ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
PUBLIC MEETING FOR THE FORMALDEHYDE
ADVANCE NOTICE OF PROPOSED RULE-MAKING
In New Orleans on the 4th of March, 2009
I (Thomas L Rodgers) was invited to testify in New Orleans on 4 March 2009 at the EPA Hearing (w/ FEMA & HUD), by a caring former New Orlean's Sheriff and Hazardous Materials Safety Specialist, Jesse Fineran -- who had been made a FEMA placement officer for the Hurricane Katrina victims. He himself (and his wife) was made sick as he labored to set up the families in the FEMA units, so he became the courageous force to open the investigation as to why. With gathered friends including Becky Gillette of the Sierra Club, he exposed the Formaldehyde poisoning being experienced in the FEMA units, and forced the investigation by the EPA. He subsequently saw my data on the poisoning event here in Utah, so deemed my testimony to be a vital addendum to the testimonies for the similar poisoning injuries suffered in Louisiana and Mississippi as the displaced Hurricane Katrina victims were put into the FEMA and HUD regulated Manufactured and Mobile housing units. So thankfully a loving friend of mine here in Utah sacrificed and got me flown to New Orleans where I testified and participated with honor in our now combined efforts to save lives from this malfeasance of FEMA and HUD (and the pathetically complicit HHS and AMA).
My Testimony; (with others) before the EPA (FEMA & HUD) investigative Hearing in New Orleans 3/4/09 follows. (Complete original transcript -- which we finally received today, 3/12/10 -- in pdf is linked from here)
I have copied the introduction pages to the Hearing and those portions which reference and quote my testimony.
-- Description of Hearing, with Ms Vendinello opening on page 1 through 4.
-- I am referred to in page 96.
-- then my testimony begins on page 114 and finishes on 125.
(my clarifying notes are added in italics within parenthesis)
On a projection screen in that EPA Hearing in New Orleans, I displayed the video of smoke and photo of deathly ill infant Daniel (I have inserted those photos and video in the text below for you to see what was projected there for the committee and audience), yet my descriptions in the transcript of what was being viewed by committee and audience is curiously missing. (Why? Those visuals are absolute, irrefutable, indicting evidence of the injurious poisoning problems created by HUD (and FEMA) in their 3 decades of deliberate malfeasant Federal regulation, including EPA (and OSHA) silence, and in that same period, the intentional avoidance of correct diagnoses, with profitable cover-up through mis-diagnoses instead being affected by HHS and the AMA-controlled Medical Profession.)
Copied Portions of said Transcript:
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ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
PUBLIC MEETING FOR THE FORMALDEHYDE
ADVANCE NOTICE OF PROPOSED RULEMAKING
****************************************************
Meeting held at Sheraton New Orleans Hotel,
500 Canal Street, New Orleans, Louisiana, before
Tammy Hupin, Certified Court Reporter, on the
4th of March, 2009, beginning at 1:00 p.m.
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1 APPEARANCES:
2 LYNN VENDINELLO
Chief, Fibers and Organics Branch
3 Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics
US EPA
45
JOHNATHAN TORRES
6 Disaster Housing Operations
US FEMA
78
DAEMIAN SCHREIBER
9 Quantech, Inc.
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
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1 PROCEEDINGS
2 MS. VENDINELLO:
3 Good afternoon. If I could get
4 everyone to take their seat, we want to get
5 started, because we have a very full agenda
6 today.
7 I'd like to welcome you all here today,
8 and I want to thank you all for coming. I
9 know many of you have traveled long
10 distances to be here.
11 My name is Lynn Vendinello, and I'm
12 with the Environmental Protection Agency.
13 With me here today is Rebecca Edlestein,
14 also with the Environmental Protection
15 Agency, and Johnathan Torres with FEMA.
16 And, then, we have some contractor support.
17 I'd like to welcome you here. We're
18 very interested in hearing your concerns
19 about formaldehyde.
