Toxic homes get little help

Editorial

Chinese drywall has disrupted the lives of hundreds of American families, and a reasonable question is: Why did U.S. law offer no protection?

If more homes were affected, Congress might have forced some accountability on foreign importers, but a bill to do just that has gotten nowhere.

It is infuriating to learn that the Chinese companies that sold a dangerously faulty product here are beyond the reach of U.S. courts. Meanwhile, a judge has ruled that a homeowner's insurance policy does not have to cover damage caused by defective building material.

That's reasonable, because if insurers were liable, they would need to inspect homes carefully before insuring them against bad material. And this drywall is bad stuff.

Sulfur fumes wafting from the walls, primarily in houses in Florida and a few other warm, humid states, have made people sick, ruined air conditioners and corroded electrical wiring.

A comprehensive report by the Miami Herald-Tribune and ProPublica says the U.S. government has no clear standards for air testing or for home remediation. Giving homeowners some power to protect themselves would be better than sending government inspectors into homes to test the air, which could lead to new and costly interventions in areas best left to the homeowner's discretion.

At this point, the government isn't sure how many homes are affected. Many more sheets of bad wallboard were imported than were used in the 6,500 homes in which the product is now believed to have been installed, the Herald-Tribune reported.

There has been no official finding that the drywall fumes cause health problems, no level determined for safe exposure, no guidelines for how to deal with contaminated products removed from affected homes, no federal lawsuit against the responsible importers and distributors, and no Congressional hearings to figure out what to do or to head off similar problems in the future.

A bill called the Foreign Manufacturers Legal Accountability Act was introduced months ago to require foreign manufacturers selling in this country to hire a representative to be headquartered here. That agent would communicate with consumers, answer complaints and if required by U.S. law, pay claims.

Importers worry that the requirement would raise the cost of doing business, but that is a flimsy excuse for not holding foreign manufacturers to the same standard as U.S. manufacturers. They should be at least partly accountable for injuries their products cause to U.S. consumers.

The cost of ripping out defective walls, replacing pipes and wires, and installing new appliances can exceed $100,000.

Hillsborough Property Appraiser Rob Turner was among the first public officials to speak out loudly in defense of injured homeowners and to offer them a substantial property tax break. He urges anyone who thinks they might have toxic drywall to contact his office.

The hope is that the worst is over, but the fear is that it's not. The Chinese Drywall Complaint Center suspects that some homebuilders "were intentionally intermixing toxic Chinese drywall with U.S. made drywall."

If that is true, more than 100,000 homes built or remodeled from 2001 to 2008 in Florida and other Southern states could contain drywall capable of causing mysterious health and mechanical problems, according to the center.

No lawmaker could have foreseen that a benign product like wallboard could be capable of sticking families with a home they cannot afford to fix, cannot safely live in and cannot sell.

But it's easy to anticipate that some health and safety issues will arise in the era of global trade. It's bad business to leave U.S. consumers so open to international exploitation.