perpetual victimhood... and it can't be cured
Posted on 05/27/2008 3:10:10 PM PDT by Hildy
BAY ST. LOUIS, MISS. - The anguish of Hurricane Katrina should have ended for Gina Bouffanie and her daughter when they left their FEMA trailer. But with each hospital visit and each labored breath her child takes, the young mother fears it has just begun.
"It's just the sickness. I can't get rid of it. It just keeps coming back," said Bouffanie, 27, who was pregnant with her now 15-month-old daughter, Lexi, while living in the trailer. "I'm just like, `Oh God, I wish like this would stop.' If I had known it would get her sick, I wouldn't have stayed in the trailer for so long."
The girl, diagnosed with severe asthma, must inhale medicine from a breathing device.
Doctors cannot conclusively link her asthma to the trailer. But they fear she is among tens of thousands of youngsters who may face lifelong health problems because the temporary housing supplied by the Federal Emergency Management Agency contained formaldehyde fumes up to five times the safe level.
The chemical, used in interior glue, was detected in many of the 143,000 trailers sent to the Gulf Coast in 2006. But a push to get residents out of them, spearheaded by FEMA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, did not begin until this past February.
Members of Congress and CDC insiders say the agencies' delay in recognizing the danger is being compounded by studies that will be virtually useless and the lack of a plan to treat children as they grow.
"It's tragic that when people most need the protection, they are actually going from one disaster to a health disaster that might be considered worse," said Christopher De Rosa, assistant director for toxicology and risk assessment at the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, an arm of the CDC. "Given the longer-term implications of exposure that went on for a significant period of time, people should be followed through time for possible effects."
Formaldehyde is classified as a probable carcinogen, or cancer-causing substance, by the Environmental Protection Agency. There is no way to measure formaldelhyde in the bloodstream. Respiratory problems are an early sign of exposure.
Young children are at particular risk. Thousands who lived in trailers will be in the prime of life in the 10 to 15 years doctors believe it takes cancer to develop.
FEMA and CDC reports so far have drawn criticism.
A CDC study released May 8 examined records of 144 Mississippi children, some of whom lived in trailers and others who did not. But the study was confined to children who had at least one doctor's visit for respiratory illness before Katrina. It was largely inconclusive, finding children who went to doctors before the August 2005 storm were still visiting them two years after.
A bigger, five-year CDC study will include up to 5,000 children in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas, and CDC officials said it should begin next year. But members of Congress point to the decade or longer it could take for cancer to develop and say a five-year look is inadequate.
"Monitoring the health of a few thousand children over the course of a few years is a step in the right direction, but we need commitment," said Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss.
Thompson has introduced legislation to force FEMA and CDC to provide health exams for trailer residents who believe formaldehyde made them ill. The bill is similar to $108 million legislation for workers who labored at the World Trade Center site.
Arch Carson, professor of occupational medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston, said preliminary exams alone for trailer residents could cost more than the trade center bill. But he said class-action lawsuits over the formaldehyde — at least one has been filed — could be even more expensive, costing many billions of dollars.
"It would be best for the government to get its act together now," Carson said.
More than 22,000 FEMA trailers and mobile homes are still being used in Mississippi and Louisiana.
FEMA and the CDC say they will create a registry of those who stayed in trailers for possible future study. But they admit that the task of keeping track of everyone is made difficult by the rush to get families into other housing.
The parents of McKenzie Whitney, a 1-year-old girl with wavy auburn hair, are running low on money and options for caring for the sick girl.
Born into a FEMA trailer, McKenzie was out of the dwelling in August 2007 after a 10-month stay. Her mother, Kacey Whitney, 22, a housekeeper, and her father, Kevin Whitney, 30, a maintenance man, juggle the pressures of post-hurricane life with tending to the child.
"Sunday night when I was going to work, as I was walking up to the front door, she just threw up. She had a fever. We went to the hospital and they wound up keeping her overnight," the girl's mother said. "She's always had a cold, always."
Like Lexi, McKenzie is treated with a nebulizer, a boxy breathing machine that turns medication into mist. It is prescribed to patients with moderate to severe symptoms, and requires children to inhale for 20 minutes.
Dr. Shama Shakir, a Bay St. Louis pediatrician who treats Lexi and Kacey at the Coastal Family Health Center, said that before the storm she prescribed nebulizers about twice weekly. Lately, she is doing so up to 12 times a week.
"You give them the most potent steroids, the most potent antibiotics, and still they have the symptoms," Shakir said. "I worry about what will become of these children long-term."
Deven Galloway, 27, lived in a FEMA trailer in Bay St. Louis for seven months with 4-year-old son DeReion. The boy uses a nebulizer for asthma.
"One day he was like, `I'm going to take more so I can go ahead and be finished for a long time,'" said his mother. "I had to tell him it didn't work that way."
Don't any of these people have families? I know I must sound just totally unfeeling, but I'm really at a point where I just don't care. The more they whine..the less I care.
I call BS. I spent 10 years growing up in a trailor and I was asthmatic to boot.
OMG~! IF ONLY THEY HAD SPENT $SIXTY BILLION INSTEAD OF $30 BILLION THEY COULD HAVE BOUGHT EVERY SINGLE PERSON A NEW HOUSE
“Children in Katrina trailers may face lifelong ailments”
Ailments....yes the plural is correct:
Perpetual chip-on-shoulderitis along with a chronic lack of blood-borne, self-reponsibility cellular agents.
It is a demonstrable fact that children of pathetic losers have a statistically greater chance of growing up to be pathetic losers themselves.
Any parent still in a Katrina trailer surely fits the description of “pathetic loser”.