20 As you may know, our new administrator,
21 Lisa Jackson, who was appointed by President
22 Obama is highly concerned about toxic
23 pollution, and has made it one of her five
24 priorities for her administration. And
25 she's particularly concerned also about
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1 environmental justice issues. That's
2 another one of her key priorities.
3 Overall, environmental justice issues
4 are a high priority for the new
5 administration. And, so, I'm glad that
6 we're able to be here today to listen to
7 your concerns. . . .
. . . .
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1 it. It would not have developed any further
2 from the time I quit smoking, and the
3 American Lung Association backs that up.
4 So, obviously, formaldehyde is killing
5 us both. Stop it before it kills more.
6 Thank you.
7 MR. SCHREIBER:
8 Thanks. We'll take a break now until
9 3:00
10 -- BRIEF RECESS --
11 MS. VENDINELLO:
12 Our next speaker is Thomas Rodgers with
13 Lifesave Biological Research.
14 We're going to switch the order, so we
15 can connect up Tom's laptop for his
16 presentation. So, therefore, I would ask
17 Paul Nelson of the Alabama Arise to come up
18 to the microphone, please.
19 Oh, they might be outside. Okay.
20 And I think he's with Zack Carter.
21 All right. Let me keep going down the
22 list. William Hamblin. Oh, there you go.
23 D&D Disaster Service.
24 MR. HAMBLIN:
25 I'd really like for everybody to be in.
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. . .
17 MR. SCHREIBER:
18 Mr. Rodgers, can I ask you to
19 (inaudible).
20 Thank you. Mr. Rodgers, if you will,
21 please state your full name and your
22 organization for the Record. We have
23 fifteen speakers left, so let's keep going.
24 MR. RODGERS:
25 I'm Thomas Rodgers. I'm from Utah.
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1 What in the world am I doing out here? A
2 little secret, your trailers are heading
3 west, and who's receiving those trailers and
4 those manufactured mobile homes? The Native
5 Americans, the Mexican farm workers, the
6 industrial labor that's cheap and quite
7 often slave labor, Asians, again Mexicans,
8 Polynesians that are being trafficked by
9 coyotes.
10
And, when I had a family contact me in11 February of this last year with a deathly
12 ill child, they didn't call me to diagnose
13 their child. What they called me for was
14 because the State of Utah and Child
15 Protective Services were about to take that
16 child away from that family, because the
17 state determined that the family was
18 negligent in the care of that child.
19 I know in my heart there are thousands
20 of families that are being destroyed by
21 Child Protective Services wrongly, because
22 they happen to be living in a HUD-regulated
23 house.
24 Now, in this case, you may not think
25 this is related, because what you see up
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1 here is a HUD regulation, FEMA regulation in
2 the evacuation of furnace exhaust. How many
3 of you saw the trailer parked out here at
4 the sidewalk this morning? Now, you looked
5 at the particle board and the other stuff
6 inside, and you were thinking about that
7 issue, which is an appropriate issue, and
8 Becky's right.
9 But I'm here to support Becky in this
10 battle against formaldehyde, because what
11 you're seeing in that photograph up there,
12 that video is the production of CO and its
13 companion gas H2CO. Whenever you produce
14 carbon monoxide, you will always produce
15 formaldehyde.
16 Firemen working in the forests of the
17 west or anywhere often are injured because
18 of their exposure to these two gases. How
19 many of you have a tobacco habit? How many
20 of you roll that carton of cigarettes on its
21 side? You will read two gases that are
22 lethal to infants or fetuses and to you.
23 Why are infants and fetuses the primary
24 victims? Because they require twenty times
25 more oxygen per pound of body weight. Now,
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1 that's at birth. When you're talking about
2 a zygote, a developing fetus in the womb,
3 the oxygen levels are thousands of time
4 higher per pound of body weight than yours.
5 If you have any compound that's noxious or
6 toxic to a fetus or an infant, that is far
7 more lethal.
8 In this case, this family was living in
9 a HUD-regulated unit. The problem with HUD
10 is it supercedes state regulatory agency
11 power.
12 By the way, I apologize. I have a
13 broken (dental) plate. Why is my (dental) plate broken?
