[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 61 (Friday, April 24, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4709-S4710]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                           CHINESE WALLBOARD

  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I wish to talk about something 
else that is afflicting this country. A lot of people don't know about 
this, but we have to get it front and center. One of the exports coming 
from China into the United States has been drywall. Drywall is the 
boards that you put up on the studs when you build a house. Normally 
what it is is a material called gypsum. Gypsum is a byproduct in the 
mining and manufacturing of phosphate. A lot of that phosphate goes 
into fertilizer but a byproduct of that is gypsum. And gypsum, put into 
the form of a flat sheet with thick paper on either side, in boards 
about 10 feet high and about that wide, is called wallboard. In the 
modern construction of houses, when you build a house and you divvy up 
the rooms and you put up these studs to be a wall and you put 
insulation in there, and then on the outside of the studs you put the 
wallboard and then you put a finish over the wallboard and you paint 
that, that is the wall of a house.
  The problem is that wallboard that has been imported into this 
country from China is defective because it has contained some kind of 
organic compound that is having absolutely disastrous effects in 
people's houses. When you compare a piece of this wallboard from China 
with wallboard from America that is gypsum, you can actually see the 
difference. Gypsum is dry. It is absorbent, which is what you want for 
a wall if there are contaminants or vapors in a house. But this Chinese 
wallboard is giving off vapors.
  What do we find in our houses? This is not only in Florida, this is 
all over the southern United States. They have discovered it in 
Louisiana. They have discovered it in California, in Texas, they have 
discovered it in Georgia, and some people are now discovering it in the 
Atlantic coast, the north Atlantic region of the United States. What 
they are discovering is that, first, you walk into a house with Chinese 
wallboard and you notice a smell. It is a different smell. It is 
pungent. Some people call it like a rotten egg smell. As I have gone 
into these homes over the course of the Easter break back in Florida, 
to me the smell is not so much rotten eggs but you detect the smell of 
sulfur, but it starts searing the nasal passages.
  I am kind of like a canary in the coal mine because my respiratory 
system is very sensitive to these kinds of things, for example, mold 
and mildew. I will get congested if I walk into a home with mold and 
mildew and I will start coughing. When I walked into those homes a week 
and a half ago in Florida, the same thing happened to me. I would only 
be in the home 10 minutes and my nasal passages started to constrict, 
my voice got scratchy. I started to get what we call getting clogged 
up. I started hacking and wheezing, my eyes started watering.
  Lo and behold, that is happening to these homeowners. This is their 
home. This is their life investment. Now, through no fault of their 
own, they are finding out they have a part of their home that is now 
irritating their respiratory system and in some cases their family 
members have had to go to the hospital and in other cases their 
pediatricians are telling them to get their children out of those 
houses. The family has vacated the home, their life investment--
vacated. Hopefully they have some relatives they can go live with, and 
in some cases they do not. You can imagine the financial burden.
  What else are these homeowners telling me? They are telling me that 
in the homes, these vapors that are being emitted are suddenly 
corroding any kind of metallic substance in the home. I went into homes 
where I looked at the air conditioning unit and the coils on the air 
conditioner are completely corroded and the homeowners tell me over the 
course of the last 4 years they have had to change the air conditioner 
three times because it is not only a corrosion, it is eating through 
the coils.
  I took a screwdriver and I went over to one of the copper pipes on an 
air conditioner unit and I started scraping it. It was completely soot 
black. Copper, when it ages, turns green. Not this. I started scraping 
off that soot black exterior and, sure enough, there was the copper 
underneath. And the coils that were metallic on the air conditioner, of 
some other metal, had been corroded through. And here is this homeowner 
and that homeowner and that one over there who have had to replace the 
air conditioner three times in the last 5 years. It is unbelievable.
  I talked to a husband and wife in one of the homes. In this case I 
went to homes down near Fort Myers. I went to homes near Bradenton. I 
went to homes near West Palm Beach. The couple had been on a cruise to 
Mexico in January. They bought a beautiful silver bracelet. You know 
that silver will tarnish over time. You have to polish it up. In this 
case, that silver bracelet had been in the house for 1 month and it was 
black as soot. These vapors that are coming off whatever this organic 
material is in the Chinese drywall are making people sick, their houses 
are uninhabitable, their appliances, including the dishwashers, are 
corroding, and their life investment in their home is going up in 
smoke. That is not right.
  Needless to say, there is a bunch of lawsuits. But who are they going 
to sue? They are going to sue a Chinese wallboard manufacturer who is 
in China. Maybe there is a distributor here. We have a U.S. Government 
and there is an arm of the U.S. Government called the Consumer Product 
Safety Commission. This, by the way, is the same Consumer Product 
Safety Commission that was letting in all of those defective Chinese 
toys that were killing our children, 2 and 3 and 4 years ago. So last 
year the Congress, bipartisan, reformed the Consumer Product Safety 
Commission. The Consumer Product Safety Commission, in the reform of 
this legislation, has the authority, No. 1, to stop the import of this 
Chinese drywall and also exact a recall of this product.
  But has the Consumer Product Safety Commission done it? No. To their 
credit, they sent in an investigation team, and that investigation team 
reported to the staff of the Senate yesterday. I happened to go and 
talk to them. So I asked them three questions yesterday. I said: How 
harmful is this stuff?
  And they said: We do not know.
  And I said: Well, you are doing an investigation.
  Well, it is going to take us a while.
  Well, did you see the same effects?
  A member of that investigation team concurred with what I have just 
shared about how it affected his respiratory system, his eyes were 
watering, he was clogging up, and so forth.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for an additional 5 minutes.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. NELSON of Florida. So as of yesterday, they did not have a 
conclusion. I would urge them to hurry their conclusion. They ought to 
be doing this in conjunction with the EPA and the Centers for Disease 
Control because if this thing is in what we think it is, 100,000 homes 
in this country--and perhaps half of those are in Florida because that 
is where a lot of the building was going on in the aftermath of the 
four hurricanes that hit Florida in 2004--if this is in 100,000 homes, 
we have a real problem.
  You cannot get the home builders. Look, most of them are financially, 
if not bankrupt, down to their last pennies as it is. There has to be 
someone financially responsible, and you cannot expect the homeowner to 
bear this cost. But what about the effects on their health?
  Well, as of yesterday, they did not have an answer. So then I asked 
them: Well, you have done an investigation. How widespread is it?
  They said: We do not know.
  Well, we better start knowing.
  So I said: Well, since you do not know how harmful it is, and you do 
not know how widespread it is, what are you going to do about helping 
homeowners?
  They said: We do not know.
  Well, a number of us, Senator Landrieu, Senator Vitter, both of them 
from Louisiana--because a lot of this drywall came into Louisiana 
through the Port of New Orleans, they are getting the same kind of 
complaints from their State that I am getting from the State of 
Florida.
  We can file legislation that will suggest what to do. It is too bad 
we have to file legislation because the CPSC has the legal authority 
under the law to ban the import of this wallboard and

