, which could be the ventilation, why aren’t we concerned and

looking at those houses like we are 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 homes, because we are, in my opinion, picking on one

industry without really having a balance.

Chairman WAXMAN. The gentleman’s time is expired.

Mr. SOUDER. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman WAXMAN. Was that a question? Did you have a response to that?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. I want everybody on the panel to know that CDC

and I are not picking on an industry at all. I mean, we have had

good conversations with the RVIA and other industry. They have

attended 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 is no industry bashing going on with

CDC in any way, shape, or form. I simply state, as I stated before,

that we are trying to get the answers for this, we are trying to provide good data.

I, quite frankly, think that the LBNL 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.

I just want to make that statement.

Chairman WAXMAN. I think that is an excellent point.

The gentleman’s time has expired.

Mr. Tierney.

Mr. TIERNEY. No questions.

Chairman WAXMAN. Would the gentleman yield me some of his

time?

Mr. TIERNEY. I certainly yield to the chairman.

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Chairman WAXMAN. I want to point out the situation, because we

have heard complaints about some other witnesses from other

agencies not being here. The manufacturers were invited, because

this is a hearing about the manufacturers, on June 4, 2008. On

July 1st, our staffs, bipartisan staffs, heard from CDC because

CDC was doing a study about formaldehyde levels as a result of

our first hearing with FEMA over a year ago. As a result of our

hearing where we questioned why FEMA didn’t do anything about

this problem, FEMA said, oh, we are going to ask CDC to do an

evaluation. So CDC was ready to report its evaluation and to release it on July 2nd.

So when our staffs talked to—I don’t know if it was you, Dr.

McGeehin.

Mr. MCGEEHIN. It was.

Chairman WAXMAN. I guess it was—and heard what the report

was, Republican staff said, Well, let’s invite FEMA back, as well

as CDC. So we sent an official invitation to FEMA and to CDC on

July 1st. This was an official invitation to come.

Some time later in the week, the minority then said, well, wait

a second. We ought to have HUD, as well, to come in and talk

about these standards, in order to get all the relevant witnesses regarding standards. Well, our staff replied, this isn’t a hearing about

standards; this is a hearing about whether the manufacturers had

information that they should have shared with the Government,

FEMA, and whether they should have shared it with the people living in the trailers.

But, nevertheless, we sent an invitation to HUD, NIOSH, EPA,

CPSC, and OSHA on July 3rd. Now, that is awfully late, and they

said they weren’t available to come. FEMA said they couldn’t come

at all because they were busy with the emergencies that are going

on.

I want to make that point very clearly and yield to Mr. Davis if

he wants to add anything further.

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

First of all, let me just note the CDC report was final, I think,

July 2nd, but we had information July 1st, but that was the final

report. The interim report was in February, as I understand, and

there wasn’t a substantial change, was there, between the two?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. No.

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. So this has been common knowledge. We

have had plenty of time to plan for this.

Second, I mean, the difficulty here is when a contractor responds

to standards from the Government and doesn’t meet those standards they ought to be held accountable, because we have standards,

we know. in this case we didn’t have standards. You had conflicting

standards throughout Government over what, where, and ambient

air standards between HUD and EPA and everybody else.

Chairman WAXMAN. But if I could reclaim my time, that is an

odd issue to raise. It is confusing, because we have so many different standards, but when we have different standards we can

look and see. Well, does that make sense to have the standards we

have? But what we are concerned about is the health and wellbeing of people living in these trailers, and the Centers for Disease

Control, which has not established standards, is giving us their

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professional judgment about when it is a risk for people living in

those trailers.

Even if we took the report from the manufacturers of over 100

parts per billion, CDC, Dr. McGeehin, has testified over and over

again that he thinks that is an awfully high amount of formaldehyde for people to be living with.

Now, HUD has a different standard, and it is a different number

that people can live with more formaldehyde than what Dr.

McGeehin is pointing out. We have heard complaints that the manufacturer’s study wasn’t adequate, it wasn’t done professionally, it

as only a flash study. I don’t know. We will 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.

Knowing that, they mislead—I believe actually mislead—FEMA

when they said, ‘‘We are not getting complaints,’’ when, in fact,

they were, and we have done some studies, but the impression was

it is not a big problem but we will share our studies with you. So

they had some sense that maybe FEMA wasn’t going to ask, and

they would share it, I presume, if they were asked, but FEMA

didn’t ask, which is not a good point for FEMA, and the trailer

manufacturer didn’t share the information but seemed to say we

have some studies but we haven’t had any complaints.

If what they knew is that it was more than 100 parts per billion,

and they knew it was way in excess of that, they should have had

some suspicious—in fact, I believe they had some suspicions that

people were at risk.

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. Mr. Chairman, in the next panel the

companies can take care of themselves, and we ought to ask those

questions there, but there is also ample evidence that in many of

these cases they passed on this information to FEMA and FEMA

either ignored it or didn’t want to address the situation.

As I noted before, almost 99 percent of the temporary units that

were tested by the CDC in Louisiana and Mississippi met the HUD

ambient air targets for formaldehyde standards. And these standards I think were bad standards and we ought to focus on changing

these standards.

Chairman WAXMAN. What kind of an argument is that to make

that the manufacturers knew they met a standard that wasn’t a

good standard, and therefore it was OK for them not to share the

information? I don’t believe they shared the information with

FEMA. They invited FEMA to ask them further information.

FEMA never asked.

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. Well, we can settle that with the next

panel, but if you are holding contractors to some moving standard,

I don’t think you will ever get anybody to do business with the

Government again. That is the difficulty.

Chairman WAXMAN. Whether this is a standard or not, I think

a manufacturer of a product has a responsibility not to harm the

people using the product.

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. We all agree with that. There is no question about that. But the question here is, if you are meeting a

standard and it is the wrong standard, is that the Government’s

fault for setting the wrong standard or is it the contractors’ probVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:19 Apr 06, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00116 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\47995.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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lem for meeting a standard? I think we can have that argument,

but you seem to want to put ex post facto standards into account,

and I don’t think that is appropriate.

Chairman WAXMAN. There was no standard. We can all agree to

that. There was no standard for them to meet.

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. Well, there was a HUD standard, and

they met it 99 percent of the time. But we can have this discussion

with the next panel. It is not my intention to defend anybody.

Chairman WAXMAN. They have test results over 2,000 and 4,000

parts per billion, which is over and above any of the standards, all

of the standards. It is worse than any of the——

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. Mr. Chairman, there was no finding of

any delivered trailer that had anything close to that, as Dr.

McGeehin has testified. The highest standards they had is I think

you had a couple over 500.

Chairman WAXMAN. I am talking about what the manufacturers

reported.

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. I am talking about what they delivered

to the Government. That is what we are talking about, not what

they found in reports.

Chairman WAXMAN. Well, Mr. Tierney’s time has expired and it

is now Mr. Clay’s opportunity to pursue questions.

Mr. CLAY. I am so glad I have some time left, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you. Last winter CDC tested levels of formaldehyde in a

group of randomly selected travel trailers and mobile homes. CDC

finalized its report on these testing results just last week.

Doctor, CDC found that trailers manufactured by Forest River,

Gulf Stream, Keystone, and Pilgrim all had elevated levels of formaldehyde; is that right?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Yes, sir.

Mr. CLAY. The CDC study states that formaldehyde levels tend

to be higher in newly constructed trailers and during warmer

weather; is that correct?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Yes, sir. That is pretty well accepted.

Mr. CLAY. So, in your expert opinion, would the elevated levels

that CDC discovered in the winter of 2007 been even higher 2

years ago in 2005?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Yes, sir.

Mr. CLAY. And, in your expert opinion, would the formaldehyde

levels that CDC discovered in the winter of 2007 have been even

higher during the summer?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Temperature and humidity are direct drivers of

formaldehyde levels, so I would say yes, sir.

Mr. CLAY. The CDC study provides us with a spapshot of what

families were exposed to last winter, but when we account for the

passage of time and temperature fluctuations, these families were

likely exposed to even higher levels of formaldehyde than indicated

in your report; is that correct?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Yes, sir. That is in our report.

Mr. CLAY. It is in your report?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Yes, sir. That exact language is in our report.

Mr. CLAY. You know, what is so troubling about the decision by

Gulf Stream not to inform the residents of its testing more than

2 years ago is the fact that no one was made aware who lived in

114

these trailers and mobile homes. Gulf Stream found that every

trailer it tested had formaldehyde levels higher than 100 parts per

billion and found that some had as high as 500 parts per billion.

We all know that FEMA failed miserably in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. But these poor hurricane victims have now

been subjected to a second disaster and years of unnecessary and

harmful exposure to a known carcinogen.

Do you think they should have been notified a little sooner?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Again, sir, I will say what I said in the beginning, that as much information as could be given to residents about

effects that might be harmful to them is a good thing. I mean, we

believe in disseminating that sort of information. I am not commenting on any of the results that we are talking about because

I haven’t seen the testing methodology, but your question is that

sort of knowledge is a good thing for people to have, yes.

Mr. CLAY. Is there a difference in a family taking a weekend trip

in one of these homes or camping out in the homes as compared

to someone living in the homes for over a year?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Dramatically different. Yes, sir.

Mr. CLAY. Dramatically different. And have you documented any

of that?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. No, but, again, when we go back to you are looking at exposure to environmental contaminants, which I have done

for the last 25 years, you are looking at two basic things: the intensity of exposure and the duration of exposure. These units weren’t

designed or built for people to live in for 21⁄2 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 are outside. They are hiking. They are camping.

If we are talking about these units being used on large lots

where people who are living with their children 24 hours a day,

both the intensity and duration of exposure is high.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you for your response.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back.

Mr. ISSA. Would the gentleman yield?

Mr. CLAY. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. ISSA. Just for full disclosure, since you said it would be good

for us to know, and I think you are right, I want to reiterate that

in the room we are in right now we are at 80 parts per billion

based on measuring with your gold standard meter, so please be

aware that you are breathing at that level, and if you need to leave

let us know if anyone needs to leave early.

Mr. MCGEEHIN. What sampling methodology was that?

Mr. ISSA. I don’t know what sampling methodology. That was a

direct read instrument.

Chairman WAXMAN. What is the sampling methodology that we

are being told——

Mr. ISSA. It was the same methodology as Gulf Stream, and that

was the reason that our staff did it and got the 40 to 80, depending

upon what part of the Capitol you are in. I just wanted everyone

to be aware that we could be off plus or minus 19 percent, but we

do want people to know that this carpet apparently, along with

anything else that has been put in this over the years, that it

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emits. We apparently are well beyond the 16. I think full disclosure, you are absolutely right.

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. Mr. Chairman, people in the anteroom

will be relieved they are not here in the main room.

Chairman WAXMAN. The gentleman’s time has expired.

All members of the committee have asked questions, and Mr.

Donnelly is with us, and I want to give him any opportunity he

wishes to take at this point.

