The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were ready to investigate possible health threats from formaldehyde in FEMA trailers given to Hurricane Katrina victims more than a year ago, according to a report by Alison Young in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.  But they did not launch an investigation because, according to CDC officials, they can only do so after receiving a formal request from another government agency.  Worse, FEMA officials initially asked about the health threat for stays in the trailers of two weeks or less, and CDC investigators, though aware that people were living in the trailers for months on end, fulfilled the brief to the letter.  According to a CDC spokesman, the organization "doesn’t have the authority to act on its own to investigate a health threat."  Read Young here.

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