Posted on 05/31/2009 5:10:46 AM PDT by IbJensen
There's something rotten in Homestead.
It's the odor in Jason and Melissa Harrell's house, which was built with defective, Chinese-made drywall redolent of strong paint or rotten eggs. The smell got so bad that the Harrells felt forced to move. They now pay rent on top of their mortgage.
''What it boiled down to is, I had to choose between my financial health and my children's physical health,'' Melissa Harrell said.
When the sulfurous stink in Gary and Andrea Suhajcik's Boynton Beach home wouldn't go away, the builder offered to rip out the walls, wiring, plumbing and molding in hopes of making it livable.
Builders and homeowners have feuded over construction defects, real and imagined, since the first slab was poured in the first house in the first subdivision somewhere in suburbia. But South Florida has never seen anything quite like the curse of the Chinese drywall. Tens of thousands of homes were built with the material, which was brought in by boat from the Far East when the demand for drywall exploded during the building boom.
Aside from the odor, scientific studies by the Florida Department of Health and the Environmental Protection Agency found that drywall made by Chinese manufacturers distinctly differs from North American-made product and emits high levels of three volatile sulfur compounds, which can corrode copper piping -- like the kind in appliances -- and blacken copper wiring in electrical outlets and light switches.
No scientific study to date has linked the drywall to any specific health problems.
And yet, Michael McGeehin, director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's environmental health division, told a U.S. Senate subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety and Insurance: ``There's no doubt that corrosive material is causing health problems.''
COUNTING THE COST
Buyers are suing. Occupants are fleeing. And builders are, in some cases, tearing out walls and rebuilding at a staggering cost.
Although the problem is most prevalent in Florida, the defective drywall was used in at least 18 states between 2004 and 2008. Some estimate the cost of addressing the problem could rise to $1 trillion.
Dajan Green and her mother bought a four-bedroom townhome in the Silver Palms community in Homestead, built by Lennar in 2006. By buying something new, she hoped to spare herself the problems that plague older homes, like corroded galvanized pipe.
''You know: Everything is new. You don't have any issues,'' said Green, 28.
Wrong.
The air conditioner's copper coils turned black. Jewelry, including a bracelet her brother gave her to celebrate her sweet sixteen, turned black too.
And, more disturbingly, her 7-year-old son became lethargic, a condition she blames on the home -- although there is no proof.
They would leave, Green said, but they can't pay the mortgage and rent somewhere else.
''What are we going to do? We're stuck,'' she said.
Lennar, which says it isn't commenting at this time, has litigation pending against the drywall manufacturer. At the time the suit was filed, it issued a news release declaring: ``Lennar is acting promptly to correct the problem in the homes we delivered.''
The first concerns about a possible problem arose at least five years ago. A Fort Myers environmental health firm investigated complaints but didn't link them to foreign-made drywall for about two years.
Then came the first lawsuit -- the first of many, both class action and individual. The target of the suit, Knauf Plasterboard Tianjin hired its own lab, which found that the drywall emitted sulfur-containing compounds at unnaturally high concentrations but said it should not be considered a public health problem.
It’s strange though how the problems have surfaced and are related to the influx of the Chinese product.
I’m told that Chinese sheet rock contains combustion ash from fluidized bed (limestone injection to control SO2) combustion. It can be quite reactive.
or they could just be using US currency in the mix! :P
There is little argument that the Chinese drywall is the problem. Or some of it, anyway.
There is great argument about why this is the case. Despite extensive testing over the last six months there is still no answer why these problems are happening.
This is heavily reported in the media, but is not accurate.
They are confusing two issues. Fly ash is the particulate matter from unburned coal in power plants. It is widely used as an additive to concrete, where it doesn’t seem to cause any problems.
Synthetic gypsum, OTOH, is a byproduct of the removal of sulfur gases from the smokestack. It is chemically a good deal more pure than the gypsum they dig out of the ground. It is used in both Chinese and US drywall. It is widely considered a “green” product. It is produced entirely separately from the fly ash and could not be mixed with it during production. Somebody could add it later, of course.