Mr. DONNELLY. I want to thank the chairman for letting me be

present today. I will submit a written statement for the record. I

want to thank the ranking member, as well.

I guess I want to thank the chairman also for inviting FEMA.

I think FEMA’s absence here to explain their standards and their

actions, that they really have eliminated a part of the answer here.

I wish that they were, in fact, present.

Dr. McGeehin, 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?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. It depends on which you are talking about. The

occupied trailer study had parts of trailers in it that were off the

lot, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Labs had two spec trailers

and two off-the-lot trailers.

Mr. DONNELLY. Ones that were just being sold at, like, Maryland

Trailer Sales, or nothing special that was built for FEMA, but, in

fact, was regular production?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Off-the-lot trailers. That is my understanding.

Mr. DONNELLY. Did you test those?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. We did. They were part of both studies.

Mr. DONNELLY. Did you find any difference between off-the-lot

trailers and trailers that were designed for FEMA?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Well, 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 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

generalized because that would be a mistake and it would be taking the science beyond what it was designed to be.

Mr. DONNELLY. Did you know of any different production standards for——

Mr. MCGEEHIN. I don’t know that.

Mr. DONNELLY [continuing]. Trailers that were used for families

in Louisiana or Mississippi or trailers that were simply shipped to

dealers who have been dealers for years of these companies?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. 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.

Mr. DONNELLY. Let me ask you this: 44 components were tested.

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Forty-five.

Mr. DONNELLY. Forty-five. Forty-four met all HUD standards?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Right.

116

Mr. DONNELLY. OK. And did FEMA provide, as far as you know,

any standards to these companies in regards to formaldehyde to

follow?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. It seems that everybody on the committee is

more familiar with the correspondence between FEMA and the

manufacturers than I am, so I really can’t answer that. I am not

aware of that, and you are all probably more aware of it than I.

Mr. DONNELLY. So you don’t know of any standards that were

violated in any way in regards to formaldehyde?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. I can’t really comment on that. I don’t know of

anything about that at all.

Mr. DONNELLY. Let me ask you this: in regards to the Tulane

study, do you know anything unique that would have been about

site-built homes that were tested in that study?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. I do not know anything unique about the sitebuilt homes.

Mr. DONNELLY. And the results of 370 parts per billion is, in fact,

higher than what some of the trailers were at; isn’t that correct?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Sure. Yes.

Mr. DONNELLY. So I guess one other question is: why didn’t we

test site-built homes also?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Well, there have been a number of very large

studies that tested site-built homes around the country, well-done

studies.

Mr. DONNELLY. In regards to the Katrina situation?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Well, it doesn’t have to be in regards to the

Katrina situation. There are site-built homes, and they were tested

with the same methodology that we used, and those results are

comparable.

Mr. DONNELLY. Well, what I am asking is, in regards to homes

in the Katrina region at the same time that these trailers were

down there, was there any test done to compare——

Mr. MCGEEHIN. No.

Mr. DONNELLY [continuing]. The levels of those homes as opposed to the levels of the trailers?

Mr. MCGEEHIN. No. The report is as it was: 519 occupied FEMAsupplied trailers.

Mr. DONNELLY. OK.

Mr. Chairman, thank you very much, sir.

Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you, Mr. Donnelly.

Dr. McGeehin, thank you very much for your testimony. We very

much appreciate it. If there are further questions, we may submit

them in writing to you for a response for the record.

Mr. MCGEEHIN. Thank you for the opportunity.

Chairman WAXMAN. Our next panelists will consist of the following individuals: Mr. Jim Shea, Jr. Mr. Shea is the chairman of Gulf

Stream Coach and has been with Gulf Stream 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 Fenech is the president and chief executive officer of

Keystone RV. Keystone RV is a subsidiary of Thor Industries.

And then Mr. Peter Liegl is president of Forest River. He founded the company in 1996.

117

We welcome each of you to our hearing today. Your prepared

statements will be put into the record in their entirety. We will ask

each of you to limit your oral presentation to 5 minutes. There is

a little device on the table that will turn green for 4 minutes, yellow for the last minute, and then turn red when the time is up.

When you see that it is red, you should realize your time is up and

try to make your concluding comments.

It is the practice of this committee that all witnesses who testify

before us do so under oath, so please rise and raise your right

hands and I will administer an oath to you.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Chairman WAXMAN. The record will indicate that each of the witnesses answered in the affirmative.

Mr. Shea, why don’t we start with you.

STATEMENTS OF JIM SHEA, CHAIRMAN, GULF STREAM

COACH, INC.; STEVE BENNETT, PRESIDENT, PILGRIM INTERNATIONAL, INC.; RONALD J. FENECH, PRESIDENT, KEYSTONE RV, INC.; AND PETER LIEGL, PRESIDENT AND CEO,

FOREST RIVER, INC.

STATEMENT OF JIM SHEA

Mr. SHEA. Good morning, Chairman Waxman, Ranking Member

Davis. My name is Jim Shea and I am 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 brief

opening remarks, but ask that my full statement be made part of

the hearing record.

Gulf Stream is a small-town American company committed to

manufacturing quality recreational vehicles for its customers. Our

travel trailers are built by hard-working, dedicated Americans in

the heartland of our Nation. Safety is a key component to our success.

Just 2 days before Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, Gulf

Stream received an urgent call from FEMA to provide 25,000 travel

trailers to house possible hurricane victims. Gulf Stream was prepared to meet FEMA’s critical request, because at the time we were

the only manufacturer approved for rail shipment of travel trailers.

Almost every year since 1992, FEMA has purchased Gulf Stream

Postal products from independent dealers to respond to natural disasters. In 2005 for the first time FEMA contracted directly with

Gulf Stream to provide a total of 50,000 emergency travel trailers.

It is important to note that FEMA’s specifications did not include

any requirement with respect to formaldehyde emission levels.

The FEMA travel trailers we manufactured followed the same

specifications as those we delivered to hurricane victims in 2004.

In order to meet FEMA’s urgent request, Gulf Stream ramped up

its production capacity and realigned its plant operations immediately upon receipt of the purchase order. We took special care to

provide safe and quality product for the hurricane victims who

temporarily were going to live in the travel trailers. Our FEMA

units had four emergency egress windows instead of the required

minimum of two. It was Gulf Stream’s practice to do additional life

safety systems testing, including electrical, gas supply, smoke deVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:19 Apr 06, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00121 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\47995.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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tection, and carbon monoxide detection beyond what we would do

for our regular production for regular customers.

In addition to what was routinely performed on the units for the

manufactured public, and FEMA inspectors were onsite at our Indiana plants during the manufacturing process, and FEMA performed inspections at the hurricane zone staging areas. Furthermore, Gulf Stream had representatives onsite in Louisiana to do

additional inspections after shipment.

Today, just as when we produced travel trailers for FEMA, there

are no Federal standards governing formaldehyde in the manufacture of travel trailers. The lack of such a standard leaves our industry with no clear definitive guidance on the issue. Although

there are still no formaldehyde standards for covering travel trailers, Gulf Stream in 2007 voluntarily adopted the stringent product

standard for formaldehyde emissions proposed by the California Air

Resources Board. To our knowledge, Gulf Stream is the first RV

company to receive a third-party certification of our applicable

wood materials documentation, control processes, and related verification testing.

Even without a Federal standard, Gulf Stream has had a longstanding policy to purchase wood products that satisfy the HUD

low-formaldehyde emissions level for manufactured housing, even

though HUD standards do not apply to the manufacture of travel

trailers.

Several design aspects of our travel trailers also increased ventilation beyond what was required by the FEMA specifications.

Gulf Stream received the first complaint regarding formaldehyde

concerning these FEMA travel trailers in March 2006. Obviously,

we were concerned about the complaints and tried 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 Gulf Stream received regarding its

travel trailers, but were instructed by FEMA in May 2006 not to

directly contact trailer occupants; third, we attempted to gather information on ways to identify and reduce ambient levels of formaldehyde through better ventilation solutions and processes; fourth,

we provided FEMA representatives with information related to

ventilation of travel trailers and other measures to reduce formaldehyde levels for sensitive people; fifth, we offered to participate

with FEMA in joint testing of the travel trailers. FEMA did not accept our offer to do so; and sixth, we offered to share with FEMA

the results of some informal, non-scientific screenings of FEMA-occupied travel trailers performed in late March and April 2006.

FEMA did not accept our offer.

Gulf Stream 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 FEMA with any resident

concerns.

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, on behalf of Gulf

Stream and our dedicated employees, that concludes my opening

remarks. I am happy to answer your questions the members of the

committee may have.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Shea follows:]

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Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Shea.

Mr. Bennett.

Mr. BENNETT. I have no opening statement.

Chairman WAXMAN. No opening statement.

Mr. Fenech.

STATEMENT OF RONALD J. FENECH

Mr. FENECH. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, my

name is Ron Fenech and I am proud to be here this morning to

represent the 3,000 men and women who work assembling recreational vehicles for Keystone RV and our thousands of customers.

After the Gulf Coast hurricanes of 2005, as with all Americans,

our employees sympathized with the hundreds of thousands of people who overnight found themselves homeless. Emergency workers

were faced with an incredible challenge as they scrambled to rescue

survivors, account for the missing, to feed those in need, and there

was an immediate critical need for basic shelter.

We have been invited here today to discuss the CDC finding with

regard to formaldehyde in trailers. When it comes to assessing safe

levels of formaldehyde, there is no consistent Government standards. And, as the CDC, itself, stated in its February 2008 formaldehyde report, there is no specific level of formaldehyde that separates safe from dangerous.

The recreational vehicle industry cannot address the formaldehyde issue alone. It is much broader. In fact, the materials that

Keystone uses to assemble its trailers are generally the same types

of materials used in home construction and can be found in local

home improvement stores.

We are looking to the Government to evaluate the science and

provide industry with the uniform standard. Once that standard

has been developed, we hope the home construction industry will

join us in adopting that standard. Together, these actions can lead

to a workable national approach to this issue.

We join with others in applauding the recent announcement by

the EPA that they will conduct a comprehensive review and will,

we hope, announce a clearly articulated standard that our industry

and our suppliers can follow. Until then, we have not and we will

not stand by idly. The Recreational Vehicle Industry Association

has recently announced compulsory standards that require manufacturers to build all units using CARB compliant wood by January

1, 2009, and CARB certified wood by July 1, 2010. And at Keystone

we intend to beat those deadlines. We have informed our suppliers

that as quickly as possible we will only purchase supplies that

meet CARB standards.

Hurricane Katrina was the worst natural disaster in modern

U.S. history. Hundreds of thousands of Americans needed temporary shelter, and I am proud to say that our industry was part

of the solution. I sincerely hope that there will never again be another disaster that requires our vehicles to be used under such extreme conditions for such lengthy periods 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 that may

arise.

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With that, I thank the committee for the opportunity to appear

here today and to answer any questions that you may have.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Fenech follows:]

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Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Fenech.

Mr. Liegl.

