Reporting from Los Angeles and Wuhan, China — The final years of the U.S. housing boom and a disastrous series of Gulf Coast hurricanes created a golden opportunity for Chinese drywall manufacturers. With domestic suppliers unable to keep up with demand, imports of Chinese drywall to the U.S. jumped 17-fold in 2006 from the year before.

That imported drywall is now at the center of complaints of foul odors seeping from walls. Hundreds of homeowners, most in Florida, have also reported corrosion to their air conditioners, mirrors, electrical outlets and even jewelry.

State and federal authorities have traced the problems to Chinese-made drywall but haven’t yet fully determined the causes. Some Chinese experts, however, suspect that the culprit is a radioactive phosphorus substance — phosphogypsum — that is banned for construction use in the U.S. but has been used by Chinese manufacturers for almost a decade.

Copies of Chinese customs reports obtained by The Times, along with interviews, indicate that drywall made with phosphogypsum was shipped to the U.S. in 2006 by at least four Chinese-based manufacturers and trading firms.

The health risk of phosphogypsum is uncertain, but industry specialists say they are troubled by its widespread use and the possibility it was exported, especially in light of recent incidents in which other Chinese imports such as pet food, toys and candy were found to be contaminated with toxic or unsafe substances.
Read the rest of this entry »

If a whole building can fall due to Chinese sub-standard materials just imagine what they sell to the rest of the world!  Chinese drywall is going to be the least of our worries.

HONG KONG (Reuters) – A 13-story residential building under construction in Shanghai collapsed on Saturday, killing one worker and highlighting the dangers of shoddy building in fast-urbanising China.

The building, in the outskirts of the city, collapsed at around 6 a.m. (2200 GMT), with one construction worker killed, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

The block of high-rise residential flats was shown toppled onto its side in a muddy construction site, in footage from Hong Kong’s Cable Television. Exposed pilings stood in the remains of the building’s foundations.

It appeared to be almost complete with fitted windows and a finished, tiled facade. Other similar-looking blocks in the same property development were still standing nearby.

Shoddy construction and the use of sub-standard materials is a concern in China’s construction sector as the country scrambles to build out cities and finish massive infrastructure projects to keep pace with fast economic growth.

Construction-related accidents last year included the collapse of a steel arch on a new railway bridge, which killed at least seven and a crane which fell on a kindergarten killing five.

The collapse of dozens of schools during last year’s Sichuan earthquake, sometimes when buildings around them withstood the tremor, also led to a wave of public outrage about corrupt officials and construction firms.

Source

Sunrise Homes sent letters to about 100 of the 350 home-owners in the Penn Mill Lakes subdivision north of Covington, asking for permission to check whether they were built with the Chinese drywall. For Linda Williams, the inspection gave her relief.
“The news was very good, and I was a little nervous,” she said. “I’m glad to hear that everything is going to be okay, that we don’t have the Chinese drywall.”
Read the rest of this entry »