EPA tests that just came out this week found no fly ash in the Chinese drywall. But the tests were of only two samples.
Lord only knows what the Chinese put into drywall. But people should be aware that six months of testing has found nothing that is obviously the cause of the problem.
Never thought of that. Execution victims’ body parts are more valuable than the monopoly money our communist government prints. Those body parts can be made into a delicious dog food.
Drywall is made from gypsum, which naturally contains sulfur compounds. If the drywall was exposed to humidity at sea, the process of evaporation that occurs as the drywall dries could be responsible for the odors coming from the material. According to a report on Environmental Expert.com, the problems appear to be related to the presence of iron disulfide (FeS2 pyrite) in the material. Hydrogen sulfide (H2S), carbonyl sulfide, sulfur dioxide (SO2), and carbon disulfide (CS2) are also suspected as culprits, the Web site said.
The possibility that the Chinese drywall is emitting hydrogen sulfide fumes is disturbing. Exposure to 50 parts per million of hydrogen sulfide for more than ten minutes can cause extreme irritation. Inhalation of 500 to 1,000 parts per million can cause unconsciousness and death through respiratory paralysis and asphyxiation, according to environmental experts.
Why do we buy any products from China. They are so corrupt, they don’t care about safety. We need to rebuild our manufacturing base in this country and produce our own products.
I agree fly ash can be nasty stuff. I have just seen no evidence to date that it is in drywall, Chinese or US. Since it is very easy to detect, this is important.
Is there a competent chem lab working on this? If the problem is that obvious (visible damage to exposed copper pipes) then the effect cannot be very subtle and a couple of good chemists ought to be able to figure it out in no time.
Figuring out what is outgassing, wet and dry, should be pretty simple.
This might require the resources of a high end like at one of the National Laboratories (Argonne or Oak Ridge), but this is potentially a mult-billion dollar problem and the EPA certainly has access to them.
Quality control always hangs by a thread in China. At any given time, under the pressure of pricing and profit and curruption a supplier can fall off the standard.
Every product sold in America..from pine nuts to lug nuts need to be labeled as to country of origin..not just packaging.
Just to keep these numbers in perspective.
50 ppm is 50,000 parts per billion (ppb).
To date the highest levels measured in affected homes of which I'm aware are in the low hundreds ppb. Human exhalation can have hydrogen sulfide in the 500+ ppb range. I suspect human flatulence much higher than that.
People can detect the odor of hydrogen sulfide in the less than 5 ppb range.
Not saying there should not be health concerns. Just saying that the extreme acute effects you describe aren't likely. Or anyway there's no evidenc they're likely.
The state of FL has very good chem labs working on this. My company is working with the same lab.
You are quite correct, IMO, that a simple chemical reaction should be figured out quickly. Since it hasn’t, my suspicion is that it isn’t simple and therefore not purely chemical in nature.
I’m presently leaning to the hypothesis that it is a combination of contamination with bacteria and/or mold combined with poor humidity control associated with negative building pressure. That might explain, to some extent, why the problem popped up first in the most humid areas of the US.
This is how I get most of my exercise: jumping to conclusions.
80% of the garlic consumed in the USA is from China.
Hmm. Garlic gets its odor and flavor from organic sulfur compounds. Maybe the Chinese are putting surplus garlic into their drywall. To cover up the odor of decaying ground-up remains of dissidents, perhaps.
Low cost, which trumps all other concerns (quality, safety, employment of our fellow citizens, etc.).
However, exposure to hydrogen sulfide will eventually dull the olfactory sensitivity, to the point that people may not be able to detect it at low levels.
I imagine that if the sulfur is coming from the drywall, metal in or near the walls, like copper pipes and wires, would be exposed to higher levels that people in room spaces. Also, solution of hydrogen sulfide in condensation of water on pipes, could enhance corrosion of plumbing.
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