STATEMENT OF PETER LIEGL

Mr. LIEGL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. My name is Peter Liegl. I am president of Forest River. On

behalf of more than 5,000 employees, thank you for the chance so

we can tell you about what our company does. I am especially

proud to tell you how Forest River workers pitched in to help the

victims of Hurricane Katrina.

We started Forest River in 1996. It began in the part of 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, 12 years

later, we currently have 5,000 employees who work in more than

60 locations. Forest River has plants in Indiana, California, Michigan, Texas, Georgia, and Oregon. Last year we built and sold over

100,000 units. We are still learning and we are still improving. Our

folks still work hard and still care what they do.

They cared in 2004 when hurricanes hit Florida. Forest River

employees built 800 units to FEMA’s specifications, and our folks

were proud. We never received a complaint about one of them.

They cared in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina and Rita devastated

the Gulf Coast. Like other Americans, Forest River employees

wanted to help, and, again, they did. This time we were asked to

build 35,000 RVs. We had to decide what made sense for our workers, our suppliers, our dealers, and our customers, so our team at

Forest River came up with a production schedule that would allow

us to build 5,000 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 they do for the product they build every

day. The quality was the same as all the other units we build.

The units we built for the Gulf Coast received the RVIA seal because they met RVIA standards.

Of course, our folks couldn’t build these 5,000 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 and the

years after Katrina.

Today’s hearing involves formaldehyde. We all know there is

some formaldehyde in wood products, carpeting, fabrics used in the

RVs. It 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 where 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 formaldehyde that are safe or not safe. 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 Forest River’s experience.

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First, formaldehyde has not historically been an issue. Over the

dozen years we have been in business, we have made and sold over

one million units. Out of 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 formaldehyde 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

manufacturer’s end.

Given that experience, literally less than a handful of instances

of this sort out of a million units, I think you can understand why

I say that formaldehyde has not historically been an issue with

Forest River products and customers.

The second point is we have not been sitting idly by waiting for

doctors and scientists 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 stricter formaldehyde standard for wood products even

before it was recommended in the industry, which we have done.

In closing, I want to thank you again for your allowing us to

share Forest River’s story. Our employees are proud of the product

we make and the company they have helped build.

I must also tell you candidly that many of our workers are now

confused and hurt about the charges about the quality of RVs, but

they know when it comes to Forest River products nothing can be

further from the truth. But I think they also have the faith, as I

do, that responsible people will be fair and will make the decisions

on fact.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and the committee, for letting me tell

you my story. I will answer any questions that you might have.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Liegl follows:]

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Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you, Mr. Liegl.

We are now going to recognize Members to ask questions for 5

minutes apiece, and I will start off the questions.

Mr. Shea, I wrote to Gulf Stream on February 14th of this year

and I asked your company’s help in understanding why a Gulf

Stream travel trailer sold to FEMA would have high levels of formaldehyde, and I want to read what Gulf Stream said in response

to my question on March 7th. Here is what they said: ‘‘Gulf Stream

respectfully disagrees with the premise of the committee’s question,

i.e., that formaldehyde levels in the trailers it sold to FEMA following the Gulf Coast hurricanes of 2005 were high.’’

Given what we know now, I find this response astonishing.

In March 2006 trailer occupants began to complain about formaldehyde. On March 21, 2006, Steven Miller of FEMA e-mailed

your brother Dan Shea and asked him if Gulf Stream had ‘‘the capability to put this to bed.’’ Were you aware of this e-mail?

Mr. SHEA. Yes, sir.

Chairman WAXMAN. Your brother responded that he would send

a person to Baton Rouge to test units. From the end of March until

May 2006 Gulf Stream vice president Scott Pullin tested FEMA

trailers. He tested approximately 50 trailers, including 11 occupied

trailers. Mr. Pullin’s test indicated formaldehyde levels at or above

100 parts per billion within every occupied travel trailer he tested;

4 of the 11 occupied trailers had levels above 500 parts per billion.

Mr. Pullin also tested over 25 new Gulf Stream travel trailers

that had not yet been deployed for displaced residents, and over 10

of these trailers contained formaldehyde levels in excess of 900

parts per billion. One Gulf Stream trailer had formaldehyde levels

of 2,690 parts per billion.

In 2006, Gulf Stream knew better than anyone that formaldehyde levels in the travel trailers it made for FEMA were high, and

just last week the Centers for Disease Control confirmed that even

in the winter of 2007 and 2008 56 percent of Gulf Stream’s travel

trailers had elevated levels of formaldehyde.

I have one question for you, Mr. Shea. Do you still disagree that

formaldehyde levels in FEMA’s Gulf Stream trailers were high?

Mr. SHEA. Well, Mr. Chairman, when I reviewed the CDC report,

the most recent CDC report on occupied trailers, I see that our levels of occupied units fell——

Chairman WAXMAN. We cannot hear you.

Mr. SHEA. Yes. I would just like to repeat, sir, that what we saw

in the occupied unit testing that the CDC did was that our units

fell in what they would term the intermediate level.

Chairman WAXMAN. How about your own testing?

Mr. SHEA. We did not do testing, sir. We used an informal device,

a screening device. It is not a scientific device. It is not accepted

by NIOSH. It is not accepted by any organization. It could have

been used by anyone, any company, any agency. It is not testing,

sir. It is a screening device that picks up many other components,

chemical components. It is not testing.

Chairman WAXMAN. 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?

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Mr. SHEA. Let me tell you, we were a proactive company, sir.

One of the first things we did—in fact, Mr. Pullin, a long-time technical employee, vice president of this company went into the field,

was in the field on other matters, and he canvassed and talked to

other occupants, to varied trailer residents. They 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.

Now, at the time that he did quickly take a snapshot deployment

with this tool, it was screening. It was not testing. It was a quick

snapshot that would have reflected anything that the residents

would have done in the unit at the time.

I remind you that they were not complaining. There were not

symptoms. He also——

Chairman WAXMAN. Well, you did have some complaints, because

I just read one of the complaints. In fact, one of the people said

please, please, please help me. I have this formaldehyde, and it is

causing problems in my breathing—to paraphrase it.

Mr. SHEA. Yes, sir. I would like to——

Chairman WAXMAN. And, notwithstanding that, you did the testing and you told FEMA you didn’t get any complaints, and you told

them you got some test results, but you didn’t tell them what they

were. They didn’t ask. You told them if they asked, then you would

share it. But your own test results showed high levels of formaldehyde.

Mr. SHEA. Yes. I would like to set the record straight there, sir.

We communicated with FEMA. Actually, we asked FEMA, Do you

have any complaints? We wanted to assist. We wanted to visit people. We wanted to lend whatever we could for sensitized individuals. We had three complaints come in directly to ourselves in that

March period after the initial news reports, and we investigated all

three of them. Then in mid-May, after we had asked FEMA for

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 complained on odor from an 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 from FEMA.

Chairman WAXMAN. Mr. Shea, my time is up, but I do want to

tell you that if you have done some kind of testing and you see the

kind of high levels, even over 2,000 parts per billion, in some of

your trailers, the response, I think, of a responsible businessman

should have been to test further, to find out what is going on, to

take some kind of responsible action and not to come before Congress and say FEMA 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 is what you didn’t do. You didn’t do more tests. You

didn’t tell FEMA there is a problem. And you didn’t take the action

that I would think would be a responsible action of a responsible

business.

Mr. SHEA. I would love to respond to that, sir. Sir, there is a difference here between testing and screening. There is a difference

between unoccupied units and occupied units. We did unoccupied

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unit 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 unoccupied screenings because we could generally screen for how indoor air quality changed. I would remind

you there are many components, as Dr. McGeehin said, in indoor

air. This unit would have been sensitive to many of them. So what

we were able to do is we could advise FEMA better. Our counsel

asked us to make sure what we said to FEMA was as accurate as

possible. We tested the performance of the ventilation systems that

we provided with the unit, plus some optional systems to help with

sensitive individuals.

There is a difference between what we did with occupied units

versus the screenings of unoccupied units.

Chairman WAXMAN. My time is over. I am just going to say it

sounds like you handled it very carefully as a public relations and

as a legal problem, but I think you had more of a responsibility to

the health of the people that were living in your trailers.

Mr. Davis.

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. I would yield my 5 minutes to Mr.

Souder.

Mr. SOUDER. And I would ask the chairman to be generous if I

go over just a little bit, as well.

First I want to welcome all of you as fellow Hoosiers and having

huge facilities in my District and employing lots of people who are

already hundreds losing their jobs because of the gas prices, the

mileage restrictions, the ability to get vehicles that can tow. Ten

percent of Americans of some sort of vehicle. Most are from northern Indiana and Congressman Donnelly and my Districts. It is the

danger of how we do something like this is, as our guys try to meet

these standards, try to follow whatever the Government says, you

have inspectors on your sites, you just push these kind of jobs to

China where they don’t meet these kind of inspections, where there

is no conscience, and we wonder why we lose American jobs.

It is incredibly frustrating. We all want to find out what the

truth is.

Mr. Shea, wasn’t FEMA at the plants all day?

Mr. SHEA. I am sorry, sir?

Mr. SOUDER. Weren’t they at your facilities all day?

Mr. SHEA. Yes. During the course of our production, as I understand, because we were a direct manufacturer, they had an inspector in each Indiana plant every day receiving units as they came

offline and inspecting them.

Mr. SOUDER. Without getting into confidential information, and

I am not asking you to disclose this, but the type of test you did

on these trailers, how expensive was it to take the desiccator test

that you did that is not the gold standard, that has a wide variation of accuracy?

Mr. SHEA. This is a device that is called a formaldemeter. It is

not a scientific tool. It is not really what they would call a desiccator test, which is another imprecise type of testing. This is a quick

snatch method, and it is just a screening tool. If you look in the

directions to the piece of equipment, it is a screening tool. It doesn’t

claim to be a testing tool. It tells you that there are other components that it absorbs.

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Our individual wasn’t experienced in using it. It did provide

some benefit in terms of seeing how indoor air changes occurred,

but it is certainly not testing, and we didn’t employ that. And certainly at our plant location with FEMA inspectors there was no

issue about that. It was never an issue with FEMA inspectors. This

was during the time that we were producing these units.

Mr. SOUDER. Would this have been an expensive test for FEMA

to conduct?

Mr. SHEA. Well, anybody could have used one of these devices,

any organization. FEMA did OSHA testing in fall of 2005, so they

were familiar with closed-up units, unoccupied units. They did

more OSHA testing, I think the record shows, in March, late

March, after this became an issue. I think those results are available. So they knew what closed-up, sealed-up units that had been

cycled to 80 to 100 degrees of hot boxes would do. Any structure

that was closed up, even a house that was closed up and sealed up

and cycled to 80 to 100 degrees would have decreased indoor air

quality. There is just no two ways about it.

