The Lens

Remember back in May of last year, when The Lens reported that the same FEMA trailers that once housed victims of hurricanes Katrina and Rita were being resold Alabama as cheap housing for people displaced after tornadoes destroyed residential areas in 2011? 

Our investigation found that the trailers, many of which were proven to be releasing toxic levels of formaldehyde from the particle board walls into the small living space, were being released into the open market with little to no assurance that buyers would be made aware of the possible dangers of long-term exposure to the interior to the trailers — and that the people most likely to buy these units are low-income folks in need of cheap housing in the wake of massive disaster or a housing crisis.

Despite our investigation and frequent indications that people living in the units frequently suffer from respiratory illness and skin problems, we haven’t seen any significant steps toward protecting buyers from potentially harmful housing. In fact, we’ve found that FEMA sold or auctioned these trailers into the open market, and the units are now being used as long-term housing as natural disasters destroy homes and a housing crisis forces some people to downgrade to more affordable lodging.

Most importantly, the tests we’ve run on some of these trailers have shown extremely high levels of formaldehyde, which indicates that dangerous concentrations of the neurotoxin may be present in as many as 50,000 trailers . There has been no effort to track the location of these trailers beyond their initial sale, allowing the potentially toxic units to be easily bought and sold across the country despite the health risks.

For these reasons, The Lens is teaming up with the University of Oxford for Trailertrack, a journalistic and scientific excursion to the southeast United States. Ariella Cohen, an investigative reporter with The Lens, and Nick Shapiro, a medical anthropologist with the University of Oxford, will leave today for Florida to seek out trailers and trailer residents, test the trailers they find for formaldehyde, and learn more about how the units are turning up many miles from New Orleans. The trailertrackers will hit Ocala, Harvey, Tampa and Palm Beach this weekend, and will also visit Texas and Oklahoma in the coming weeks. You can view a map and itinerary here.

 We’ll be posting here regularly to keep you informed on the status of the trackers. You can also follow Ariella on Twitter at @cohenlensnola, where she’ll be updating followers on the duo’s progress with the hashtag #trailertrack.

If you have any knowledge about FEMA trailers being sold or lived in near your community, please click here and let us know.