Tainted Chinese drywall: Should we have seen this coming? October 1, 2009

Experts are predicting that the Chinese economy will surpass Japan’s in the near future, which would make it the second largest in the world (behind the United States).  It is a time where Americans are growing wary of Chinese imports, which raises the obvious issue of whether U.S. regulations and standards of importation are what they should be.  In recent years, the U.S. has seen a flow of products that have been deemed unsafe.  The most recent (and perhaps most dire) consumer product to raise such concern is Chinese drywall.

The safety of consumers is paramount – primarily when children are implicated.  It is one matter if a product is tainted with “faulty” components, but when a good is tainted with a dangerous drug or harmful compound, a figurative line of tolerance is crossed if not crossed already due to simply being a “poor product”.  Furthermore, when the said product in question has the potential to harm children, the issue becomes exponentially more egregious.  Chinese drywall has elicited thousands of consumer complaints, some alleging health consequences.  Like many environmental hazards, children and the elderly may be especially prone to risk.

4.2 million tainted toys from China – aqua dots – were recalled in 2007 after they were found to contain a drug that induced sickness in children.  Other examples of faulty Chinese imports, as reported by the Washington Post, include apples preserved with a chemical linked to certain cancer, frozen fish loaded with antibiotics, and illegal pesticides found in mushrooms.

Federal agencies like the Consumer Product Safety Commission and Environmental Protection Agency are investigating thousands of complaints surrounding defective Chinese drywall and hope to bring some conclusivity to establishing a nexus.  Hopefully, the issue our nation is facing with regard to Chinese drywall will serve as a wakeup call for increased pressure on foreign manufacturers to comply with healthy standards of consumer goods.