[[Page S4710]]

to exact a recall and to freeze the assets of the companies that are 
attributable to that drywall that is manufactured in China. They have 
that authority.
  If they are not going to act on that authority, then the Congress is 
going to have to act for them. That is the bill Senator Landrieu and 
Senator Vitter and I and others also who have joined have filed.
  I thank the Senator from Oklahoma, Mr. Inhofe, our dear friend. I did 
not even know this, but the Senator must have heard some of this 
problem in his State of Oklahoma. This is a problem of monumental 
proportions.
  I will close by saying, because of that report yesterday from the 
staff of the commission to the staff of the Senate committees, there 
are a couple of news articles today: ``Drywall Clamor Is 
Intensifying.'' Another headline cries out, ``Agency Outlines Strategy 
To Deal With Chinese Drywall.'' Another headline cries out, ``Efforts 
On Chinese Drywall Fix Too Slow.''
  I close with this: Put yourself in the place of the poor homeowner. 
They are there with their children. This is their dream home. They have 
put all of their assets into their home. They are current on their 
mortgage, and suddenly they start realizing the symptoms they and their 
children have had over the last several months, and in some cases 
years, is attributable to this. They now understand why they have 
replaced their air-conditioning unit three times. They now see why they 
cannot keep their silver polished. They now know why the refrigerator 
metal and the dishwater metal is constantly corroding, and their 
pediatrician is telling them to get their child out of that house. As a 
result, they have vacated their dream home.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator's time has expired.
  Mr. NELSON of Florida. So I close by saying my plea to the Senate is 
to insist, if we have to, through the passage of this legislation, to 
address this problem head on. It is a major problem facing the people 
of this country.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, it is my understanding that I have 1 hour. 
I did not mind the Senator going over. I was enjoying the comments of 
my friend from Florida. But I want to make sure I still have that hour.
  I ask unanimous consent that I do.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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