Katrina trailers' toxic levels unshared

WASHINGTON, July 10 (UPI) -- A U.S. trailer manufacturer says it did not disclose to Hurricane Katrina evacuees or the government that formaldehyde in some units exceeded federal standards.

Some of the trailers manufactured by Gulf Stream Coach had formaldehyde levels as much as 45 times above the federal guideline in 2006, The Washington Post reported Thursday.

Gulf Stream Coach built 50,000 trailers for the Federal Emergency Management Agency for $520 million.

Company chairman Jim Shea told lawmakers Wednesday that his company decided that its testing results were "irrelevant information" because FEMA already knew about the high formaldehyde levels.

"Anything that would have been helpful to public health in any kind of way with this in retrospect, we would have loved to have been able to shed more light on it," he told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended this year that all residents in the FEMA trailers be moved to safer housing. The agency found elevated formaldehyde levels in 42 percent of trailers.

Four companies were identified as having significant problems: Gulf Stream, Forest River, Keystone and Pilgrim International, the newspaper reported.