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On November 23, 2009, the federal government said that it has found a “strong association” between problematic imported Chinese drywall and corrosion of pipes and wires, a conclusion that supports complaints by thousands of homeowners over the last year. In its second report on the potentially defective building materials, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said its investigation also has found a “possible” link between health problems reported by homeowners and higher-than-normal levels of hydrogen sulfide gas emitted from the wallboard coupled with formaldehyde, which is commonly found in new houses.

The commission, along with the Environmental Protection Agency and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, continues to study the potential health effects, and the long-term implications of the corrosion.

“We can say that we believe that there’s a number of different chemicals that when brought together can be related to some of these irritant health effects that we’ve been getting reports of,” said CPSC spokesman Scott Wolfson. “But we’re still working toward that exact nexus.”

The commission said it can now move forward with additional studies to identify effective remediation of the problem and potential assistance from the federal government. However, Warren Friedman of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said it’s too soon to discuss specifics of any financial assistance homeowners could get.

The CPSC has spent more than $3.5 million on the studies, and has received more than 2,000 homeowner complaints from 32 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, in what is now the largest consumer product investigation in U.S. history. Most of the complaints have come from Florida, Louisiana, and Virginia. Wolfson said the CPSC has committed nearly 15 percent of its staff to the issue.

However, officials cautioned that not all Chinese drywall is necessarily problematic and that homes with American-made drywall also are being studied.

“Not all drywall is alike,” said Jack McCarthy, president of Environmental Health & Engineering Inc., the firm hired by the government to perform the air quality tests. “It depends on what it’s made of, not necessarily the country where it came from.”

Added Wolfson: “We are not limited in the scope of our investigation to just Chinese drywall.”

The commission released its first report on the drywall last month, noting further studies were needed before it could consider a recall, ban or other action.

Thousands of homeowners who bought new houses built with the imported Chinese building product are finding their lives in limbo as hundreds of lawsuits against builders, contractors, suppliers and manufacturers wind through the courts.

During the height of the U.S. housing boom, with building materials in short supply, American construction companies imported millions of pounds of Chinese-made drywall because it was abundant and cheap. An Associated Press analysis of shipping records found that more than 500 million pounds of Chinese gypsum board was imported between 2004 and 2008 enough to have built tens of thousands of homes.

They are heavily concentrated in the Southeast, especially Florida and areas of Louisiana and Mississippi hit hard by Hurricane Katrina.

The suspect building materials have previously been found by state and federal agencies to emit “volatile sulfur compounds” and produce a rotten-egg odor. Homeowners complain the fumes are corroding copper pipes, destroying TVs and air conditioners, blackening jewelry and silverware, and making them sick.

The federal government says China is assisting with the investigation.

During the week of October 5, 2009, United States Senator Bill Nelson, D-Florida, along with three other senators sent a letter to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) asking the agency to review whether it has the power to provide aid to homeowners displaced by defective Chinese drywall.

The senators sent the letter to Administrator Craig Fugate, asking him to determine whether FEMA upon request from a state governor who has declared a disaster or emergency can offer rental or other emergency assistance to homeowners or businesses who have sustained uninsured losses because of the tainted drywall.

Some Chinese drywall, imported between 2000 and 2008, has been found to give off a sulfuric gas thought to corrode metal components in homes and blamed by a growing number of people on such health issues as trouble breathing, nosebleeds and headaches.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has collected more than 1,500 complaints about the defective drywall in 27 states and the District of Columbia.

“Families in our states are watching their dream homes turn into nightmares,” the senators wrote. “We believe it is important to marshal all appropriate Federal resources that may assist these families.”

Nelson worked with Senators Mary Landrieu, D-Louisiana, Jim Webb, D-Virginia, and Mark Warner, D-Virginia, to write the letter, which asks that FEMA reply by Nov. 7, 2009.

In April, U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Boca Raton, sent a letter to Florida governor Charlie Crist, asking him to declare a state of emergency “to make Florida citizens whose homes are affected by Chinese drywall eligible for immediate relief through the Federal Emergency Management Agency.”

At the time, Sterling Ivey, a spokesman for Crist, said he was not sure if it was even possible to declare a state of emergency for something of this nature.

The Associated Press reported on September 17, 2009, that a federal judge presiding over hundreds of lawsuits against Chinese drywall makers and installers announced that he plans to hold the first trial in January for the cases, which state the imported products emit sulfur, methane and other chemical compounds that have ruined homes and harmed residents’ health.

U.S. District Judge Eldon Fallon told attorneys that he expects them to pick six plaintiffs whose cases could be tried in early 2010, with the first trial starting in January. Fallon said the first batch of trials would be limited to damage claims and wouldn’t include plaintiffs who blame Chinese drywall for health problems.

An estimated 400 plaintiffs and 20 defendants have filled out “profile forms” for the litigation, but it is believed that plaintiffs’ lawyers represent between 12,000 and 20,000 clients with claims.

Knauf Plasterboard Tianjin, a company based in China, is the only drywall manufacturer to have filled out a profile form; most of the companies are home builders. Knauf Tianjin spokeswoman Melisa Mendez Chantres said the company is investigating and trying to resolve homeowners’ complaints.

“KPT’s primary focus has always been ensuring the health and safety of the end-users of its product,” she said in a statement. “It responded immediately to inquiries by builders that raised health concerns and hired highly regarded experts, who determined that there were no health risks to persons in the homes.”

Thirty properties owned by plaintiffs are scheduled to be inspected in the coming days. Fifteen are in Florida, eight are in Louisiana, four are in Mississippi and one each are in Alabama, North Carolina and Virginia.

Fallon said the protocols for the inspections could be “tweaked” before the next batch of roughly 1,000 inspections.

“You can think you’ve done the protocol in the proper way, but until you carry it out, until you conduct inspections, you really don’t know,” he said.