14 Because the people I help have no money. I
15 can't even afford -- I couldn't even stay in
16 the Sheraton last night. None of you could,
17 could you? I stayed off base. I shouldn't
18 say that here.
19 But when you're helping the poor, the
20 already injured people, they're not going to
21 have funds. And what's really sad, they
22 also don't have the wear with all to speak
23 for themselves, and so you (and I) must speak for
24 them.
25 I'm just an old Army fart -- sorry,
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1 didn't mean to say that word. I went into
2 the military, because I love my Country and
3 I love the people who I fought for. I went
4 into medicine, because I love the people and
5 the people that I thought I would heal. I
6 found out that I've been betrayed in both
7 areas, both professions.
8 I'm going to tell you a little secret
9 in this case, what happened here. Both the
10 Government that I fought for and the
11 military -- I should say both the Government
12 and military included and my medical
13 profession have betrayed you.
14 Now, that's a harsh thing for me to
15 say. It's not the nurses and the doctors.
16 It's the bankers on top. Because I don't
17 know how many of you had any difficulty
18 getting tested for your poisoning.
Did it19 just happen? You had to beg, borrow, steal.
20 You had to get an act of Congress to get
21 that to happen.
22 This family's baby was dying with
23 carbon monoxide and formaldehyde
24 intoxication. When the doctor examined the
25 baby, he deliberately overlooked, he
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1 deliberately avoided testing for either one
2 of those toxins. And I had to go to battle.
3 And, of course, I have offended my fellows
4 before, so they like to write you off as
5 being a nut, you don't know what you're
6
talking about. And, by the way, since they7 own all the test equipment, you can't get
8 the test.
9 But, in my eighteen, twenty-five years
10 of working with dead bodies, living bodies,
11 I knew that not only this baby was poisoned,
12 but as I looked at the mother and father, I
13 saw the indications of poisoning. So I
14 pressed through my legislature, even that
15 did not force the doctors to do the right
16 thing.
17 We ended up in the courtroom. We
18 prevailed, because we had the truth. It was
19
obvious to any dumb old farmer. If you have20 a furnace exhaust, which you see up here
21 puffing this vapor, three feet away from the
22 power vent bringing air back into the unit,
23 you're going to have sick or dead people
24 inside.
25 There are twenty-six million units that
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1
I know of exactly like that under the2 regulation authority of HUD. Now, what's
3 HUD's responsibility? To care, provide
4 housing, safe housing, understood, for the
5 poor. Well, what the hell. They're just
6 trailer trash. Let's just get rid of them.
7 Gas them.
8 And the medical profession stands back
9 silent. If the medical profession would
10 come forward in your issue with
11 formaldehyde, it would be a dead issue,
12 wouldn't it? It would be done. It would be
13 fixed.
14 If you went in after being in one of
15 your trailers and you were found to be toxic
16 with formaldehyde and the doctor spoke out
17 and reported it to the health department,
18 health department reported it to my old
19 neighbor, Michael Levet (phonetic). Michael
(I was referring to Michael Leavitt, former Secretary of EPA, then Secretary of HHS during Katrina)
20 Levet would have come to HUD and FEMA and
21 said, "Get your act together. You're
22 killing people."
23 But, you know what, if the doctor
24 doesn't open his mouth, this all happens.
25 The trailer manufacturers get away with (producing)
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1 their junk. The regulatory agencies that
2 are having coffee instead of going out there
3 and examine things, (and) they get paid while
4 (your) babies die.
5 I went into medicine to save lives.
6 Thankfully, these families have found me, an
7 idiot farmer according to everybody out
8 there in profession now, because I've been
9 defrocked and all that. I'm just a
10 pathological liar instead of a pathologist
11 now.
12 But tell me, does that lie? Can you
13 not see that those vapors are going past a
14 vent that's drawing air back in?
15 Now, did you notice on the trailer
16 outside where the furnace exhaust was?
17 Right by the door. And Jesse's telling me
18 about these fires when they put wooden steps
19 next to door, well, hell, you've got exhaust
20 coming out right against the wood. What's
21 in that exhaust?
