Federal safety panel: Remove Chinese drywall

Homes built with Chinese-made drywall should be  stripped of all the problem wallboard, electrical wiring and natural gas piping, federal product-safety regulators said Friday.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is leading a $3.5 million, multi-agency investigation into the imported drywall, released guidelines on how the homes should be fixed.

The agency’s recommendations are not binding on homebuilders or home ­owners dealing with the tainted drywall. The guidelines also are considered preliminary and subject to revision.

Last fall, the agency found that the building material emits higher levels of volatile sulfur gases than typical U.S.-made drywall and is likely causing metal corrosion in homes.

Homeowners claim the product also causes respiratory illness.

While the commission said homeowners should replace fire alarms and sprinkler systems, it stopped short of recommending they replace air-conditioner coils, pipes used for water plumbing, or home electronics and personal property because those items don’t have “a direct connection to safety.”

“Our concern is for building products for which drywall-related corrosion might cause a safety problem,” said Inez Tenenbaum,  head of the commission, in a conference call Friday . The commission also recommended that homeowners remove only the tainted drywall, which  is emitting sulfur gases, and leave in place any domestic wallboard.

“We have no science that points that the emissions are affecting the non-Chinese drywall,” Tenenbaum said. “Our conclusions are, once you take the problem drywall out, you will cease the off-gassing, and then you can move back into your home.”

However, the commission acknowledged that determining which sheets are tainted and which are not could pose a problem.

“Until such challenges are overcome, this interim remediation guidance calls for the general replacement of drywall in an identified home,” the report stated. “If a portion of the drywall in a home can be reasonably identified not to be problem drywall … one option is to leave that drywall in place.” The commission also said it doesn’t believe emissions from the problem drywall require replacement of wood studs, flooring, cabinets or other household components and fixtures exposed to the drywall emissions.

“Congress now has a clear picture with this remediation guidance how to set policy going forward” to bring relief to homeowners, Tenenbaum said. The commission’s long-awaited report comes as a federal judge in New Orleans presiding over hundreds of Chinese-drywall lawsuits weighs the same issue: How to fix the homes.

While the guidelines are  recommendations and not a federal mandate, the chairwoman said that the findings could be used by the courts. Homeowners have asked U.S. District Judge Eldon E. Fallon in New Orleans to rule that the homes in most cases be gutted of all wallboard – Chinese and domestic-made – and electrical wiring and appliances.

They also have asked the judge to rule that all copper pipes and air-conditioning systems be replaced. The homeowners contend that the problem drywall could be contaminating the regular wallboard.

The cost of such work would range from $190,000 to $235,000 per home, according to homeowners’ attorneys. Those figures don’t include the loss of personal property or moving and living expenses for those homeowners who have relocated.

Still, the commission’s guidelines go beyond a proposal from drywall manufacturer Knauf Plasterboard Tianjin Co. Ltd., which told the judge the drywall should be removed but that most electrical wiring could remain in place.

Drywall, which is typically made of gypsum pressed between two layers of thick paper, is used for the interior walls in most homes.

When supplies of U.S.-made drywall became scarce in 2005 during the building boom, a Norfolk construction supplier imported at least 150,000 sheets of Chinese-made drywall, enough to build more than 300 homes. The drywall has since has been found in scores of homes across the region.

The trials in New Orleans already have  resulted in a judg ment against one of the Chinese manufacturers – Taishan Gypsum Co. Ltd. – a company that is owned by the Chinese government. It did not respond to lawsuits.

“We will continue to press the Chinese government to work with those companies so that we can see if they will work fairly with us to compensate homeowners, if we can show that certain companies were responsible,” Tenenbaum said.

Josh Brown, (757) 446-2318, josh.brown@pilotonline.com