Is My Drywall Chinese? - HB Litigation Conferences

Chinese drywall hits health, wallets,
homeowners say
Tue May 19, 2009
By Rich Phillips
CNN Senior Producer
PARKLAND, Florida (CNN) -- Sherri and Ira Rojhani stopped paying the mortgage on their 2-year-old
South Florida home in April, victims not of a troubled economy, but, they say, of drywall from China that they
believe is making them sick.
An air conditioning unit in a Florida, is blackened and corroded from Chinese drywall, homeowners say.
They join a growing list of homeowners in 13 states who face foreclosure or the prospect of paying both their
mortgage and rent on alternate housing as they seek relief from what they describe as corrosive gasses
emitted from the Chinese drywall. The drywall is now the subject of several scientific studies.
"Families are being forced to make health decisions based on financial consideration, and that is
fundamentally flawed," said Sherri Rojhani, a homeowner in Parkland, Florida. "We shouldn't be in a position
to stay in a home, based on our health," she said.
Homeowners allege the gas is causing home appliances and copper wiring to fail and causes chronic, long-
term upper respiratory infections.
Federal authorities including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Environmental Protection
Agency and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission are studying the possible health effects of the
drywall. Most of their results are still some time off.
On Tuesday the EPA announced that it found sulfur, a corrosive material, in the Chinese drywall samples it
tested and that sulfur was not found in the U.S. manufactured drywall samples it also tested. The EPA also
found strontium in the Chinese drywall at levels about 10 times higher than in the U.S. drywall. Strontium is
a metal often used in manufacturing the glass for television screens.
The EPA also detected two elements typically found in acrylic paints in the Chinese drywall but not in the
U.S. drywall.