Thank You irish gal,
It has been in the national news. Good Morning America, CNN, Lou Dobbs, Fox, Inside edition, and such, has covered it. Not nearly enough as there are far to many people who still know nothing, or next to nothing about it.
Walking Away,
For some it's worse-much worse. Everyones sensitivity to the chemicals in these gases and exposure times, varies. People, especially healthy "20 30 somethings", who are away at work all week, and away at play on the weekend, have had little domestic exposure. Stay at homes moms and their kids, and retirees, who are in the homes more often, are showing the brunt of the exposure symptoms.
The reactions are real, yet different for everyone. Some are more severe and some, not so much and I explained why.
Remove the health concerns from this and you still have a big problem. These gases corrode away at metals in the home. Large builders , like Dragos in your area, and national home builder Lennar, are paying the expenses of moving families out, and gutting the homes over this. If it wasn't serious, they would not be spending this sort of money.
If you are in construction, you should know that no one should have to replace 8 rotted away copper AC coils, in the first two years of living in a new home. Copper wiriing, should not be black, corroding and shorting out within a year. This was the first problem, along with the smell, that started investigations into what was the cause.
Some Chinese manufacturing plants, were taking the toxic flyash off of coal fire power plant scrubbers and throwing it into the drywall as filler, before they neutralized the toxic chemcals. In short, this junkwall is loaded with the toxic waste from their coal plants.
It's also looking like the junk wall comes from plants, they took from the scrubbers where an inferior coal, with an even higher sulfur content was being burned.
Brand new appliances like refridgerators, dishwashers, and microwaves, have been failing within two years. Peoples brand new electronics, and computers are failing quickly from corrosion to the tiny copper components.
Their silver jewely, and collections are becoming blackened and pitted beyond repair. The homes are eating away at peoples things....and bodies. When these sulphur compound gasses meet up with moisture, that create sulfuric acid. It's why the AC coils, are taking the fastest repeated hit. The same thing happens, when these gases meet moist eyes, noses, throats and lungs. The tissues are being burned.
After about two years, new chrome fixtures in bathrooms and the backs of mirrors start to blacken, pit and corrode.
This is serious and disgusting. The damage is enormous if we are looking at about 300,000 homes and condos in the U.S. because we are dealing with a toxic gas, that can harm health, destroy personal property within the homes, property values, and cross contaminate and make toxic, anything porous in it's path.
Mind you, many in the construction business are trying to minimize it, because they are afraid of law suits. They should be if they are buying and using cheap toxic crap from China to build homes with. The people buying the homes have no way of knowing where the drywall was made. All of that info is on the back where you can't see it, and or painted over on the front.
Before this story broke locally in Florida, in late Dec 2008, and nationally in January of 2009, no one nor inspectors, had any reason to question where the drywall came from.
Links?
Do google searches on chinese drywall and hundreds of pages will come up now. It's in the Florida news pretty much every day. A lot was used here, and the effects were first noticed here because of our higher heat and humidity, which increases the releasing of these gases, along with the fact, we run our ACs more often and so the condenser coils are almost always wet.
BTW, in homes where freon was used, the freon was leeking inside of the homes to boot. At least we had Puron, to huff on along with the gasses, while 8 shot coils leaked dry of it into the house.
That compounds the problems for people, because once the AC system , leeks all of its coolant, the AC runs non stop creating high electric bills, and isn't cooling or dehumidifying the place anymore. That's when all hell breaks loose in a house, as the gases just ooze from the drywall in high heat and humidity.
I also knew when a coil went bad, after the experience with the first one, because my sinuses and head would come under an explosive attack, beyond the day to day suffering with the lower emmision levels. I use to want to blow my head off it was so bad.
Unless you have lived in one of these homes and watched your health and your families health deteriorate quickly, along with your things, I realize, this is difficult to wrap your head around. Most days, it is still difficult for me to wrap my head around what has been happening to us.
This is BS. We never should have come to having homes in the U.S. that were Made in China. It's disgraceful to this nation that we have come to this.
Yes, lots of the junk board came into New York Ports. It's been found in homes in NJ, Maryland, and mostly Virginia. Because of the northern climate, it has not been revealing itself as quickly up your way.
Most of it was shipped to the West Coast. Lot's of it came into Florida and Lousianna. It's been found in 41 states already.
Here is a mixed variety of a few links to help ground this in reality for you. If you do a google search, you will find hundreds of links.
YouTube - FL Senator Bill Nelson Demands Chinese Drywall Ban Norfolk condo project in question after manager departs | HamptonRoads.com | PilotOnline.com Epoch Times - Chinese-Made Drywall: A Family’s Nightmare Chinese Drywall Complaint Center Man deserts Boynton Beach home for Chinese drywall tests