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| | | US Environmental Protection Services | | People Helping People |
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The defective drywall - also known as wallboard, gypsum board or plasterboard - arrived at about 2 dozen ports around the country with 7 of them in Florida, but others include New York, Texas, New Orleans and California.
During the housing boom and after the hurricanes from 2004 through 2006, the strain on the supply of domestic drywall required many drywall supply companies to use international suppliers to fill the demand. Many imported drywall from a German-based company names Knauf with subsidiaries in China (such as Knauf Tianjin). Reports show that millions of pounds of Chinese drywall entered the US during this timeframe and installed across the country in thousands of homes, condos, and office buildings.
Most foreign manufacturers stopped shipping drywall to the US in 2007, after the building boom ended. However, it has been discovered that another manufacturer, Taian Taishan (based in Taian, China), continued to ship large quantities of drywall to New York and Port Everglades into the summer of 2007. It appears that at least 550 million pounds of Chinese drywall have arrived at US ports since 2006. That is enough to construct about 60,000 average-size homes.
The cause of the problem is sulfur. Gypsum is supposed to be 100 percent calcium sulfate, Gypsum is supposed to be inert. The problem was caused by gypsum "contaminated or mixed in with other biologically active ingredients. The Chinese drywall contains ash from the many coal-fired power plants in China. China has low quality coal that has high sulfur content. The ash from the plants may have been mixed with the gypsum used to make drywall. |
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