President Barack Obama’s nominee to head the Consumer Product Safety Commission faced questions Tuesday on the growing problem of tainted drywall at her U.S. Senate confirmation hearing.

The nominee, Inez M. Tenenbaum, appeared before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, where she promised that if confirmed she would work quickly to reach a resolution to the Chinese drywall issue.

Tenenbaum called the drywall issue a “very real problem” that was “causing people great hardship,” but she stopped short of any specific promises, telling the committee she only has had access to publicly available reports and was thus still getting up to speed.

“I would like to meet with the scientists first,” she said, adding that she would organize a briefing her first week on the job aimed at putting together a specific schedule for when new drywall testing and conclusions were to be reached.

Sen. David Vitter, R-La., said the pace of the investigation was “inadequate” and that for victims suffering in an affected home, the “big issue is time.”

“Right now it’s on a very frustrating, multi-month timetable,” Vitter said. “People don’t know what the health bottom line is.”

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., called what Chinese drywall victims are facing a “Kafkaesque tragedy,” and told Tenenbaum it was unreasonable to ask those stuck in affected homes to simply wait it out.

Warner said CPSC inspectors themselves have reported experiencing health effects after just an hour or two inside affected homes, but that the government was telling homeowners “actually living in one of these health hazards, ‘You have no recourse.’

“It’s remarkable to me that the testing and finding the cause is taking this long,” Warner said.

The CPSC has begun putting out contracts for testing of upwards of 40 to 50 homes it would like to examine, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has also recently been in Florida and Louisiana testing homes.

The Florida Department of Health tested air in an affected Parkland home last week, and the state also contracted with Illinois-based Unified Engineering to study what drywall compounds may be behind the release of volatile sulfur gases found in its previous round of tests.

The Tenenbaum confirmation hearing was cordial overall, and the nominee is widely expected to sail through the process. Some Congressional aides said she could receive a final confirmation vote by the Senate before the July 4 recess.

One possible indication of a faster confirmation came at the conclusion of the hearing, when Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., informed the committee that any written questions for Tenenbaum were to be submitted by the end of the day. Generally the committee members are given a couple of weeks to assemble such questions.

Pryor advocated for more vigilance by the CPSC and other agencies at U.S. ports, saying that the Chinese drywall issue was an “illustration of how easy it is to fix the problem before it comes in,” as opposed to the untold cost of trying to now remove the material from affected homes.

“If we could have gone back and had an inspector there to say no, that could not come into the U.S., think of how many millions of dollars that would have saved for people across the country,” Pryor said.

As the defective drywall problem has grown, not all of the fingers have been pointed at China. Some U.S. drywall manufacturers are also in disputes with homeowners about their products causing similar corrosion and bad smells.

Charlotte-based National Gypsum and Atlanta-based Georgia-Pacific Gypsum, two companies whose drywall is present in Florida homes evidencing corrosion, have denied their products are the cause.

A spokesman said the CPSC has also begun investigating potential cases involving domestic drywall.

Florida’s two senators, Democrat Bill Nelson and Republican Mel Martinez, both sit on the Commerce Committee, but neither attended the Tuesday hearing. Nelson has said he discussed the drywall issue personally with Tenenbaum after learning of her nomination

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