US: Chinese drywall not harmful

Both. I'd say it points to a need to get beyond anti Chinese bigotry and look at what else may be in common in the problem houses in question.

Hey Bub- The quote you cited includes the phrase "so far". And if you look at the full Wall Street Journal article in the URL you included in your posting (above), the second paragraph of the full article explicitly identifies the government's report as "preliminary".

In your rush to condemn the government, you are ignoring inconvenient information that negates your criticism.

The alleged structural damage done by the off-gassing from the suspect drywall took time to develop due to the relatively low concentrations of whatever volatile chemicals may be responsible. In order to scientifically establish whether or not the drywall is at fault, it is probably necessary to do a thorough chemical analysis of the off-gasses, including their concentration, and then expose typical home construction materials to the same mixture of gasses at the same concentrations and same conditions of temperature and humidity.

You cannot always extrapolate the effects of low level exposure by using a higher concentration for a shorter exposure period to accelerate the testing time. Many toxic and/or corrosive substances exhibit a threshold effect, where low or very low levels of exposure produce a different (or even null) effect compared with a higher exposure. Doing the science properly takes a certain amount of time that cannot always be rushed, despite what you may believe.

Yet this is the basis for much of the rat lab testing for cancer status. Feed the rat a couple orders of magnitude more than the human equivalent and wonder why bad things occur.

You make a good point, yet your point raises an even more interesting question:

If the results (so far) are inconclusive, equivocal, almost meaningless, and merely suggest a hint of a shadow of a possible trend, why say anything at all?

Is the obviously premature report a mistake in its release or an attempt to influence something: Diplomatic relations, pending lawsuit results, the World Series winner?

on 10/30/2009 10:04 AM (ET) Kurt Ullman wrote the following:

Even drinking clean water can cause death.

Isn't that what happened to the saccharin ban that caused cancer in rats ? They fed them enough that a person would have to eat about a gallon of it a day to produce the same results.

Since SW Florida is ground zero in this mess I wonder how much of this sulfur is coming from the drywall and how much is just coming from their well water. That is always a surprise for people who come here from up north.

I know a guy who is fixing two genuine chinese drywall houses as we speak and damage to a running A/C coil seems to be the biggest problem the drywall caused. In the other house the A/C was off and the coil is OK. You are still stripping the walls back to the studs

Because it's interesting, and because there are people who prefer not to buy defective and/or dangerous s*it from dictatorships.

At the time people were buying this drywall they just felt lucky to get any drywall from anywhere. It was right after Katrina and in the middle of a building boom that had already swallowed up all the drywall the US could produce.

A few companies like Centex Homes got in front of this problem and built their own drywall plants but most just bought at the market price..

If you think it's a non-sequitur, you're too busy with other tasks. Come back when you can focus.

One major bit of commonality: the houses were occupied by living, breathing humans.

Like cows emit methane, h*mo sapiens emits hydrogen sulfide, and kitty litter emits ammonia. Has anyone tracked down the emissions of the ubiquitous 'palmetto bugs' that Floridians live with? Endless possibilities...

Joe

What saccharin ban? All they ever got was a warning on the label which nobody cares about, the stuff is still selling quite well today.

The FDA banned it in '72 but was overruled by Congress. BTW: Canada banned it entirely. Probably confusion with cyclamate where the ban stuck.

A couple other drywall factoids I got from a friend: Drywall can contain asbestos. If a material contains less than 1% asbestos it is not regulated [1% seems rather high to me]. Some Chinese drywall has been found to have 3% asbestos.

Drywall contains gypsum (it is also called gypsum board). Gypsum is calcium sulfate, so 'normal' drywall contains sulfur (but bound in the gypsum molecule).

This seems to vary from, person to person. I was in a "drywall" house the other day. I noticed the musty smell but it had no real affect on me. My friend had a sore throat, runny nose and he said his eyes burned.

I do have some pictures, this is an FTP site, use your back button to get back to the index.

idiots

OK, read *carefully*, it doesn't declare the stuff innocent, just that they have "found no evidence". Well, where do you LOOK for such evidence?

They verified what can be easily verified, that the emissions are there.

But they need a time machine to go back and watch the damage that was done a year ago.

J.

I've been hearing this story for months. I don't understand how this happened. Drywall is supposed to be gypsum, but supposedly some of the troubling drywall that was USA-made had cellulose in it and emitted formaldehyde as well as sulfide. Is this some sort of go-green recycling issue? Did the Chinese make this drywall for us or did they also use it for themselves? In the 1970s folks pumped foam between their walls and choked from formaldehyde. Is there some insulation additive? I sometimes freak when I find all the additives in stuff I buy for the house. I mean, when I buy one thing, I can mix the other stuff myself (I'm a chemical engineer!). THat's how we got asbestos and other stuff into our homes. The 1965 late engineer told my late dad the asbestos siding was "a new material that never needs replacing." Well, not in their lifetimes. The asbestos siding on my block that hasn't beenreplaced or covered has a lot of paint fading.

- = - Vasos Panagiotopoulos, Columbia'81+, Reagan, Mozart, Pindus, BioStrategist

In 1985 NYC air had 1 fiber of asbestos/cc and the Germans workplace standard was .2/cc and the USA one 2/cc. Plus I seem to recall Vermont "white" asbestos is at least one order of magnitude less dangerous than South African "blue" and fiberglass is at least one order of magnituded less hazardous than "white".

- = - Vasos Panagiotopoulos, Columbia'81+, Reagan, Mozart, Pindus, BioStrategist