By Aaron Kessler
The Sarasota Herald Tribune
WASHINGTON — The Consumer Product Safety Commission is investigating two “fire incidents involving Chinese drywall.”
No details were available in the federal agency’s first “status report” on Chinese drywall to Congress, but the commission said it is working with the Florida State Fire Marshal’s Office to get more information and to “explore the possibility of sample collection for testing and analysis.”
The risk of fire posed by the defective drywall has been one of the primary concerns of CPSC investigators from the beginning. That includes either corrosion resulting in an electrical or gas fire, or by smoke alarms or fire sprinklers failing to do their job because of drywall-related damage.
The agency’s report, requested by the Senate Appropriations Committee last month, provides some of the most detailed information to date on where the federal investigation into the problem stands.
The document does not contain any firm conclusions, however, on the root cause and overall effects of the drywall, or any guidance on what should be done to remediate the problem. The agency said more testing is needed and provided a timeline for the testing in the works.
A contract has been awarded to Environmental Health and Engineering of Needham, Mass., to conduct indoor air quality testing of 50 homes. That is expected to start about July 20 and run through August.
The analysis and report will take until mid-September, the CPSC said.
The study will involve 35 homes affected with Chinese drywall and 15 “control” homes for comparison.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency also is conducting elemental analysis of 15 drywall samples to identify organic and inorganic compounds present in the material. Those tests are expected to take until Aug. 21 to be completed.
Chamber testing to measure levels of gases coming from the drywall have also been contracted out to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and initial results are expected in August, with more comprehensive results to be completed by the end of September, the report stated.
The CPSC is also in the process of collecting more than just pieces of drywall from affected homes.
Investigators are also taking samples of components such as air-conditioning coils, light switches, circuit breakers, smoke alarms and gas connectors.
The items will be inspected to determine the extent of the damage. Additionally, “accelerated corrosion testing” will be done “in an attempt to predict long-terms effects of the identified gases on these components.”
Beyond testing, federal investigators have been trying to determine exactly how much Chinese drywall came into the U.S., and to follow the stream of commerce once it arrived.
So far, the CPSC has been able to confirm that about 5.5 million sheets of Chinese drywall arrived in U.S. ports in 2006 alone, the report said. Investigators are still working to confirm additional shipments.
Those numbers appear to be largely in line with a February analysis of shipping records by the Herald-Tribune, which estimated based on the weight of drywall shipments that around 5.7 million sheets likely came in during 2006.
Florida Sen. Bill Nelson, who has been instrumental in pushing the drywall issue in Washington, said through a spokesman Wednesday that the CPSC’s report “gives us all the more reason to get rid of this stuff.”
The agency has now received more than 600 incident reports from 21 states and the District of Columbia have been received, the majority from Florida, Louisiana and Virginia.
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