Mr. SOUDER. Well, the scary thing about if we are not careful in

hearings and we aren’t trying to look at fundamental questions

with accurate science, one of our challenges here is that I met with

9 of the 10 companies named in the early lawsuit total. They had

the three complaints that you had talked about. Then the lawsuits

started, and all of the sudden legal liability starts. Now you are

being criticized for doing a very simple test that could have been

done by the Government, and the question comes: what employer

or company in America is going to expose themselves to voluntary

cooperation if this is the end result, that the proliferation of suits

all over America right now—you know, people say, I heard in

Katrina, I read in the newspaper, I heard on TV, not on any

science, as we are learning. The 390 parts per billion, we keep sliding between parts per million and parts per billion, 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?

Mr. SHEA. Sir, this is an incredible quandary. We have seen a

specification—it is not a standard—put forth by FEMA in their latest standards. It is 16 parts per billion. Of course, very recent studies with new technology show that this is within the range of

human breath. This is within the range of normal human breath,

what people normally breathe out from their normal metabolism,

irrespective of what is in the air.

Well, 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 from user sources that would double or triple this

specification. This company would never take that liability on, sir.

Mr. SOUDER. Within the broad definitions of 5 minutes I have

one more supplemental question. You have done FEMA before. It

has been a significant part of your business.

Mr. SHEA. Yes. We have provided units through dealerships since

1992. FEMA came directly to us and asked us for a direct

quotation and proposal at the beginning of this hurricane before

the hurricane actually hit New Orleans.

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Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you, Mr. Souder. Your time has expired.

Mr. Cummings.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Shea, you know, I know the chairman referenced a letter

from a lady in which she said, ‘‘There is an odor in my trailer that

will not go away.’’

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman.

Mr. CUMMINGS. ‘‘It burns my eyes, and I am getting headaches

every day. I have tried many things, but nothing seems to work.

Please, please help me.’’ You are familiar with that, are you not,

Mr. Shea?

Mr. SHEA. It would be helpful for me to see the exact customer

that you refer to, sir. That would refresh my memory.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Well, you heard the words. If that was your wife,

would you be concerned about her living in a trailer?

Mr. SHEA. I can give you the letter that we responded to, sir, to

FEMA. When we got that report and we communicated with

FEMA, my recollection is it was with regard to a Mr. Reeser.

Mr. CUMMINGS. OK.

Mr. SHEA. Here is what we said, if I can quote.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Very briefly, because I have a lot of questions

and a little bit of time.

Mr. SHEA. Yes, sir. ‘‘I do want to take the opportunity to reinforce our position previously communicated to FEMA that Gulf

Stream is ready, willing, and able to work with FEMA with regard

to any complaint, including sending a representative within 24

hours to work with your contractors to inspect, test . . .’’——

Mr. CUMMINGS. Good.

Mr. SHEA [continuing]. ‘‘—or do whatever is reasonably necessary

to . . ’’——

Mr. CUMMINGS. Mr. Shea, you are coming right where I want you

to be, because I want to talk about some of your correspondence,

not in addition to what you just read. I would like to share with

you what Gulf Stream disclosed to FEMA—and I know you are familiar with this—related to formaldehyde in its travel trailers in

May 2006. It has been referenced quite a bit here. And Gulf

Stream sent a letter to FEMA and said, ‘‘We want to followup on

our recent conversations regarding the travel trailers supplied to

FEMA. We would like to reiterate our willingness to assist you in

addressing any concerns about our products. Our informal testing

has indicated formaldehyde levels of indoor ambient air of occupied

trailers far below, for instance, the OSHA standard of .75 parts per

million, 750 parts per billion. We are willing to share these informal test results with you and, as mentioned during our meeting,

if FEMA wishes to conduct formal testing protocols on any designated units, we are willing to participate in that testing.’’

Now, you spent a lot of time, I am 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 a formaldehyde problem, or are you saying that your testing did not show a problem?

Mr. SHEA. Well, sir, going back to the framework of the time,

there were two regulatory standards that I was familiar with. One

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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 were the two. Those are the two now. There

was one that came up in the press. That was referenced as a .1

EPA ‘‘safety level’’ by some activist groups. But when I looked that

up it said above this level sensitive individuals may experience

symptoms. It wasn’t a safety level, and I did ask some experts did

EPA have a standard. They told me that EPA didn’t have an outdoor standard for formaldehyde at the time, it didn’t have an indoor standard for formaldehyde at the time.

So in terms of how——

Mr. CUMMINGS. You understand that before you sent that letter

that the CDC had said that they thought that the levels of 100

were dangerous? You knew that, right? You didn’t know that? I see

people shaking their heads behind you.

Mr. SHEA. I have no recollection of—the CDC came out with

their interim report and took a position. The original ATSDR position was that after the EPA testing that was done in the fall was

that .3 parts per million was acceptable. They changed that later,

but that was well after this time, sir. That was in 2007. That was

in, like, February 2007 after EPA did testing of unoccupied units

in September 2006.

Mr. CUMMINGS. So this is not the record on April 24, 2006, Gulf

Stream’s outside counsel sent both Jim and Dan Shea a 1997 document created by the Consumer Product Safety Commission entitled, ‘‘An Update on Formaldehyde.’’ The document included the

following information: formaldehyde is a colorless, strong-smelling

gas. When present in air at levels above .1 ppm it can cause watery

eyes, burning sensations in the eyes and nose and throat, nausea,

coughing, chest tightening, wheezing, sick skin rashes, and allergic

reactions. You are saying that is not accurate? Is that what you are

saying?

Mr. SHEA. That is the language that came off of the EPA sensitivity recommendation. As I recall, sir, that is for sensitive individuals. And we have always been concerned to help with any individuals that had sensitivities. We know that there are sensitive

people, sir.

Mr. CUMMINGS. All right.

Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you, Mr. Cummings.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman WAXMAN. Your time has expired.

Mr. Burton.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

This home test kit, this formaldemeter, how accurate is that?

Mr. SHEA. Well, sir, it varies. It can be up and down. if you

sprayed an air freshener and then took a screening it would be

eight parts per million sometimes. It is reactive to ethanol, methanol, phenol, all kinds of things. It is an indicator of air flows, ventilation, but in terms of absolute testing, nobody would accept it.

NIOSH doesn’t accept it. It is not acceptable in a court of law.

Some people may be more accurate than others. Our individual

wasn’t well trained in this or trained in calibrating it.

Mr. BURTON. So it is an indicator, but it is not really scientific?

Mr. SHEA. It is an indicator that formaldehyde is likely present.

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Mr. BURTON. Now, in these 11 units that were checked with the

formaldemeter, there were four that were above 500, but the other

seven were below the 500 level?

Mr. SHEA. That is correct, sir.

Mr. BURTON. But that wasn’t scientific?

Mr. SHEA. No, it wasn’t scientific. Of course, we recognize that

if anybody had smoked a cigarette an hour before or cooked or

something, that influences the level, but what our main thing was,

these people were very happy. One person was described by Mr.

Pullin as being ecstatic that he finally had a place where he could

go to, a refuge, something that was air conditioned, a totally selfcontained living unit, and everyone was happy. There were 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—Mr. Pullin did—to revisit

with these people in that late April period before we asked FEMA

to come in and talk to them further about these canvassing that

we did.

Mr. BURTON. You know, I don’t think you can answer this question, any of you, but if I took a HUD-produced house or HUD-funded house—and there are an awful lot of them around this country

right now that are vacant—and you closed it up, and you left it

closed in very hot weather for, say, a couple of weeks or longer,

would the parts per billion be equivalent to what you saw in a mobile home, manufactured housing?

Mr. SHEA. I do know this, sir: any structure, if you close it up,

seal it up, cycle the temperature to 80 to 100 degrees, you are

going to have a reduction of indoor air quality. There will be higher

levels of chemical constituents, especially if you have attached garage with a car in it. 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.

Mr. BURTON. And you used the kind of materials that are used

in just about any kind of construction in these?

Mr. SHEA. The highest users of these composite wood products,

like particle board, MDF, 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 RV industry and the manufacturing housing industry only use less than 1 percent of these kind of products.

Mr. BURTON. The point I am trying to make is you are not using

anything out of the ordinary in producing these products; you are

using what is normal in construction?

Mr. SHEA. These products are used in furniture making, cabinetry, home building.

Mr. BURTON. Let me just say I am going to yield to my colleague,

Mr. Issa from California, but I just want to say I have known the

Shea family probably for 30 years, and I know their business, and,

Mr. Chairman, I want you to know they have impeccable credentials as far as conducting their business in an honorable way in Indiana. I don’t represent that area, but I want you to know that I

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don’t think they would ever do anything intentionally to harm the

health of any individual.

With that I yield to Mr. Issa.

Mr. ISSA. I thank the gentleman.

Mr. Bennett, how many people does your company employ typically?

Mr. BENNETT. Right now we employ approximately 100 people.

Mr. ISSA. About 100. And, Mr. Shea, how many would you have

had at the peak of production for FEMA? How many people would

you have employed?

Mr. SHEA. I would estimate about 2,000 people, sir.

Mr. ISSA. About 2,000. So we are looking at companies of 5,000,

3,000, 100, and 2,000, and I noticed that in the information that

I received we only have two people that have made complaints,

both about your company, Mr. Shea, and they seem to be about

only one thing, which is the question about Norboard being made

in China and that being the source of a lot of these problems. Earlier people talked about imported Chinese products. Do you know

where Norboard is made? And do you know if it could be the cause

of the problem?

Mr. SHEA. Norboard is a product that is made in Deposit, NY.

It is an American product. It is made to what they call an ANSI

standard, which is equivalent to the HUD standard for particle

board. But we asked this company to provide testing documentation on their product, and their product actually tested well below

the standard that they build to. It is actually about over 30 percent

below the standard. And it is almost what the upcoming CARB

standard is for MDF that is upcoming for 2009. It is very close to

that. So this was good product, good American product, and I don’t

know what this individual was referring to relative to——

Chairman WAXMAN. The gentleman’s time has expired. We will

come back to you, Mr. Issa, in a minute.

Mr. Danny Davis.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Shea, let me try and make sure I understand your testimony. How many Katrina-related trailers did your company build

and supply to FEMA during this process?

Mr. SHEA. Sir, we had two contracts. Each was for 25,000 units,

sir.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Did you actually build and supply or sell

to FEMA those 25,000 units?

Mr. SHEA. Yes, we did, sir.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Did I understand you to suggest or to say

that prior to the CNN new report, that you had only heard of possibly three expressions of concern, one which turned out to be a

faulty connection of a sewer line?

Mr. SHEA. Sir, I am not sure as far as the CNN report. The timeframe that I was referring to was a report that came out of Bay

St. Louis on an individual that was in one of our units, and we contacted FEMA on that individual. They told us, because we wanted

to assist or see what we could do, they said that they couldn’t discuss it for privacy reasons with us, but that they had addressed his

concerns by exchanging for a different trailer.

Now, I am not including that customer, sir, but——

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Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. OK. But you had no information that

would suggest that formaldehyde was a problem in any of these

units?

