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FEMA trailers in Port Sulphur, La., May 2009

The New York Times reports that those formaldehyde-laden FEMA trailers of Katrina infamy are back. This time they're being used to house workers fighting the Gulf oil spill.

In the wake of the 2005 hurricane, 120,000 of the emergency shelters provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency were found to contain high levels of the chemical and were abandoned as an option for long-term housing.

The eventual conclusion was that formaldehyde – common in many housing units – was compounded in the trailers because of their poor ventilation and the cheap wood used in their construction.

The government sold the trailers in 2006 and although it did so with the implicit proviso that they shouldn't be resold as housing, some of them have been resurrected for just that purpose, according to the Times:

They have been showing up in mobile-home parks, open fields and local boatyards as thousands of cleanup workers have scrambled to find housing.

The trailers are being resold for as little as $2,500 by the companies that snatched them up at auction four years ago.

The Times report cites an email from a spokeswoman for the General Services Administration, the agency that oversaw the auctions, saying it was taking steps to make sure the trailers weren't being used for housing.