WASHINGTON, March 27 (UPI) -- New Orleans residents who are returning to their homes in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina are finding that, although the immediate threat to their safety has passed, health risks remain.
 
But despite the dangers from the mold and toxic chemicals that Katrina left behind, New Orlean's healthcare infrastructure is still struggling, with the city's most needy paying the highest price.
 
Earlier this month, New Orleans residents protested the closing of Charity Hospital, the city's only Level 1 trauma center, saying it would leave a gap in care for the city's low-income and uninsured. The owners of the hospital, Louisiana State University-Health Care Services Division, issued a statement saying the structure was too damaged by flooding to be salvaged.
 
A new center is being built in cooperation with the Department of Veterans Affairs, but will not open for five years. In the interim, the poor will be forced to rely on a series of temporary clinics.
 
As the weather warms, federal authorities are warning of the increased environmental hazards the hurricane, and accompanying flooding, left behind.
 
"Given the extent of the damage during the hurricane, there's only so much that can be done," Capt. Sven Rodenbeck of the Centers for Disease Control told United Press International. "People have to protect themselves."
 
Residents returning to their homes in New Orleans are being warned about dangers from chemicals, snakes, mosquitoes and mold - which will only being heightened as the temperature outside increases, he said.
 
Parts of the city that were flooded are covered in mold, he said, and the young, the old, and anyone with respiratory problems or a compromised immune system is advised not to spend time there.
 
Doctors and hospitals are being warned to prepare for potential increases in certain kinds of injuries.
 
"Hospitals and healthcare providers are in line to do what they can," he said.
 
CDC staff members have been stationed at hospitals to provide assistance and lookout for spikes in illness or injury, Rodenbeck said. "Constant communication is really the key."
Meanwhile, some residents are taking matters into their own hands.
 
Beverly Wright, of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice at Dillard University, is no stranger to chemical contamination. The center has worked on sites in the Mississippi chemical corridor for years, she said.
 
So when she returned to her home in New Orleans, she knew the health hazard that the inches-thick layer of sludge left by receding floodwaters could pose. Environmental Protection Agency measurements merely confirmed what she has already suspected - the soil was now full of toxins like arsenic, barium, and benzo(a)pyrene at levels that could cause cancer and other long-term illness.
 
At first she thought government - busy cleaning up the French Quarter and other parts of the city - would remove the poisonous layer from her neighborhood's lawns, Wright said. Instead, she and her neighbors saw only reassuring flyers posted about an eventual cleanup, but the sludge remained. Neighborhood residents began cleaning up their lawns without important safety gear.
 
"We were seeing all those horrible things, and it seemed like the agencies responsible for our health were silent," she told UPI.
 
So Wright started organizing. She recruited volunteers from local universities, community organizations and Americorps. She secured funding from private donors like Ford Foundation and the National Black Environmental Justice Network.
 
To help protect volunteer health, she turned to an ally with a lot of experience dealing with toxins - the United Steelworkers union. The union trained volunteers to safely remove the top layer of sludge using heavy machinery.
 
In two days, steelworkers and trained volunteers cleared the lawns of 25 homes on the 8100 block of Aberdeen Road were cleared. Over the weekend, more than 100 untrained volunteers lay new sod.
 
FEMA agreed to pick up the dredged materials and dispose of them safely.
The residents of the neighborhood were "ecstatic," said Mary Williams of the center. "They were so excited."
 
"Residents cooked for the volunteers and did what they could to make them more comfortable. They were the envy of their neighbors, I can tell you," she said.
The organizers of the project, called A Safe Way Back Home, hope that government agencies will adopt this low-cost and rapid model of cleanup, Jim Frederick, assistant director for health and safety at the union, told UPI.
 
"This is a wonderful demonstration of initiative that could be replicated throughout this side of New Orleans and the entire city," Frederick said. "One of our goals is to help people return to their houses and turn them back into homes."
 
"The people of New Orleans are not sitting around waiting for a handout," Wright said. "We are willing to do our share, but we want what we deserve from the federal government."
 
While it remains unclear how long New Orleans residents will be waiting for what they say is their due from the government, for now, federal officials have acted to compensate neighboring states that weren't caught up in Katrina's wrath, but that took in those who were.
 
Late last week, the federal Department of Health and Human Services dispersed the first $1.5 billion of the $2 billion Congress set aside to help states that took in refugees from Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
 
When those displaced persons arrived in their new locations, they had lost homes, jobs -- and the health insurance that came with them. States were given special permission form the federal government to immediately enroll the new population into their Medicaid programs.
 
Some of the individuals who enrolled had income low enough to qualify for Medicaid before the storm hit, while others found themselves in need in the hurricane's aftermath.
"Last year, when disaster struck, President Bush promised to make states whole for the cost of caring for their neighbors," HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt said. "The President and Congress have made good on that statement."
 
 

# # #

Pure Air Control Services, Inc.

1-800-422-7873