It was sure to happen, and now it has. RV, park model, and mobile home manufacturers, along with FEMA (the US Federal Emergency Management Agency) have been named as defendants in a class action lawsuit brought by 55 Gulf Coast residents who claim that the “manufacturers failed to warn the federal government about the risks of formaldehyde used in particle board, fiberboard, plywood, glues, and adhesives used to manufacture the housing units and then ‘ignored or deliberately and fraudulently concealed’ the risks.”

For its part, FEMA is on the rack for allegedly, “Distributing housing units well after undisclosed air sampling of housing units at government staging facilities showed formaldehyde levels that exceeded government standards; seeking to avoid comprehensive testing of the housing units after widespread health problems were reported by residents of the housing units; ignoring the scientific work and concerns of federal scientists familiar with formaldehyde issues; and manipulating governmental testing of the housing units by seeking to ensure that long-term formaldehyde exposure considerations would not be addressed in testing findings.”

While the group of 55 plaintiffs is relatively small, some of the lawyers who filed the suit, Buzbee Law Firm, in Houston, Texas, say that in the end, defendants could be looking down the barrel aimed at them by literally thousands of folks allegedly affected by the so-called “toxic trailers.”

Among RV builders, Coachmen Industries Inc.; Fleetwood Enterprises Inc.; Thor Industries Inc.; Gulf Stream Coach Inc; Forest River Inc.; Jayco Enterprises Inc.; Monaco Coach Corp; Pilgrim International Inc.; Recreation By Design LLC; and Starcraft RV Inc., are listed as defendants.

The litigation group has opened a website.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 19th, 2008 at 12:41 pm and is filed under FEMA, formaldehyde, government. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.