Mr. SHEA. Before the report that came from Bay St. Louis, this

had not been an issue that we had tried to deal with with agency

FEMA units. Our travel trailers had not been this kind of concern,

so this was surprising to us, very surprising to us when this became an issue in the State of Mississippi at that time.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you. Let me ask you, Mr. Liegl,

how many trailers did your company supply to FEMA?

Mr. LIEGL. We supplied 5,000 to FEMA specs, not directly to

FEMA but through a Government-approved purchaser, and so

5,000 to the FEMA specs, but we also know that FEMA had bought

trailers of Forest River off of dealers’ lots.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Let me just ask, did I understand also

that you were actually invited or there was some discussion that

you could supply 35,000?

Mr. LIEGL. That is correct.

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. And you decided not to do the 35?

Mr. LIEGL. That is also correct.

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. Could you tell us why?

Mr. LIEGL. Well, No. 1, we couldn’t. Doing what we were told to

do by FEMA, they wanted our units to be built in the same standards that we build our typical RV, and so to do that we had to use

the same plants, the same people, the same materials, etc. The

most we could build was 5,000 in the time period they needed

them.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. So you were afraid that you might have

to compromise something if you were to attempt to take on that

contract?

Mr. LIEGL. Yes, sir.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. The 5,000 that you actually built and

sold, did you make any profit different than the profit that you

probably would have made if you sold those to the Danny Davis

Enterprises?

Mr. LIEGL. No. The margin of profit would have been about approximately the same what we made the year before and the years

after.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Let me ask each one of you gentleman

if you would answer directly. Last week the CDC issued a report

about the results of its testing, and ultimately ended up suggesting

that people living in any of these trailers exceeding 500 parts per

billion, that they actually ought to be moved out and that they

ought to move out immediately. Let me ask if you agree with that

statement, and beginning with you, Mr. Shea.

Mr. SHEA. Sir, I don’t recall that 500—my understanding on the

CDC was they really didn’t define a level of when people should

move out; they just recommended——

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. OK. So you couldn’t comment on the

statement that I just made because you wouldn’t be aware of it.

Let me go to the next gentleman.

Mr. BENNETT. I would have to say that until a standard is agreed

upon, that is a difficult question to answer.

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Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. All right. So it is difficult. Let me go to

the next.

Mr. FENECH. Please ask the question again, sir, because I don’t

want to——

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Well, let me just ask this: if you purchased an apple and cannot eat it, do you believe that you ought

to pay for it?

Mr. FENECH. Great question. No, I would probably not want to

pay for that apple.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Well, my point is this: that if there were

trailers that people can’t live in now, that FEMA has purchased,

should the taxpayers be paying for those trailers that cannot be

used for the purposes for which they were purchased.

I thank you, Mr. Chairman, and yield back the balance of my

time.

Chairman WAXMAN. The gentleman’s time has expired.

Mr. Issa.

Mr. ISSA. Thank you.

Mr. Davis, I would be interested to know whether or not we

would make more money on your purchase than on FEMA’s purchase. That could be a whole separate hearing.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. But I am selling apples.

Mr. ISSA. Well, and we don’t know today, unfortunately, whether

or not this is an example of 50,000, 125,000 apples being bought

and we have a couple of bad apples. I have several questions, but

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. And CDC just told us that, in fact,

they only looked at one item and there is no standard for what

level we should move people out of these trailers or how much ventilation would be enough to reduce it, and they weren’t familiar

with the high levels inside fixed homes in these areas of the south,

particularly Louisiana.

So, having said that, I am going to look at you four business people and I am going to try and—I am not saying provide you relief.

I think you will 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 16 parts per billion and given you any new guidance

on how to make trailers if, in fact, a hurricane hits today?

[No response.]

Mr. ISSA. I will take no as the answer. I think I saw a no from

everyone.

Mr. Shea, in your case, speaking about trying to hit this level of

parts per billion that is 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, the

only thing you know of is something that could cause you to say

no bid; is that correct? That if, in fact, 16 parts per billion becomes

the standard, you are going to have to no-bid it because you can’t

meet that standard?

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Mr. SHEA. No, sir, because even if you tested something, and

where we produce in Indiana, the time you moved it to Louisiana,

totally different atmospherics, much more humidity, much more

heat on a constant basis, there is no way. And that doesn’t even

include how residents differ and their use.

Mr. ISSA. You know, I am an electronics manufacturer, so my

background is one in which we have standards for absolutely everything, and I was the chairperson of the Standard and Trade Association, the Consumer Electronics Association, before I came to

Congress. Now, you all four are, I believe, members of the trade association for travel trailers; is that correct?

Mr. SHEA. Yes.

Mr. BENNETT. Correct, sir.

Mr. FENECH. Yes.

Mr. LIEGL. Yes.

Mr. ISSA. OK. And is your association prepared to participate in

standards setting if, in fact, the Government is willing to set standards?

Mr. SHEA. Yes.

Mr. BENNETT. Absolutely.

Mr. FENECH. Yes.

Mr. LIEGL. Yes.

Mr. ISSA. OK. Do you know if your association has reached out

to try to have that engagement? Any one of you that wants to

speak?

Mr. SHEA. I think that is very important to the industry, and

they have said so. They are very interested in being able to have

the kind of standard they can conform to. I am sure they will be

leading the parade as attaining that standard.

Mr. ISSA. So, again, in the spirit of lest 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 of 16 parts per billion is not achievable, and your association

stands ready to work with, on a uniform basis, meeting these

standards both for FEMA and for, as a matter of fact, the consumer public. Is that all correct?

Mr. SHEA. Absolutely.

Mr. BENNETT. Yes.

Mr. FENECH. Yes.

Mr. LIEGL. Yes.

Mr. ISSA. So we have hauled you all in here to talk about a

standard that didn’t exist, that you couldn’t meet because it didn’t

exist, it doesn’t exist today, and we are asking you to defend yourselves because you might have made a profit making trailers that

in many cases were identical or actually were off-the-shelf trailers,

because many of what FEMA bought were off-the-shelf trailers; is

that correct?

Mr. SHEA. Correct.

Mr. BENNETT. Yes.

Mr. FENECH. Yes.

Mr. LIEGL. Yes.

Mr. ISSA. OK. And I yield the remainder of my time to Mr. Burton.

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Mr. BURTON. I just want to ask, I was wondering if we could ask

the EPA to test closed houses in this area down there to see what

the parts per billion are in those houses compared to these motor

homes that were there since Katrina. I think that would be a very

interesting thing, and I would like to ask you, Mr. Chairman, if we

could request that kind of a study.

Chairman WAXMAN. Well, I will certainly take it under submission, but certainly you are free to ask for any information you wish.

Mr. BURTON. I know, but you being chairman I think it would

carry—I will co-request it with you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman WAXMAN. The gentleman’s time has expired.

Ms. Norton.

Ms. NORTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Shea, my question really goes to the duty of the manufacturer. We have spoken about FEMA here. You don’t have to worry

about FEMA. I am Chair of the subcommittee with jurisdiction

over FEMA. This committee has, in addition, had FEMA before us

way before we ever got to you over the past couple of years. My

questions really go to the duty to disclose in a free democratic free

market society when a business wants to avoid liability, when a

business wants to remain in business, when a business wants to

maintain its reputation with the Federal Government and with

customers, generally. I am perplexed by your approach to the 35

unoccupied trailers.

I have a letter here from March 2006, a letter from Gulf Stream

where Gulf Stream was testing 35 unoccupied trailers. Leave aside

the controversy about now standard, what standard, these tests

showed levels in some of these trailers well over 2,000 to 4,000

parts per billion, and I don’t think there is much controversy about

that level. By anyone’s standards that is a dangerous standard,

and I don’t think that is subject to dispute or has been subject to

dispute even here.

Now, Mr. Shea, you began testing in March, and FEMA, of

course, was still in the process of activating its purchase of trailers.

Indeed, after March 2006 when you were testing FEMA actually

continued to activate trailers, thousands, which, of course, ended

up in the Gulf with the results that are under scrutiny here today.

Let me ask you: did Gulf Stream provide FEMA with the vehicle

identification numbers of the trailers that it had tested that had

high levels of formaldehyde so that at the very least FEMA could

ensure that those trailers were not distributed on the Gulf Coast?

Mr. SHEA. Well, there is various e-mails. I think if you look in

the record you will see discussions between FEMA and e-mails between FEMA and Gulf Stream.

Ms. NORTON. Well, we have your letter, and your letter makes

no reference to any results from the unoccupied trailers. Is it your

testimony that you, in fact, told FEMA, e-mailed FEMA, wrote

FEMA about the results in the 35 unoccupied trailers? Did you reveal these 2,000 to 4,000 parts per billion in the unoccupied trailers? I am simply trying to get whether you did or not.

Mr. SHEA. Well, we——

Ms. NORTON. Did you disclose this information or not?

Mr. SHEA. We didn’t conclude that it was relevant, ma’am. We

thought that it was irrelevant information.

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Ms. NORTON. In what sense?

Mr. SHEA. Well, ma’am, we felt it was irrelevant information because, first of all, we provided information to FEMA in that letter

relative to what our experience was with ventilation, what our experience was with looking at ventilation options for sensitive individuals. That——

Ms. NORTON. That is my point. You provided, indeed, in this letter you provided only the information that, of course, would reinforce the continuing purchase and activation of these trailers. I understand what you provided. I am asking you why you thought it

was irrelevant——

Mr. SHEA. Yes, I would love to respond to that.

Ms. NORTON [continuing]. To disclose any information about the

formaldehyde levels in the unoccupied trailers which you, yourself,

were at that moment testing. Why was that irrelevant?

Mr. SHEA. First of all, FEMA had information on unoccupied

units, ma’am. They had done OSHA testing and——

Ms. NORTON. I am talking about your tests. You just said irrelevant.

Mr. SHEA. Yes, we——

Ms. NORTON. And I want to know why it is irrelevant.

Mr. SHEA. It is irrelevant, ma’am, because FEMA knew about

closed-up, tightened-up, heated-up units, what they would have

been testing at, because they had OSHA-certified persons that

went out and did testing well before this.

Ms. NORTON. This was unoccupied trailers about to be distributed to actual human beings on the Gulf Coast. If you had to do

it over again, would you disclose the information on the 35 unoccupied trailers to FEMA?

Mr. SHEA. Anything that would have been helpful to public

health in any kind of retrospect on this, we would have loved to

have been able to shed more light on. We support public health.

But this is looking at it in a retrospective, and our perspective at

the time was——

Ms. NORTON. Well, you haven’t been able to tell us why it was

irrelevant. Indeed, you testified that in retrospect, if I could conclude, in retrospect this could have been helpful to maintain

health. And, you know, my main concern here is not so much with

what appears to be a cover-up, at least of this information, but

with whether or not the companies have learned anything from

this experience. I will try to conclude that your first answer about

irrelevant is not your final answer, and that if you had to do it over

again perhaps it should have been disclosed. That is giving you the

best veneer I can on your answer.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Chairman WAXMAN. The gentlelady’s time has expired.