“...and although we can’t get inside the emergency area we believe millions of people have died. Since the town is only a few thousand, this is truly a tragedy.”
-News Reporter, ‘South Park’
The trailers sent to ‘victims’ sat for over a year, The city wouldn’t allow them to park.
I care about the children. It’s the finger-pointing politicians I couldn’t give a rat’s pitoot about.
I am a Hurricane Katrina survivor from Biloxi, not far from Bay St. Louis. The storm destroyed my business, so I moved to Dallas/Ft. Worth, married again and got on with my life. I work as a Loan Officer and Recruiter and help a friend who also relocated here with the bodyguarding/security company that he started. Why is it that millions of “victims” still have their rent paid for by Uncle Sam or live in those crappy little trailers? This is AMERICA, not AFRICA!
I feel sorry for the children, it’s not their fault that their families were to ignorant, foolish or ambivalent to leave.
If it is ANY government’s fault, it is the fault of the Louisiana state and New Orleans city government. The hurricane hit on Monday morning, the governor did not declare a state of emergency (as was required for federal assistance) until late Sunday and then only after Bush begged her to.
There was NO REASON that EVERYONE couldn’t be evacuated. The rest of the country knew for several days that New Orleans was facing a catastrophic hurricane, yet the state and local governments REFUSED to order evacuation until it was too late.
A hurricane is one of the most devastating natural catastrophes. However, unlike tornadoes and earthquakes, there is more than enough time to prepare for them. Obviously we cannot save property, but there is NO REASON that people should ever die in a hurricane.
And lest I forget, only a total idiot would build and then continue to rebuild a city that is BELOW SEA LEVEL AND SINKING.
Yea, but your trailer probably wasn't filled with crack smoke all the time.
I agree. I still live in a trailer, and my asthma is clearing up.
The solution to the problem is to get them house plants. Several of them are good at cleaning the formaldehyde out of the air:
http://www.essortment.com/all/houseplants_rwhz.htm
Pure and simple liberal freaking pap. Those little kids are just fine.
Gawd, when are people going to quit buying into pure BS.
1- Bush caused Katrina by global warming. Rove steered it.
2- Bush deliberately neglected the levies, causing the flood. Bush operatives may have dynamited them.
3- Bush refused to save people after Katrina because they were black.
4- Bush hesitated in helping desperate people after Katrina.
5- Bush didn't pay rent in the Marriott long enough for the poor victims, who can't work.
6- Bush deliberately put the victims in poisoned trailers.
7- Bush owes thousands of families complete care for life.
Good point.
bkmark for more research later.
Don’t forget that Bush directed the French to build the city of New Orleans under sea level.
I cannot fathom the level of hate that Bush has for black people. </s>
“Children in Katrina trailers may face lifelong ailments””
Yeah, it’s called loser parents and poor genetics.
These trailers are small and have multiple warnings posted in every room, on every door and in the bathroom.
The warning is specifically for those with asthma, pulmonary diseases, the elderly and young children.
Persoanlly I would only sleep in one if all the windows were open and there were screens to keep out the Louisiana State Bird.
ROFLMAO!
All those years in high school huffing formalin while dissecting the fetal pigs and frogs in bio lab! Oh the humanity!!
The White guilt over the hurricane has created a new victim class.
perpetual victimhood... and it can't be cured
It would be interesting to know the post-hurricane stats of other areas.
We suffered an allergic asthma after Floyd. It’s only natural and normal when one is inhabiting a gross disaster.
Looking for lawsuit money is not.
My grandparents lived outside of Charleston and a large oak cut their house in two during Hugo. EVERYONE in their area had major damage, but they rebuilt.
Andrew was probably the most devastating storm ever, yet they rebuilt.
New Orleans is the only place I can think of that was still whining nearly three years after the storm.
Gee, maybe that's because Katrina wiped out every tree within a half-mile of the beach, and WEEDS are now growing where all that shade used to be. My family lost a weekend cottage in Bay St. Louis; I saw ragweed growing nearly chest-height last summer.
The environment in that area *changed*, so I would expect the sort of medical problems described by this article.
This is just an excuse to stay on the government gravy train. Why, it's almost like these people were residents of the Lower Ninth Ward. I suppose Mississippi has its share of societal parasites, too.
What an incompetent (and dangerous) moron!
I couldn’t believe it. Mardi Gras 2006.
Children in Katrina trailers may face lifelong ailments
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
Wow, this is really serious, serious enough for a new government department to be established with offices and staffs in every city of the country. Every person who so much as touched one of those trailers should begin receiving payments immediately and get health cards for free healthcare for life. We should go a step further and pay for emotional distess and life style disruption suffered by these people. Considering the costs of attorneys these days lets say $2,000,000 and a free house for each if no attorneys are involved. /s
“Children in Katrina trailers may face lifelong ailments”
Growing up the children of welfare rats will cause a host of ailments.
It may not be the trailers causing the asthma, although the air in them did irritate the throat and eyes. After Katrina, there was so much mold and junk in the air from burning trash that I was having asthma attacks several times a day. As soon as I moved to Texas, the attacks stopped immediately.
"There was NO REASON that EVERYONE couldn’t be evacuated."
80% of the city was evacuated before the storm. The city would have been destroyed even if every living soul had been evacuated, and people would have still lost their homes, possessions and businesses.
"And lest I forget, only a total idiot would build and then continue to rebuild a city that is BELOW SEA LEVEL AND SINKING."
That you will have to take up with Jean Baptiste La Moyne, Sieur de Bienville who founded New Orleans in 1718. Considering the age of the city, I think that we have fared pretty well.
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