After returning home to Fairland, Ind., Higdon and her husband had the trailer tested. They were shocked: Airborne formaldehyde in the travel trailer was seven times the amount considered acceptable by scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

What happened to the Higdons shows that formaldehyde problems aren't limited to the emergency trailers shipped by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to hurricane victims on the Gulf Coast in 2005.

Air quality advocates say that ordinary camper trailers and motorized recreational vehicles can be unhealthy because no federal or state agency bars manufacturers from using materials in them that contain formaldehyde. The colorless gas can cause respiratory problems and is a suspected carcinogen.

"Travel trailers and RVs are not regulated by anyone. You can use the worst formaldehyde product you can find if you want to," says Thad Godish, a professor of natural resources and environmental management at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind.

New regulations coming

Last year, 103 manufactured housing companies sold about 350,000 such vehicles for $14.5 billion. They included campers mounted on pickups, campers towed by autos, motorized RVs and mobile homes, which are houses set in permanent trailer parks for year-round residents.

Mobile homes are the only vehicles in which formaldehyde is covered by federal law.

Change, however, is coming. Starting in 2009, California will phase in a requirement that manufacturers cut by half the amount of formaldehyde in manufactured wood for all products sold, used or made for sale in California.

Two congressional committees also are examining health issues related to emergency housing for victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

The investigations could lead to strict formaldehyde standards for future RVs, campers and travel trailers for emergency or normal consumer use.

At issue is the urea formaldehyde in glue that is used to make plywood and particle board fashioned into furniture, cupboards and floors. As an RV or camper cabin warms up, formaldehyde slowly seeps from the glue as a colorless gas.

Safer glues have been available for nearly a decade, but the new products are more expensive. No federal or state rules require the use of the safer glues.

While the EPA has established a limit for airborne formaldehyde, the agency has no regulatory authority over manufactured housing. The federal agency responsible is the Department of Housing and Urban Development. In the mid-1980s, HUD set a limit of 0.4 parts per million (ppm) — but only in mobile homes.

When HUD set the standard, a level that wood-products manufacturers could meet then, urea formaldehyde content in plywood and particleboard dropped sharply, Godish says.

James Seltzer, an allergist in Irvine, Calif., says formaldehyde complaints from people have eased considerably since then.

Even so, Godish says, few people would want to live in a home where formaldehyde measured 0.4 ppm.

"My eyes would be burning," he says.

Prices expected to rise

California's rule will cut by nearly 60% the amount of formaldehyde emissions that seep into the air from glue used to create plywood and particleboard. The higher standard will force manufacturers to use more expensive glues and will mean longer processing times, cutting into profits and pushing up prices for the finished product, according to testimony before the California Air Resources Board when it passed the rule last April.

The impact could be widely felt in Indiana, one of the top five states for manufactured home production. Indiana manufacturers turn out about 60% of the country's recreational vehicles, and the industry employs 23,000 in the state.

Kevin Broom, spokesman for the Recreation Vehicle Industry Association, a Virginia-based trade group that represents most of the nation's recreational vehicle and camper-trailer makers, says the group agreed in January to follow HUD's standards for mobile homes in campers and RVs, too. Manufacturers voluntarily comply by purchasing material containing less formaldehyde.

Even so, the recent formaldehyde controversy on the Gulf Coast has put the industry in a bind, says engineer Joseph Hagerman, head of the building technology group for the Federation of American Scientists in Washington.

"They've really taken a PR hit on this one," Hagerman says. "Who is going to buy a new trailer if they heard about the health problems in Hurricane Katrina trailers?"

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