Mr. Souder.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a couple of points

that I want to make, but I want to followup there.

Mr. Shea, it was not a scientific test; it was a snapshot, and it

was a snapshot of sealed vehicles which could test at any different

range. In retrospect, perhaps it would have been helpful for CDC

to know, but, in fact, they probably wouldn’t have had it be relVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:19 Apr 06, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00164 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\47995.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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evant, either, other than potentially to do more testing, because the

test wasn’t accurate. Wasn’t that what you were trying to say?

Mr. SHEA. Yes. And, if you will remember, the EPA did testing,

certified testing, 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, sealed-up units at

these levels. They didn’t come back and say, Well, everybody needs

to be evacuated from units.

Mr. SOUDER. Because you have certainly said air them out.

Mr. SHEA. They said air them out, and the ATSDR did a report

in February 2007. It wasn’t until occupied unit testing was done 18

months after this approximately letter that Ms. Norton is referring

to that there was a move to what the CDC said, quickly relocate

residents. It wasn’t after this EPA testing that was done well before that showed results in these sealed-up units.

Mr. SOUDER. I wanted to make a comment, and if any of you

want to add to this, there is kind of a misunderstanding in applying the type of industry that has developed predominantly in Elkhart County from other industry associations and why the industry

hasn’t been more proactive. It is basically a startup industry that

was a collection of small companies.

Mr. Liegl, when you started what size was your company?

Mr. LIEGL. Well, when we began it was in 1996 and I began with

20, 30 people.

Mr. SOUDER. And Forest River is now one of the biggest. How

many acquisitions would you say you have made in the last 24

months?

Mr. LIEGL. Acquisitions?

Mr. SOUDER. Yes. In other words, picking up other facilities.

Mr. LIEGL. We primarily grew from being organically grown and

not through acquisition.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Fenech, Keystone came out of other companies

in the area and was one of the most dynamic young companies.

Four now has bought a whole number of companies in the District,

including yours. Mr. Bennett’s historically has been more typical,

fairly small company that, as Government pressure comes in, and

as we have more accountability, one of the byproducts of this is it

is getting harder and harder for somebody to start a company of

90 employees or harder and harder to do what Keystone did without the capital, meeting all the different standards, and there are

consequences to our actions. But in the ability of the association to

fund their own R&D, what we have seen is a consolidation of this

industry into larger companies, because, as you have to do this, you

respond differently.

One of the great entrepreneurial counties—Elkhart County is the

highest percent manufacturing in America, one of the last percent

places.

One other thing that has come up, I have seen it in media reports, are shuttered buildings. I know another company which is

not this, but Utilimaster, when I first visited them, sometimes operating in two buildings and sometimes they are operating in nineVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:19 Apr 06, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00165 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\47995.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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teen buildings, because buildings get shuttered because things are

cyclical. That would be the wide range.

Mr. Shea is a little different, because your company historically

has dealt more with FEMA. Has it always been significant, as opposed to Mr. Liegl is about 5 percent of yours? Is that what the

trailers——

Mr. LIEGL. Correct.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Shea, what percent of FEMA would be a standard and what is your range that the green facilities tend to be

extra cyclical? Could you kind of give an idea of how you go up and

down because of the nature of your business is somewhat different

than some of the others?

Mr. SHEA. Well, some years we provided 500 units to FEMA,

some years we provided 7,000 units to FEMA for hurricane relief.

This was the largest number we ever produced. Obviously, since

that time the industry has gone downward in terms of its overall

production. We have had to adjust to that. This is going to be a

very difficult year for the industry. I have heard five or six companies already go out of business, long-term companies, and some of

the industry segments are down 56 percent. So we do have to make

that kind of adjustment, but our utmost thing is to try to preserve

manufacturing jobs and do everything we can to do that.

Mr. SOUDER. I have just a quick followup to that. The 2,000 figure was used. What would be the range of your employment?

Mr. SHEA. It could range between 1,000 and 2,000.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you.

Chairman WAXMAN. Mr. Jordan.

Mr. JORDAN. I thank the chairman.

I want to thank the panel, too, for coming. I represent the Fourth

District of Ohio. We have Airstream, part of Four Industries, as

well, in our District; Norcold, which I assume is a supplier for some

of you guys. We do appreciate your being here and your industry.

I thought Mr. Issa did a nice summary when we talked about the

standards. You talk about there is no test, there is no standard. In

fact, in the previous panel Dr. McGeehin even said that, I think,

if I got his quote right, the CDC is not a standards-setting agency.

So it is a tough situation that you guys are having to deal with

here.

I wanted to go to, I think, Mr. Liegl’s reference. I didn’t catch all

your opening statements, but Mr. Liegl in his opening statement

talked about his assistance to FEMA in past disasters. I know Mr.

Shea, as well, with Gulf Stream has done that.

Mr. Bennett and Mr. Fenech, have you guys also assisted FEMA

in past hurricanes or past disasters?

Mr. FENECH. We have never had a contract with FEMA, no.

There have been some products that we have supplied, but it has

been through the dealers.

Mr. JORDAN. Mr. Bennett.

Mr. BENNETT. We have never had a contract directly with FEMA.

Mr. JORDAN. OK. So just Gulf Stream and Forest River. In your

past dealings with FEMA, has there ever been problems? Have you

had any complaints? Have things gone fine?

Mr. FENECH. Could I go back? We did not have a direct contract

with FEMA.

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Mr. JORDAN. You sold off your lots?

Mr. FENECH. No. We sold to American Catastrophe, which was

an approved supplier.

Mr. JORDAN. OK.

Mr. FENECH. So it wasn’t a direct deal with FEMA.

Mr. JORDAN. OK. But in your past dealings where your units

have assisted FEMA in dealing with disaster relief, have there

been any problems with those units?

Mr. FENECH. In the past, absolutely none.

Mr. JORDAN. Mr. Shea.

Mr. SHEA. We have had a very excellent relationship with FEMA

over the years. We have had a laudatory letters relative to our performance, and we have worked closely with them.

Mr. JORDAN. And the units that went out with Katrina and Hurricane Rita, the units that were sold there, is it accurate to say

they were the exact same units that you would send to your dealers

and your dealers would sell to any citizen or any family who came

to purchase those?

Mr. FENECH. Yes, sir.

Mr. JORDAN. Mr. Liegl.

Mr. LIEGL. Definitely.

Mr. JORDAN. Mr. Shea, same units?

Mr. SHEA. We were the only manufacturer that was approved for

rail transport, which was important to FEMA, and I think they

shipped about 25,000 of our units by rail, so our units do have differences beyond what would be normal for our regular production.

There are some differences, but all the products use composite

wood products like particle board and MDF and hardwood plywood.

I mean, that is very much the same for all of them.

Mr. JORDAN. And then Mr. Bennett and Mr. Fenech, same units

that were part of Katrina, same units you would sell to any other

customer?

Mr. FENECH. Absolutely.

Mr. JORDAN. OK. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my

time.

Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you very much.

That concludes the questioning by the members of the committee, and I do want to recognize Mr. Donnelly at this time.

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 for participating. There are headquarters located in our District. You have facilities located in our

District. I think the other story that is here is the story of the 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 of your comps,

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 companies, 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, their fellow Americans, down in the Gulf region.

164

I travel the highways of our District, as you know, and day after

day almost every 2 or 3 minutes you could see another unit heading down to the Gulf region for another family.

So the one question I have is for you, Mr. Shea, and that is that

the Government and scientific agencies have not seemed to be able

to successfully come to a consensus as to a formaldehyde level for

your products. In that absence, are you voluntarily implementing

any standards, and what would they be?

Mr. SHEA. Yes, Congressman. In spring of 2007 we started implementing products that were equivalent to the upcoming CARB

standards for product emissions that go into effect in 2009, and beyond that we have moved now to actually 2011 compliant products.

So what we are producing now is 21⁄2 years in front of the marketplace, as far as I know. That is where we like to be. We like to be

ahead of the curve. We have been ahead of the curve in terms of

using LFU products starting in the 1990’s. And we also, to my

knowledge, are the only manufacturer who has a third party organization that ensures our material acquisition, our supply processes, and does verification testing on products that we receive

from vendors.

Mr. DONNELLY. Thank you very much.

I have no other questions, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Donnelly.

Some Members wish a second round, and I see Mr. Welch has

just arrived and he hasn’t done his first round, but let me recognize

myself and then we will get to Mr. Welch down the road.

Last week CDC issued this report and we heard from CDC this

morning in their testimony, and they said to us that levels of formaldehyde were elevated in these trailers, and some exceeded 500

parts per billion, which is the level that OSHA requires mandatory

medical monitoring. It is that high so that they require medical

monitoring. As a result of its testing, CDC recommended everyone

currently living in these trailers be evacuated immediately, not just

some residents, but all of them. CDC said that Government should

prioritize its evacuation first to take out the elderly and children,

those who are most sensitive, but then eventually get everybody

out.

The witnesses on this panel that is before us right now representing the companies that sold these trailers, I would like to ask

each of you, Do you agree with this Federal Government decision

to evacuate these residents from your trailers if they exceed this

500 parts per billion? Mr. Shea, do you agree with that statement

from CDC and recommendation?

Mr. SHEA. CDC 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——

Chairman WAXMAN. No, that is not my question. My question is

we are being told that if people are living in trailers that exceed

500 parts per billion, that they be put into some other trailer, that

they be relocated. Do you disagree with that?

Mr. SHEA. I think that there should be all consideration for the

safety of the persons. There are some statistical outlookers. There

are very few of the units that I know were at that level. They

average——

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Chairman WAXMAN. But if they are at that level, do you agree

with that recommendation? Yes or no?

Mr. SHEA. Above that level, with the concerns that are being registered by the CDC, I would agree for public health.

Chairman WAXMAN. OK. How about you, Mr. Bennett?

Mr. BENNETT. I would agree.

Chairman WAXMAN. Mr. Fenech.

Mr. FENECH. I think that there are really some unusual circumstances in Louisiana, and absolutely. I mean, if it is unsafe

they should be moved out.

Chairman WAXMAN. Mr. Liegl.

Mr. LIEGL. Yes, sir.

Chairman WAXMAN. OK. 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

$2 billion in trailers that can’t be used. Shouldn’t we get that

money back if those trailers exceed those very high levels?

I don’t see any of you jumping in to say yes.

Mr. SHEA. I would answer that question, sir. CDC testing totally

depends on use. Anybody that would have smoked a cigarette or

otherwise used 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, whether they did

other things that raised these levels higher.

We are in favor not just of a standard, but we need also a protocol of testing to follow so that we know what we are comparing it

to.

Chairman WAXMAN. Let me interrupt you. Two years ago you

tested trailers and found that 40 percent of them exceeded that

level. Mr. Fenech, CDC found that a trailer from your company,

Keystone RV, had formaldehyde exposures of 480 parts per billion.

Do you think that is safe?

