Posts Tagged: drywall

Business to CPSC: Let’s handle this offline

One of the signature reforms to the product safety system in America may be in danger, according to reporting by Andrew Martin in the New York Times.  The 2008 Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act meant more inspectors testing toys and a range of other products and overseas inspections of factories shipping goods to our shores (such as drywall from China).  It also meant the creation of an online public database where people can report problems they’ve had with different products they’re already using.  Martin notes on an amendment passed in the House of Representatives that would  “strip financing for the consumer products database.”  How about we trust the people and try this out?  (Rather than stating, as one member of Congress skeptically did, “I know what people put online.”)

On poisonous drywall, Chinese companies stonewall CPSC

Consumer Product Safety Commission officials trying to find out the true source of hazardous materials, including sulfur, in drywall imported from China (a problem we’ve reported on previously) were subject to misinformation, disinformation, and just plain intimidation when they tried to find out where Chinese drywall might have been contaminated.  That story emerges in almost “handheld documentary” fashion in reporting from Joaquin Sapien and Aaron Kessler (of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune)  in ProPublica.  Their story shows why the U.S. government is going to have to be very creative if it wants to track hazardous products back to their source in today’s globalized economy.  (more…)

Slow Interagency Response Delays Solutions on Defective Chinese Drywall

Gut your homes. That’s the advice the federal government gave homeowners whose houses smell of rotten eggs and have corroding electrical wiring because they were built with defective drywall imported from China between 2003 and 2008.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) made the startling recommendation in a joint statement, saying the importehttps://understandinggov.org/files/tag/d drywall might be a health hazard and that residents should “remove all possible problem drywall from their homes, and replace electrical components and wiring, gas service piping, fire suppression sprinkler systems, smoke alarms and carbon monoxide alarms.” (more…)