22 Did you notice there's another hole
23 right below it in that trailer. That's the
24 combustion air and within a few inches of
25 each other. So what's the combustion air
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1 drawing in? Old exhaust. And, when you
2 recycle this stuff, you get carbon monoxide
3 and H2CO.
4 So, indeed, you may have vented the
5 original construction of formaldehyde, but
6 you've reabsorbed it three years later when
7 you're running the furnace and you're
8 opening the door where that stuff is coming
9 back in, like in this case. So you will
10 measure formaldehyde, and you will think
11 it's the off-gassing of the material. Much
12 of it is.
13 Well, let me think about that. If
14 formaldehyde was absorbed by cellulose in
15 the beginning in the manufacturing, you re-
16 expose that old cellulose especially that
17 that's been wetted, and it's a great sponge
18 for formaldehyde along with carbon monoxide.
19 So you have again re-contaminated the woods
20 with formaldehyde.
21 Who's responsible? The manufacturers?
22 No. Who tells them how to put the unit
23 together? Somebody tell me. HUD and their
24 companion criminal, FEMA.
25 Now, I'm not blaming the people on the
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1 front line of FEMA, but deep in FEMA. They
2 can't be that stupid, can they? People in
3 HUD can't be that stupid.
4 Nobody can get a permit anywhere in the
5 United States to build a house and put an
6 exhaust three feet from a free-air intake
7 especially a power intake.
8 You can't go to the City of New Orleans
9 and build a house and say, "Hey, I want to
10 put my fresh-air intake three feet from my
11 furnace exhaust." Guess what the inspection
12 department in New Orleans is going to tell
13 you, "We refuse your permit." It's got to
14 be twelve to fourteen feet.
15 NIOSH, how does HUD spit in the eye of
16 NIOSH? How does HUD spit in the eye of the
17 National Homebuilders Association, the ICC?
18 How do they do that? It's for money.
19 Because if we can put this arrangement in a
20 trailer or manufactured home, it saves us
21 the additional expense of running pipe in
22 your conduit or ducting an additional way.
23 But, you know what -- I know I'm
24 putting myself really in the line of the
25 bullet -- it takes committees after
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1 committees. They can take a toilet seat
2 that would cost you five dollars at Home
3 Depot -- I hope there's Home Depot out here
4 -- and they can make it cost you what, three
5 thousand bucks. Well, that's what this is.
6 It's about saving money, but charging you
7 more, and everybody profits.
8 Now, I know I sound like a nut, but I
9 hate dead babies being on my table. I hate
10 families being destroyed by an incompetent
11 bureaucracy that instead of taking
12 responsibility for the situation that caused
13 the baby's illness or the death and saying,
14 "Oops, we made a mistake," but instead they
15 turn against the parents and blame them.
16 I'm sure you've been told many times
17 your sickness is your own fault. Well, I'm
18 Thomas Rogers. My web site is
19 gassingamerica.com. It's talking about
20 carbon monoxide, but formaldehyde is there
21 too.
22 And I appreciate Becky and the work
23 she's doing and you wonderful people who've
24 got the courage to come and stand against
25 the gorilla.
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1 Thank you. (again, I am) Thomas Rodgers,
2 (my website is) GassingAmerica.com.
3 MR. SCHREIBER:
4 Thank you, Mr. Rodgers.
5 Dr. Heidi Sinclair, if you could please
6 approach the podium. Dr. Sinclair had pre-
7 registered. So if you saw your name right
8 after hers, you may not be next.
9 MR. RODGERS: (I stepped back to the microphone to add critical statement about FEMA trailers being disposed of with our Native Americans in Utah and the Great Basin [Utah, Idaho, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming])
10 Oh, by the way, I just wanted to say in
11 Utah, the Native Americans are getting this
12 gift. The great base in the west, they're
13 getting this gift, and that's a crime.
14 DR. SINCLAIR:
15 Hi. My name is Dr. Heidi Sinclair . . . .
. . . (Complete New Orleans EPA Hearing transcript is available here)
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