Mr. FENECH. Based on the information that we are hearing

today, you would say that no, that doesn’t sound like it is a safe

level.

Chairman WAXMAN. OK.

Mr. FENECH. Please let me complete my thought, if I might. But

the implication then is that it is all the result of the way the trailer

was built, and that I don’t agree with, to answer your question

about the buy-back.

Chairman WAXMAN. But you don’t think it is safe.

Mr. FENECH. I am not a scientist.

Chairman WAXMAN. Let me ask Mr. Bennett the question. CDC

found that a trailer from your company, Pilgrim International, had

520 parts per billion. Do you think that is safe for people to live

in?

Mr. BENNETT. I would have to state that this is long after the

fact and at the time we built these units we had no standard to

go by. We were building them the same way we build trailers,

thousands of trailers. We had no reason to believe that these trailers were——

Chairman WAXMAN. But you don’t think it is safe now.

Mr. Shea, you are the chairman of Gulf Stream company. You

provided the most trailers to FEMA. Your company was paid over

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a half billion dollars. CDC found that one of your trailers had formaldehyde levels 590, the highest level of any of the trailers that it

examined.

The point that I am getting to is I don’t think that a manufacturer of any product should say, well, if there is 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 is just the responsibility of any manufacturer that sells a product, no matter

what it is, whether it is a toy or a trailer. When we hear from CDC

that everyone living in these trailers at that level should be evacuated as soon as possible, nobody should live in those trailers with

formaldehyde that high, it sounds like the companies who sold

these trailers are not willing to say that they have some responsibility because there was no standard. I just don’t accept that argument.

My time has expired. Who wishes to be recognized? Mr. Bilbray.

Mr. BILBRAY. Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Gentlemen, this whole issue sort of is interesting how it has

come around. As the chairman knows, I served on the Air Resources Board in California, and we had major concerns about indoor pollution exposures. In fact, as far as I know right now in the

1990’s we were looking at a different exposure, and that was the

exposure caused by formaldehyde emissions from new purchased

vehicles, new manufactured vehicles. I question, Does anybody

know what the formaldehyde exposure is on a new automobile in

the United States left in the noonday sun for a few hours?

[No response.]

Mr. BILBRAY. And is there a Federal standard of maximum exposure for new automobiles?

[No response.]

Mr. BILBRAY. 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 the late 1980’s. But do we hold automobile manufacturers responsible for that exposure and do we now open up the issue that

automobile manufacturers should be held accountable for any exposure over a certain limit to 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 it.

My question is this: the formaldehyde emissions in these trailers—and in my family I was in Mississippi. I had a family home

damaged in Mississippi. I saw the trailers coming 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 emitting formaldehyde? Gentlemen?

Mr. FENECH. I would be happy to answer that. It is off-the-shelf,

standard stuff that is used every day in house building for all intents and purposes. Maybe we might get a different thickness of

that material versus the standard half-inch versus we might get

three-eighths, but it is off-the-shelf material.

Mr. BILBRAY. Anyone knows when the testing was done, was

there any mitigation done to new construction exposed to the

southern sun basically caused more aggravated emissions coming

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out of these particle board and other products, just like the new

automobile left in the sun? In these records, what kind of application? How old were the units? And what was the parameters with

which the tests were made that came up with these high numbers?

Do you guys have any idea of what kind of parameters the Sierra

Club used in doing these tests?

Chairman WAXMAN. You said the Sierra Club.

Mr. BILBRAY. Well, the data I had was that the Sierra Club felt

there were evaluations and concerns about the exposure, Mr.

Chairman. Am I wrong on that? The Sierra Club didn’t have——

Chairman WAXMAN. I am misinformed, and I am sorry to have

jumped in. I guess the Sierra Club did some very preliminary,

early studies.

Mr. BILBRAY. And raised the concerns?

Chairman WAXMAN. Yes. The gentleman’s question is based on

an accurate statement.

Mr. BILBRAY. There were tests done by the Sierra Club and

raised these concerns. And the testing done, the big question that

is there is do we now go to all construction material and start addressing the issue of formaldehyde in all construction material, and

is that the way we could reduce this exposure, and basically say

particle board may be outlawed in the United States or may not

be used in construction where you have the potential for indoor pollution, which ARB in California has been talking about for over a

decade.

Go ahead, sir.

Mr. SHEA. Yes, CARB is implementing, as I mentioned earlier,

in 2009 new product standards which they say are the most stringent in the world. And yes, there is going 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 is more difficult to

ensure what products you are getting when there is all kinds of different products out there, so it would be helpful to have a national

standard for these kinds of products.

Mr. BILBRAY. OK. And remember, too, that the use of this particle board has actually been encouraged due to recycling of waste

products from lumber activity so that waste products that would

normally have been burned or thrown away are now recycled and

put into this stream to be able to use it as construction material

rather than using virgin material and going down and cutting

down more trees. Is that fair to say that this is how we ended up

with so much particle board?

Mr. SHEA. Yes, sir. There is a product that came into play well

after our products were created. It is called environmentally preferable product. It has special standards, and they are low formaldehyde, but to be an environmentally preferable product it has to be

a sustainable product and taken from the kinds of products you are

talking about. In a lot of ways it is a green product.

Mr. BILBRAY. Mr. Chairman, I would 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 exposure rate

was assumed to be different, and I think there is a legitimate argument there that maybe we need to look at our own regs. But again,

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just as we did with medical implants and stuff, there has really got

to be a line drawn here of what is the exposure or what is 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 somehow not appropriate at this location.

I think that is a debate, but I think there is a degree of back seat

driving here, hindsight 20/20 that it is 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 post-script, but to perceive that was

going to be a problem somewhere in the future I think is really second-guessing people to an extreme, especially with the fact that I

still would say why are new automobiles exempt from the environmental air pollution exemption except for the fact that they are in

the same clause here.

I say publicly if you own a new car don’t jump into it after it has

been sitting in the sun. Roll the windows down and let it air out,

unless you want to get a good dose of formaldehyde. That is something that I think the 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 incident.

I yield back, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you, Mr. Bilbray.

Mr. Welch.

Mr. WELCH. I thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Shea, I want to ask you a little bit about a CNN story. In

April 2006 I understand that Gulf Stream became aware that CNN

was going to be doing as story on formaldehyde in FEMA trailers.

You are familiar with that?

Mr. SHEA. Yes, I recollect that, sir.

Mr. WELCH. Well, it was a big deal. This was going to go to the

heart of the quality of the trailers and whether people in your trailers were getting sick, right?

Mr. SHEA. Sir, I expressed earlier—I don’t know if you were

here—the experiences that we had with several complainants.

Mr. WELCH. Well, let me proceed here. I am saying the obvious

here. As a company, you obviously want to defend the product that

you put out, right? This is going to be a story raising questions

about it, you are going to take that story seriously and prepare for

it, right?

Mr. SHEA. As soon as the initial story came out in Bay St. Louis

in mid-March, we were very much concerned with the story and

the issue. Certainly.

Mr. WELCH. So Gulf Stream, your company, sent a statement to

CNN in April 2006 about formaldehyde, where it said, and we will

put this up on the board if we can, ‘‘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 contracts with FEMA.’’ Did your company make that statement?

169

Mr. SHEA. And we are speaking retrospectively prior to the

March issue when it started in March. We were talking about our

experience with Florida hurricanes, and we had been building

these since 1992, if you recall.

Mr. WELCH. Did your company make that statement?

Mr. SHEA. We did make that statement, yes, sir.

Mr. WELCH. And did you make it in April 2006?

Mr. SHEA. It was made in April 2006.

Mr. WELCH. All right. So is it fair to conclude that any listener

would hear your statement as asserting that your company was

aware of no complaints prior to the issuance of that statement?

Mr. SHEA. Our intent with the statement was to describe our history of experience with this prior to this issue coming about from

Bay St. Louis in mid-March. That was our intent, sir.

Mr. WELCH. Let’s use English here. You made a statement in

April, and as of that date I assume that you vouch for the integrity

of the statement.

Mr. SHEA. Sir, there were allegations. We are not even familiar

with the medical aspects of any of these complaints.

Mr. WELCH. So what you meant to say is that you are unaware

of any substantiated medical complaints?

Mr. SHEA. We were aware of allegations; we were unaware of

substantiated medical complaints, and we were speaking prior to

the——

Mr. WELCH. So why, if——

Mr. SHEA. Previous experience in previous years, sir.

Mr. WELCH. So why didn’t you say you heard of allegations but

not ‘‘substantiated medical complaints?’’

Mr. SHEA. Sir, we were trying to be as expressive of our history

of dealing with this, and we thought that was what was important,

but we were addressing the few complaints that we received, sir,

and the record shows that in that period we had——

Mr. WELCH. Let me tell you what the record does show. On

March 20 of 2006 on your Gulf Stream interactive Web site, you

received a statement, you, Gulf Stream, and this is before you

issued the no complaint 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 my eyes and I am getting headaches every day. I have

tried many things, but nothing seems to work. Please, please help

me.’’

Now, were you able to say that you had received no complaints

because this did not come with a medical certificate?

Mr. SHEA. Every complaint that we received, sir, we investigated,

we responded to, we asked persons if we could assist them.

Mr. WELCH. That is not the question I am asking. I mean, I

asked you how you square that statement, your statement to CNN,

‘‘We are not aware of any complaints of illness,’’ you made in April

2006 with a statement from a customer on a Web site that was a

complaint.

Mr. SHEA. Sir, we received three complaints during that period.

We addressed all of them. We were proactive on them. We asked

FEMA to assist on any complaints they had. And we were——

Mr. WELCH. I don’t want to be difficult, but——

Mr. SHEA. I don’t want to be difficult, either, sir.

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Mr. WELCH. Had you received any complaints before April 2006

when you issued your statement to CNN that you had no complaints?

Mr. SHEA. The complaints related to this matter that we received

were two for that period.

Mr. WELCH. So the answer to my question is yes, you had received complaints prior to April, but you told CNN you had no complaints, correct?

Mr. SHEA. We were speaking of our history with FEMA as a program, sir.

Mr. WELCH. And that is a convenient way of saying that is the

justification for saying something that was untrue.

Mr. SHEA. Sir, I believe we have been very truthful in everything

that we have done and what we have presented here today.

Mr. WELCH. I will yield the balance of my time.

Chairman WAXMAN. The gentleman’s time has expired.

Mr. Issa.

Mr. ISSA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Liegl, I think I will switch to you and give Mr. Shea a bit

of a break here. The chairman earlier was talking in terms of

shouldn’t people get their money back, shouldn’t the Government

not pay, and so on. And I would like to set the record straight, as

having been a manufacturer, myself. All of your companies—I will

ask you to answer for anyone, unless they want to pipe in, in particular—all of your companies are subject to various State lemon

laws, right?

Mr. LIEGL. Yes, sir.

Mr. ISSA. Plus, you all have networks of dealer distributors,

right?

Mr. LIEGL. Yes. Correct.

