Need help removing newlines from header

I have a form with a textarea field.
Everything is ok until the user submitting the form adds returns characters.

When return characters are added I get this error

Warning: Header may not contain more than a single header, new line detected

This was my original code

$action = 'report_pub.php?report_pubaccess=' . $id . '&pub_access=' . $_soft_id;

Line A. header('Location:' . $_action);

I should be able to fix this using the following.

$headers = "Content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8\r\n";
$headers .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit";

Can someone tell what syntax I should use to concatinate Line A onto Line B or vice versa!

Line B. header($headers);

Are you using [man]urlencode[/man] to encode characters that aren't valid in URLs?

No, just standard text which works fine untill returns are added.
I have also tried to remove problem characters earlier in the script -

if (isset($GET['submit'])) {
$name = $GET['pub_access'];
$report = mysql_real_escape_string(stripslashes(rtrim($_GET['report_pubaccess'])));

still receive this error -

Warning: Header may not contain more than a single header, new line detected

Looks like what I should have is this -

header("Content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8");
header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit");

Just not sure how to add it to this -

$action = 'report_confirm_pub.php?report_pubaccess=' . $id . '&pub_access=' . $_soft_id;

header('Location:' . $_action);

In that case, maybe you should.
As the function's name suggests, that is what it's for.