Artist Paul Villinski has done a fab refab of a prefab, stripping out the guts of a 30' Gulfstream Cavalier FEMA Trailer of all formaldehyde-contaminated materials and rebuilding it with recycled denim insulation, reclaimed wood floors and bamboo cabinetry.
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Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that Katrina trailers emitted four to eleven times as much formaldehyde as one might get in conventional housing. There are rules restricting the amount of formaldehyde that can be emitted in mobile homes, but not in wheeled trailers. According to the Washington Post:
Lori Waselchuk for The New York Times
Object lesson on why this never ends: FEMA gets it right, and is testing the "Mississippi Cottages" offered by Mississippi Emergency Management Agency (MEMA), which the New York Times describes as having "tin roofs, small porches and are colored like Easter eggs — rose-hip pink, malted mint, cloudless blue. The cottages are on wheels, but the larger models can be put on permanent foundations. All are equipped with appliances, beds, a table and chairs, ceiling fans, even pots and pans, and cost an average of $32,000 apiece to build." People love them.
RVs and recreational trailers are designed to be as light as possible; they are also often engineered to be as cheap as possible. Consequently they are built out of luan plywoods, thin particle boards, plastics and vinyls, full of formaldehyde, phthalates and fire retardants. As John noted earlier, they are also small, with a lot of interior surface area for the volume enclosed, and are baked at high temperatures in the southern sun.
Exactly like the toxic FEMA trailers....
Last year John did a recipe of the week for optimizing formaldehyde exposure:
1. take small aluminum box;
2. fill with particleboard, composites, glues, carpet, luon plywood liner;
3. stuff tightly with jobless Katrina refugees with nowhere to go;
4. cook at high heat in southern sun until done.
Last year John did a recipe of the week for optimizing formaldehyde exposure:
1. take small aluminum box;
2. fill with particleboard, composites, glues, carpet, luon plywood liner;
3. stuff tightly with jobless Katrina refugees with nowhere to go;
4. cook at high heat in southern sun until done.
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