Our Emeryville office recently received a request from a local school district who suspects that Chinese drywall was installed in one of their schools during a recent renovation project. A Google search on Chinese drywall turns up over 346,000 citations. Rather than wade through all those citations, skip straight to the most authoritative site on the web: The Consumer Product Safety Comisssion.
It appears that some drywall manufactured in China in the mid-2000’s has various metals added to the manufacturing process. The materials added to the drywall have reportedly caused corrosion of other building materials as well health effects similar to allergies or asthma attacks. CPSC founded varying levels of corrosion on exposed portions of copper wires, in particular ground wires, since they are not insulated. Wiring associated with smoke alarms, fire sprinklers and coils on air conditioning units also appear to be at risk of corrosion. There have been reports of Chinese manufactured drywall in twenty-four states including both Washington and California.
The CPSC is the lead agency and is working with both the EPA and the Center for Disease Control to develop a coordinated approach to the investigation of the scope of the problem as well as a governmental response. The EPA is developing a protocol for air monitoring. RGA is receiving regular email updates for the CPSC to ensure that we can give our clients the most recent and updated information as to how to investigate, respond, mitigate and respond to cases of installed Chinese drywall.
JoAnn Copperud, CEO – Emeryville, CA
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