Green Building Materials Should be Selected with Care
July 28th, 2009 | Author: admincato
Green building materials are widely available in today’s market place. But when there are booms in building some materials become in short supply. During the last few years of the home building boom there was a shortage of drywall. Many companies and contractor’s in America then imported millions of pounds of cheap Chinese drywall.
This decision has now plagued the homes that were built with it with many problems. The wallboard has been the source of fumes that have corroded copper pipes, blackened silver jewelry and silverware and sent some homeowners to the hospital with allergies.
After a review of shipping records by the Associated Press, the amount of imports of this potentially harmful Chinese building material is over 500 million pounds in a four year time period. This translates to more than 100,000 homes were built with this Chinese drywall.
A U.S. Representative has introduced a bill before the House that calls for a temporary ban on Chinese-made imports so that the chemical compounds used in their production can be identified and assessed for possible harmful effects on people.
The suspect drywall emits a rotten egg or sulfur odor that increases with heat and humidity, the possible suspect components are possibly the fumigants that the drywall was sprayed with or the fly ash that it is composed of. American drywall uses a better more refined fly ash in their product.
Home owners are now being left with this contaminant in their homes and are usually left to deal with it on their own since a good number of the contractors that used this material are now out of business.
The Chinese government has not responded to inquires of the suspect material. But the good news is that the Chinese news has reported that there is an ongoing investigation into these complaints by the Chinese ministry of commerce.
We at Way to Go Green suggest that this is just another reason to buy American made green building materials for your home.
Posted in green home | 
Tags: china, chinese drywall, chineses building materials, Green building materials. drywall, wallboard
Great stuff here!
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Joel,
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Thanks for commenting.
Cato