WASHINGTON, D.C. –- On Thursday, the first Congressional hearing into Chinese drywall will take place in Washington. The Senate Commerce Committee will meet at 10:30a.m. to discuss freeing up additional funds for testing, and helping homeowners.

Florida’s Senator Bill Nelson and fellow Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana have been pushing the Federal government to take immediate steps to protect homeowners who may be living with tainted Chinese drywall. Nelson has asked for an immediate recall of the imported drywall and a temporary ban on future imports.

This week environmental officials have found that Chinese-made drywall – suspected of causing serious corrosion in homes throughout Florida, Louisiana and other states – contains three materials not found in samples of U.S.-manufactured wallboard, according to U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson’s office.

Tests on drywall samples were done at the request of Sens. Nelson and Mary Landrieu, who have initiated an investigation into complaints from homeowners in their respective states, Florida and Louisiana, that drywall in newer or rebuilt homes smells like rotten eggs and is causing corrosion of copper wiring and household appliances. In addition, homeowners are complaining of health problems such as asthma, coughing, headaches and insomnia.

The just-concluded tests by the Federal Environmental Protection Agency found that Chinese-made drywall contained sulfur that wasn’t in U.S. drywall, strontium at levels ten times as high as in U.S. drywall and two other organic compounds generally found in acrylic paint that were not detected in any U.S.-made wallboard.

Still, the EPA said more testing is needed, including air sampling in affected houses, to determine whether the drywall is in fact the cause of corroded wiring and appliances and the reported health problems. Tomorrow, Nelson and Landrieu will be filing an amendment to provide emergency funds for the investigation and continued testing.

“We now know there are three things in there that aren’t in other drywall samples,” Nelson said today, after his office reviewed the EPA’s first drywall testing results. “We’ve got the ‘what’ and now we need the ‘why’ – and, how do we fix it?”

“In the end, I think all this stuff is going to have to be ripped out,” Nelson said.

“These initial tests provide some answers for our impacted homeowners, but also raise more questions,” Landrieu said. “Sen. Nelson and I are continuing to work closely with federal officials to get answers for families with sick children and pets, construction workers and builders removing the product, and local health officials who are concerned with dumping the drywall in their landfills.”

Source ABC Action News