Mr. ISSA. Now, if a customer is dissatisfied, and particularly if

the customer either litigates or comes in with multiple valid complaints, if the distributor sees a problem they are going to call you

up and say take this lemon back, repair or replace it, right?

Mr. LIEGL. I’d say that is correct.

Mr. ISSA. OK. So the industry you are in, including the trade association norms for this industry, say if you make a product which

is substantially defective, such as while it was 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 10,000 other ones

produced the same year, you take them back, you repair or replace

them, you make them right; is that correct?

Mr. LIEGL. That is correct.

Mr. ISSA. And that is true of most of the sort of Elkhart group,

if you will, of travel trailer makers. So when FEMA started having

these problems, was there any doubt in any of your mind that if

any of your trailers had material or workmanship failures in your

design or in the materials you chose or in the work that your people did, that you would make it right by repairing or replacing it?

Was there any doubt in your mind that you would do that?

Mr. LIEGL. I believe we would have.

Mr. ISSA. OK. Has FEMA ever come to you and said, Take back

this trailer, it is defective in work that you did?

Mr. LIEGL. No, sir. Never.

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Mr. ISSA. OK. Now, you have evaluated trailers that had a myriad of problems that have been used and you were part of that

evaluation of why does it have this level or why did mold produce,

and so on, and so you are familiar with trailers that had a year

or two down the road and have problems, right?

Mr. LIEGL. Correct.

Mr. ISSA. OK. So you have 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

have not been asked to nor have you been given a failure or any

part of your spec or your material workmanship; is that correct?

Mr. LIEGL. If it was our problem, we definitely would stand behind it.

Mr. ISSA. OK. And I would like just a nod. All the rest of you

agree?

[No audible response.]

Mr. ISSA. So the norm in the industry, particularly when you are

making something that feeds into State lemon laws and so on, as

these things do, the norm is you make it right, you use your distributor network, your dealer networks to make it right if it is in

the field without bringing it back. And, in fact, even though we are

having this hearing today and we are talking about people suffering and so on—which I am not disputing that people have had

health problems while 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 heard from the dias here today?

Mr. SHEA. Correct.

Mr. BENNETT. That is correct.

Mr. FENECH. Correct.

Mr. LIEGL. Right.

Mr. SHEA. OK. I think, Mr. Chairman, that makes the case that

these are not the wrongdoers. Government may very well have

failed the people of Louisiana and Mississippi. They may be continuing to fail them by not setting standards for the travel trailers

or living accommodations, by not having ongoing testing. That may

all be very true. Certainly, as a Californian, you and I share the

leading edge of air quality that California is known for. But none

of that is here today.

So I am not defending anyone, but I would 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 high

or low or different levels, but, again, as we heard from the CDC,

these are all things we would like to do but Government, as of

today, hasn’t done it.

So, Mr. Chairman, since we are the Government Oversight and

Reform committee, now that we have, 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, whether it is in manufactured items

or in the air, itself, do their job and set appropriate standards and

testing procedures so that we don’t again haul in four CEOs of

companies who, as of today, have not had one product returned as

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defective or somehow inappropriate to the 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 improved 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.

With that I thank you and yield back.

Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you, Mr. Issa.

I want to ask Mr. Burton and Mr. Souder if you wish to have

a second round?

Mr. BURTON. Yes, I want one.

Chairman WAXMAN. OK. Mr. Burton.

Mr. BURTON. I want to read to you what it says regarding the

parts per billion and what HUD sets as a target. It says, ‘‘HUD set

a target of 400 parts per billion for indoor ambient air in manufactured homes. HUD’s indoor ambient air target guideline of 400

parts per billion is based on component standards for plywood and

particle board.

In the unoccupied units testing revealed baseline formaldehyde

levels were at 1,040 parts per billion, but fell to an average of 390

when the air conditioner was turned on. The averages fell even

lower to 90 parts per billion when the windows were opened. The

baseline average is probably attributable to the fact that unoccupied 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 level was 77 parts per billion and 81 parts per billion for

travel trailers specifically.’’

I kind of am disappointed that we have you four here beating up

on you, because I don’t think you have done anything wrong. You

have used standard materials off the shelf that is used in any kind

of home construction or remodeling. I have had it 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.

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 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 is all kinds of imponderables that you have to take

into consideration when you are talking about the parts per billion.

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 am going to go home and try to find out how much I

have in my house, and when I exercise downstairs where I have

it all closed up I am going to open the doors because I am concerned about my health.

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I just think, you know, there is eight million of these units in use

around the country, very, very few complaints, if any, and I just

think for us to call you in here and pound on you and infer that

you are lying about your products and everything, I think is just

unconscionable, and I want to thank you for being here, for being

so forthright, and for providing an industry that helps people when

they are in need and suffering like they did in Florida during the

hurricanes and like they have done in places like Katrina in the

south on the Gulf.

Obviously, the chairman has a right to call a hearing on almost

anything, but I am disappointed in much of the questioning that

has gone on today, because it questions your integrity, and I don’t

think it should have been done.

With that, I yield back.

Chairman WAXMAN. Mr. Souder.

Mr. SOUDER. Is Mr. Welch going to ask any more questions?

Chairman WAXMAN. Why don’t you just go ahead and take your

second round?

Mr. SOUDER. I would like to hear what other questions are before. I know the chairman has a right to summarize, but if Mr.

Welch has additional questions I would like to reserve.

Chairman WAXMAN. Let me ask you this. If I make a concluding

statement, do you want to make a concluding statement?

Mr. SOUDER. You get to make the concluding statement. I wanted to know if Mr. Welch had another round.

Chairman WAXMAN. Do you wish to be recognized at this time?

Mr. WELCH. No.

Chairman WAXMAN. OK.

Mr. SOUDER. OK. I will just make my comments.

Mr. WELCH. Thank you.

Chairman WAXMAN. So we will both make concluding statements?

Mr. SOUDER. Yes.

Chairman WAXMAN. OK.

Mr. SOUDER. Do you want me to go first?

Chairman WAXMAN. Whatever you want.

Mr. SOUDER. Well, you are the chairman. You have a right to

summarize. I just wanted to see whether you were going first.

Chairman WAXMAN. Why don’t you wait and hear what I have

to say and you will have the last word about the whole thing.

First of all, I want to ask unanimous consent that the staffs have

discussed the release of documents and have reached a mutual understanding and so I ask unanimous consent that these documents

be part of the record.

Mr. SOUDER. Reserving the right to object, I merely want to say

that, while I have some concerns, I really appreciate the majority

working with us. I will withdraw my objection.

Chairman WAXMAN. OK. Thank you.

This is our second hearing on this issue of formaldehyde in these

trailers. I thought it was the second 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 worked

for this committee in 1981, and he told us there was a hearing at

that time on the question of formaldehyde in trailers, and at that

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time, at the conclusion of the hearing the Members of Congress

said to the FEMA and to HUD and to the Consumer Product Safety Commission and OSHA they ought to set a standard. They

ought to set a standard for formaldehyde levels in trailers. That

was 1981.

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 anything 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.

I do want everyone to understand when we heard about the fellow who said the smell is too bad, come and help me, I am wheezing and having all sorts of medical problems or symptoms, please,

please, please help me, that was rare. Most people don’t smell anything. But suddenly they have symptoms. They don’t go to the

manufacturer and say, I have symptoms, take your trailer back.

They don’t even know what is causing it.

So Government should know what is causing it, because it is well

established that formaldehyde can cause these symptoms, and I believe industry has a responsibility, as well, to know that if they are

selling this product that it may cause health problems to those who

are buying it.

Testing by Mr. Shea’s company 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. 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 you didn’t know, therefore there is nothing required

of you.

Now, I am pleased that the four of you are in business. I am

pleased that you have employees that have jobs with you. I am

pleased that you have Members of Congress from your area that

will vouch for you personally. I think you are entitled to make your

profits, and even doubling of your salary in those 2 years when you

had the FEMA contract, Mr. Shea, for you and I think it was your

brother. You are entitled 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 is not

just the Government that should pay for it. I think there is some

responsibility for the manufacturers, as well, because these levels

should have been of concern.

I know that some Members have acted like you are victims because you are simply asked to come here and answer questions. I

think that those that really suffered are the people who are getting

sick from formaldehyde in these trailers. I think they are victims

of FEMA’s incompetence. They were victims of manufacturers who

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didn’t disclose what they knew about the formaldehyde dangers, as

well.

We will see where all of this goes. I am willing to entertain ideas

for legislation. That is the purpose of our oversight hearings. But

also to find out what really happened.

I think that what happened is a disgrace on the part of the Government particularly, but is not an exoneration for the manufacturers who know or should have known or, in fact, did know that the

trailers were not safe for those who were 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 voluntarily and cooperating with us. I think that is to your

credit.

Now any comments you want to make to close off the hearing?

Mr. SOUDER. I thank the chairman for his generosity. I wasn’t

trying to have the last views, but I appreciate that, because this

industry is really critical to my defense, as well as to Mr. Donnelly’s. I was at the Goshen Air Show Saturday and people kept

coming up asking, do you think we are going to get our jobs back?

We really want to work. They love working in this industry. We

need to keep this industry going. They have worked hard to meet

the emergency 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 there is no evidence, even though it is a carcinogenic,

at this point of, beyond basically itching, coughing, wheezing type

things. This may be like peanuts: different people have allergic reactions. Clearly we need to be moving toward some sort of a warning standard as we do this research that different people react differently to this. That is at very minimal that should be there.

HUD had a standard. They met the standard, as far as they

knew. Questions came up and the company volunteered to try to

test, even though FEMA could have done those tests, even though

FEMA was at the plant from morning until afternoon. The test was

not prohibitively expensive. The company tried to engage FEMA

and FEMA wasn’t interested. The incredible justified negative publicity about the Government’s handling of Katrina and FEMA has

now resulted in an over-reaction to make it 16 parts, which is not

achievable for emergency housing.

I want to reiterate again that the 390 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 6.6 milligrams per meter, which is their high point, appears to convert to 4,000 parts per billion for the highest of a sitebuilt house in the region. This isn’t a question just of manufactured

housing, of travel trailers. It is a fundamental question about the

materials, how they interact by region, and we need to have a scientific approach to this. 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 my belief unfair to suggest that the manufacturers bear

responsibility when the science is, at the very least, very conflicted.

It is not clear that every home in the region isn’t hitting—certainly

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if 390 is the mean, or the average, that means that a significant

percentage of every house in at least, given what we know now, in

Louisiana doesn’t meet the standard. And we aren’t asking for all

our HUD houses to be backed. Private owners aren’t asking to be

backed. That has been my concern with this industry, not that we

shouldn’t be trying to learn the danger to individuals.

I look forward to working with the chairman in the future.

Thank you.

Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Souder. Thanks

for all the witnesses’ participation.

That concludes our hearing and we stand adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 1:55 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]

[The prepared statements of Hon. Diane E. Watson and Hon. Bill

Sali follow:]

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