By Daniel Fowler, CQ Staff

Participants in a hearing on FEMA’s Gulf Coast trailers emphasized the importance of tracking residents of the units for potential long-term health effects, but didn’t get a clear answer about whether it was happening.

During a question and answer portion of the Science and Technology subcommittee hearing Tuesday, Rep. Nick Lampson , D-Texas, asked a Federal Emergency Management Agency official if the agency has “begun to keep a list of all the people who lived in trailers and set up a plan for monitoring the effects on anybody who may suffer illnesses because of them.”

Harvey E. Johnson Jr., FEMA’s acting deputy administrator and chief operating officer, responded, “I’d say sort of yes and no to your question. Yes, we do have a record of all those who’ve lived in travel trailers and mobile homes and at this point we’re working with CDC to begin to establish a registry that would track [them].”

When asked for further explanation after the hearing, Johnson said the registry might not specifically track people’s health problems.

“I think it’s an attempt to know where these people are and to track them so that they can be contacted later,” Johnson said. “It may not be a registry that tracks all of their health issues, but we are working with CDC to define that.”

Johnson said CDC has been tasked as the lead agency in the creation of the registry. “CDC has experience at building registries and maintaining the registries,” Johnson said. “That is not a core competency of FEMA.”

In February, CDC recommend that FEMA move people displaced by hurricanes Katrina and Rita from travel trailers and mobile homes in the Gulf Coast as quickly as possible based on formaldehyde testing in more than 500 of the temporary housing units.

Results of testing in the 519 occupied travel trailers and mobile homes revealed that the average unit had much higher formaldehyde levels than normal indoor air levels.

A chemical used in the manufacturing of building materials and household products, formaldehyde at certain levels can cause eye, nose and throat irritation, attacks in asthmatic people and possibly cancer among other symptoms, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

“I think it would be very beneficial to create a databank to track families and children and to follow their long-term health,” said Heidi Sinclair, medical director of the Baton Rouge Children’s Health Program. . . . “Future health care providers could be alerted to the fact that they had lived in the travel trailers and maybe have a little bit higher level of concern that some of the symptoms might not just be your general cold, asthma, allergies.”

Sinclair’s project provides medical and mental health care to children displaced to the Baton Rouge area, including some at FEMA group sites.

Rep. Darlene Hooley , D-Ore., wanted to know what Sinclair’s group was doing to track people living in the trailers and mobile homes.

Sinclair said her group lets families know how to get in contact with it. “They have our phone numbers,” she said, but noted there wasn’t a “databank.”

“It seems to me that you’ve got several agencies involved and that you might sit down and talk to one another and say this is something that we really need to do and begin that process,” Hooley said.

Last month, attorneys representing clients who allege they were adversely affected by high formaldehyde levels in trailers supplied by FEMA filed a master complaint against the agency and dozens of manufacturers in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.

Daniel Fowler can be reached at dfowler@cq.com.