As an Indiana congressman blasted the congressional investigation into the formaldehyde issue, a Louisiana-based environmentalist expressed hope the government will stop the use of the substance in making recreational vehicles.
Three Elkhart County RV manufacturers -- Gulf Stream Coach, Coachmen Industries and Pilgrim International -- got letters from the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform requesting information about the travel trailers they produced now being used by victims of the 2005 Gulf Coast hurricanes.
Trailer residents have been suffering from several health problems that Gulf Coast activists and medical professionals have linked to the formaldehyde levels in the units.
After initially ignoring the concerns, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which bought the trailers as temporary housing after the hurricanes, reversed course and recently announced plans to move those remaining in the trailers to alternative housing.
"Maybe what we really need to look at is the use of formaldehyde in trailers," said Marylee Orr, executive director of the Louisiana Environmental Action Network. "Formaldehyde has got to go."
U.S. Rep. Mark Souder, R-Fort Wayne, however, sees the inquiry as little more than partisan politics.
"At both the last Oversight Committee hearing and the Homeland Security Committee hearing, it was evident that lawyers have worked up people claiming a variety of illnesses, mostly aggravated asthma, as a result of formaldehyde," the congressman wrote in a statement released Friday.
"Hearings such as these are not designed to seek the truth -- they're largely geared to bash the Bush Administration for its weak response to Hurricane Katrina. We already know that the response was bad, so what will this third hearing show?"
The Oversight Committee is chaired by U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif.
"The committee is continuing to look at the issue because to date we have not received sufficient understanding of how FEMA trailers ended up in the region with such high levels of formaldehyde," said Karen Lightfoot, spokeswoman for Waxman. "We're hoping we can get a better understanding by getting information from the companies."
The RV companies that received letters were singled out because they are the "primary manufacturers for the country," Lightfoot said. She does not expect any other RV makers to be targeted.
Although the companies are not legally obligated to respond to the request, Lightfoot said the committee expects them to comply.
From there, the normal process is that the committee will review the information and decide how to proceed. Lightfoot declined to speculate on what those next steps would be.
"Of course we're going to reply to Congressman Waxman's request for information," said Brian Delaney, spokesman for Gulf Stream.
Bill Martin, spokesman for Coachmen, echoed a previous statement by the company's president and chief executive officer, Rick Lavers.
"We'll make every effort to cooperate fully with the committee's request for information on our products," Martin said.
A call to Pilgrim was not returned.
Officials at the Recreation Vehicle Industry Association were unavailable for comment as their office in Reston, Va., was closed Friday because of inclement weather.
Souder raised the possibility that the Gulf Coast residents' health problems are "more related to regional conditions and lack of air conditioning in a swampy environment" than formaldehyde.
"New Orleans is an exception, and these complaints appear to be isolated only to one period," Souder stated.
The LEAN office in Baton Rouge has been getting phone calls from hurricane victims living in the trailers, Orr said, as well as RV owners who have experienced health problems when using their units or are concerned about the potential danger.
Using travel trailers for temporary housing may have seemed like the perfect solution in the aftermath of the hurricanes, Orr said, but formaldehyde has compounded the tragedy.