Health

"Made in China" Drywall May Hurt Your Health and House's Value

by Gordon Clark | October 8, 2009 at 08:56 am

368 views | 14 Recommendations | 2 comments

Thousands of health and financial complaints about Chinese manufactured drywall have been cited. In recent years especially, North American drywall use has been fueled by the cheap prices of Chinese made drywall. And now it is realized you are only getting what you are paying for. This can post health and financial issues. Common cases include symptoms of headaches and nosebleeds.

If your drywall stinks of rotten eggs due to the sulfur chances are your home value has decreased as well. Not only should the drywall be replaced but there are cases of the sulfur damaging other metal appliances in homes.

Content exams are currently underway in China to find the defected sources of material.

“There could be 60,000 to 100,000 homes that are worthless and have to be ripped completely down and rebuilt,” said Arnold Levin, a Philadelphia lawyer and co-chairman of the plaintiffs’ steering committee.

While tainted Chinese imports like toothpaste, pet food and baby formula have been quickly removed from store shelves, drywall is installed throughout homes and does not lend itself to a quick fix.

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A. Tran

at 10:56 on October 8th, 2009

Apparently, since last year, there were numerous homes across the US that had to be partially torn down to remove the offending and health hazardous drywall.

Hugh Askew

at 13:35 on October 8th, 2009

Haven't heard of any in my neck of the woods, but i do know a rep with a national sheetrock distributor. He claims this is a major disaster for the US companies that used the product. Most of it came after after Katrina, when the US manufacturers couldn't keep up with demand. Boom states like California, Nevada, Arizona and Florida, will have the biggest quantities.

Naturally, the lawyers are involved, thus costs of the whole debacle will quadruple.