Crowd funding for a formaldehyde / indoor air quality project (discussed at the barnraising)

[Don Blair]

Howdy Folks,

Just trying to get the word out about a great crowd-funding project around formaldehyde / indoor air quality:

Nick Shapiro (Medical Anthropology, Oxford) has been tracking the illegal resale of over 150,000 emergency housing units that were built after Hurricane Katrina. These housing units, which came to be infamously known as "the FEMA trailers", contain very high levels of formaldehyde, and are now being resold all over the country to people in dire straights-- in particular, those in need of housing on Native American reservations, as well as places hit hard by the foreclosure crisis.

Nick has been working with a reporter to raise money for a website that will used data he's wrestled off the federal government to identify toxic FEMA trailers by there VIN number. In addition to tracking the FEMA trailier, the site will also amass general complaints about indoor air quality for all modular and mobile homes. The resultant data will help in assessing the public health threat in a very vulnerable community -- one that makes up the fastest growing sector of the American housing market, and that also hasn't been studied much at all, to date.

You can help get the word out & encourage folks to donate by sending them / tweeting this link:

http://spot.us/pitches/1535-tracking-katrina-s-trailers-and-a-national-housing-crisis/details

We're planning on working with Nick on related indoor air quality sensing projects / prototypes in the coming months.

Cheers,

Don