news-press.com
Fort Myers, Florida, USA

2008 12 19

BREAKING: Chinese drywall in Lee County homes may be causing health problems

By Mary Wozniak and Dick Hogan

….We have been provided with evidence of complaints of issues of sulfur odors in homes. We have been told about the associated failure of (air conditioning) coils,” he said.

The drywall appears to be emitting sulfur compounds that are corroding coils and other copper-bearing materials, causing them to be replaced repeatedly.

Eldredge cautioned that the health department cannot confirm exactly what the source of the problem is, but the department is working with a consultant representing a homebuilder who believes sulfur gases from drywall are the problem.

“We have not reviewed that data nor can we confirm or support that contention,” he said. “Our primary concern at the heath department is whether or not this is a health risk,” he said.

“It certainly does raise concerns,” said Dr. David Krause, toxicologist for the state Health Department. “There may be a direct health threat,” he said.

The drywall could be emitting one of several sulfur compounds, including sulfur dioxide or hydrogen sulfide, he said….([1] Full Story)

More on the Chinese drywall problems:

[2] The Defective Chinese Drywall Debacle
Date Published: Monday, January 26th, 2009

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Comment by folc.ca: Whether emissions of sulfur dioxide or of hydrogen sulfide in homes constructed with Chinese-made drywall are the problem has not yet been proven and remains to be seen.

All drywall contains sulphur, as all drywall consists in the majority of gypsum.  [3] Gypsum can be mined but it is also a waste by-product of the fertilizer industry and of fossil-fuel-fired power generation — whenever sulphuric acid is used to leach metals or minerals from ore, or whenever sulphur dioxide needs to be removed from the exhaust gases of fossil-fuel-burning thermal power plants.

For example, industrial processes produce gypsum when sulphur dioxide is being neutralized by passing it through a slurry of water and lime.  Sulphur dioxide reacts with the calcium in the slurry that it is being percolated through to form gypsum (hydrated calcium sulphate, CaSO₄·2H₂O).

The slurry is being stored in settling ponds in which the gypsum settles from its suspension in the water.  The water is then returned to the scrubbing process.  That process produces mountains of gypsum with often massive proportions.

A characteristic of the gypsum that is a waste by-product of the phosphate fertilizer industry is that it is radioactive, about 60 times more radioactive than the phosphate fertilizer produced.  That is due to the circumstance that the phosphate rock that is a feedstock for phosphate fertilizer production contains isotopes such as of uranium and thorium that become concentrated in the waste gypsum (a.k.a. phosphogypsum) during the production processes.

Interestingly, in connection with gypsum production through large-scale industrial processes, the highest geographical feature in all of Florida is a man-made mountain of gypsum.

The huge, unsightly mounds can stretch across hundreds of acres. Some covered, some uncovered–these mountainous stacks can be an eyesore on the flat, sandy Florida skyline. Whitish gray in color, with a crusty surface look like massive heaps of table salt that tower up to 200 feet high.

This is Florida’s stockpile of phosphogypsum. More than 600 million tons of it are already on the ground and an additional 30 million tons accumulate yearly….([4] Full Story)

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Florida has a large quantity of phosphate deposits, particularly in Bone Valley region. However, the marine-deposited phosphate ore from central Florida is highly radioactive, and as such, the phosphogypsum by-product is too radioactive to be used for most applications. As a result, there are about 1 billion tons of phosphogypsum stacked in 25 stacks in Florida (22 are in central Florida) and about 30 million new tons are generated each year.^{[5] [2]}

(Wikipedia: [6] Phosphogypsum)

The presence of sulphur in industrial environments causes problems with computer equipment and cell phones, as the sulpur compounds in the atmosphere will affect the soldered connections of microchips, often causing them to fail.  Such problems manifest themselves in surprising circumstances that often have no direct connection at all to either fertilizer production or comparable industrial processes.  For instance,

Ford investigative team solves automotive ‘mysteries’

Reliable Plant Magazine - Tulsa, OK, USA,

Nov/Dec 2006

Central Lab chemist Tom Munie discovered that the solder on the motherboards and other circuitry within these computers had been attacked by sulfur, ….

“We were seeing a lot of new computers in one particular area of the design center that were malfunctioning – sometimes within the first 30 days,” says Ford commodity analyst Cyndi Morrell….([7] Full Story)

It could be a bit of a red herring to focus the examination of sulphur problems in Florida just on Chinese-made drywall.  After all, drywall is drywall (unless China used its drywall to dispose of other forms of its waste sulphur — of which its growing economy has many).  On the other hand, Florida has a lot of sources of sulphur that can contaminate its environment and cause failures of copper-containing equipment components or may even cause a variety of health problems.

Perhaps one of the first issues to be examined should be whether any of Florida’s phosphogypsum was exported to China and whether then it was used there to produce drywall that was exported to the whole world and to Florida.  It would not hurt to prove that that route of environmental pollution in Florida can and should be ruled out.

Then it may be worth the effort to see how much of Florida’s phosphogypsum made its way into road and parking lot construction in Lee County and in other areas affected by sulphur-pollution problems.  After all, Florida ran a lot of experiments in the early 1990s to find practical ways by which to get rid of its masses of waste-phosphogypsum.

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Update 2010 09 07: The US Consumer Products Safety Commission has set up a [8] Drywall Information Center that offers a large variety of information regarding the issue of the drywall problem, tests and remedial action.

In short, the problem exists, it is large and requires at times expensive remediation.  However, one of the most important pieces of advice regarding the drywall issue is contained in a Consumer Alert by the US Federal Trade Commission: [9] Defective Imported Drywall: Don’t Get Nailed by Bogus Tests and Treatments, to which the CPSC Drywall Information Center established a prominent link on its home page.