A housing materials crisis ‘made in China’

The World

Contaminated milk, poisonous pet food, toys containing dangerous levels of lead: Some products made in China have been found to be hazardous to your health. The latest is drywall. During the housing boom, construction companies used drywall from wherever they could get it, and now certain types, made in China, have been found to be releasing chemicals and fumes that cause medical problems. Adding insult to injury, many of the people affected are stuck with their infected walls because they can’t afford to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to remove the drywall.

We talk with the BBC’s Shanghai correspondent, Chris Hogg, who has details of an emerging partnership between the U.S. and China to crack down on tainted drywall. We also speak with Luis Gonzalez, a Miami-Dade police officer forced to leave his home, which was built using drywall from China.

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