Personal Injury Law

Chinese Drywall Problem Moves Across Florida

By Jane Akre

Just how many homes are built with foul-smelling wallboard from China?

Many residents of coastal Florida have been reporting problems to the health department and their contractor. Now the problem has moved to inland Florida to the town of Sebring, about 90 miles east of Sarasota.

Gases coming from the drywall or wallboard, as it is also called, seem to be emitting some type of corrosive that is blackening pipes and wiring. Some residents say they are getting sick. 

The Sarasota Herald-Tribune reports on Ryan Willis and his wife who moved to Sebring in 2006. They helped build their home, the first one they've owned, by laying tile and painting the walls. 

By 2007, the air conditioner failed four times. Silver plates blackened as did metal light fixtures. The television and satellite receivers stopped working. 

On the back of the drywall, Willis took a picture of the name, Knauf Tianjin, a China-based subsidiary of a German company.

The Herald-Tribune looked into shipping records and found enough drywall from China has been offloaded at U.S. ports to build 60,000 average-size homes.

A home inspector told Willis that he suspects dozens of homes in Sebring were built with the drywall.

Builder Salvatore Meliti, 81 of Avon Park, Florida, says he plans to make it right, but has no resources right now.  He says that a Lakeland-based distributor sold him the Knauf Tianjin wallboard. 

Other builders who might have used it include some of the biggest names in residential construction such as Lennar, Taylor Morrison homes, WCI, Meritage, Ryland, Standard Pacific Homes, and Aubuchon Homes.

In one development along the Manatee River, Lennar's Heritage Harbour, they are ripping out much of the interior walls to correct the problem.

Consumers generally smell a foul sulphur-like odor. Lennar says the drywall poses no health hazard. Knauf's lab came to the same conclusion. 

The paper reports that the problem may span outside of Florida. One consumer group says its investigation finds Chinese drywall in Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, north and South Carolina, Virginia and Texas.

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson is asking the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and the Environmental Protection Agency to determine whether the drywall is toxic to humans.

Nelson reports there are no safety standards regulating gypsum-based building products such as drywall, and this issue highlights the need for standards. 

Residents Talk to InjuryBoard

A respondent to IB News- Honolulu says that the wallboard may actually be Chinese magnesium oxide board, also called Mag Board, MgO Board and Dragon Board. Wet it and it releases magnesium chloride, corrosive to metal, he says. Heat it and it releases magnesium oxide fumes.

Another person writes that the inspector told her to look at the drywall on the walls, not the ceiling, because Chinese drywall doesn't stay flat enough to make a ceiling.   

There is not necessarily a smell, writes another, but corrosive pipes and wiring. Wayne Parson's blog has at least two dozen people who appear to be impacted by the Chinese drywall. 

Joe Saunders, IB partner from Sarasota, adds to the conversation as does Steve Lombardi from Iowa who says that the Chinese government's secret closed government, lack of independent media and of civil litigation with its requirement for full disclosure, all serve to keep information secret and the public in the dark.   #

Full post as published by InjuryBoard on February 18, 2009 (boomark / email).