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159 Comments
- copypastry, on 05/10/2009, -6/+87The Chinese making ***** up substandard products that hurt people? Surprise!
- WordsnCollision, on 05/10/2009, -2/+58It does repel Mongols, though.
- Jerryrad, on 05/11/2009, -0/+35Also, houses of brick/stone are the first line of defense against wolves that would huff and puff and blow the house down.
- SpookyET, on 05/11/2009, -13/+42Houses in United States are piece of low quality ***** sold for hundreds of thousands--wood studs covered in drywall with foam in the middle (not everywhere). For example, they don't bother filling inside walls with foam. You would not have to heat/cool the entire house if they did that. There is no foam around windows. So, a lot of heat escapes. Drywall is just paper-gypsum-paper painted with latex. You punch it, you make a hole.
What's wrong with bricks filled with concrete reinforced with iron poles? What's wrong with stone? That's how you build a proper structure. I'm not talking about castles. I'm talking about houses built a thousand years ago in Europe that are still standing. - DWatch, on 05/11/2009, -4/+334. Material availability
5. Shortage of skilled masons
6. Lack of ability to live for a thousand years - a23y1, on 05/11/2009, -3/+321. Price
2. Insulative Value
3. Building and Safety Standards - justok, on 05/11/2009, -0/+24if yuu get sick and die, then its Chinese Drywall. If that happens, you should replace the drywall.
- SpookyET, on 05/11/2009, -1/+23You have to remove some electronic device mounted into your wall. Then insert a camera inside to see the brand and where it is made. RTFA.
- Laminarcissus, on 05/11/2009, -2/+19Okay, that's it: Must start a band named Chinese Drywall.
- inactive, on 05/11/2009, -0/+16Yeah I agree totally. I'm renting i house right now that's only like 15 years old and is already falling apart. It's not going to last more than 30. Just a standard spec house neighborhood. Some developer cramming as many houses onto a poorly situated piece of land and cutting costs in any way possible. My parents built a huge concrete house with 6" walls. That thing is going to last long past me and my future kids/grandkids are gone.
- gnail, on 05/11/2009, -12/+28Wait, did I miss the part where they applied the scientific method and figured out that all their problems were from the walls of their house through evidence-gathering experiments?
Oooh, it doesn't exist! Oh noes! The walls are made in China! It must have killed my electonics, gave me and my kids asthma, destroyed my electronics, got my dog pregnant and blocked the kitchen sink!
Electronics die from gazillions of reasons (surges? high humidity? interference?), sinus infection are basically everyday annoyances, and 2-4 years old is a common age to develop asthma. Science still hasn't found out why asthma became much more prevalent during the past century, nor any hard answer to what causes it, and this guys just jumps off his feet and blame something out of nothing but fear.
Drywall is made out of gypsum, made of calcium sulfate dihydrate, or CaSO4·2H2O. Notice the sulfur in there? If drywalls don't have sulfur in it it wouldn't be a drywall. Plus elemental sulfur is rather stable in air, and compounds tend to be rather noticeable (fart smell, burning sensation in eyes, etc.).
"Riesz is an emergency-room doctor at Broward General, so he used the same logic he applies to his patients. He needed to get inside his walls to figure out what was wrong." - So if he has a patient with a fever, he needs to get inside the brain to figure out what's wrong? - pygmy, on 05/11/2009, -1/+14god damn mongowians! leave my wall alone
- minuslars, on 05/11/2009, -2/+14Article summary: homeowners feeling sick, and they blame the drywall from China. No proof, evidence, or data exists to suggest the drywall is at fault, but a researcher is looking into it.
- scootinger, on 05/11/2009, -3/+15Where in this article does it say that Chinese drywall "can kill"? Buried for sensationalist title.
- inactive, on 05/11/2009, -3/+1422 meters^3 rough sandstone delivered = (-/+) $14,000
22 meters ^3 mudstone, granite, slatestone, bluestone = $10,000.
Will need
1 string line,
Spirit level,
Shovel
ladders with plank
Cement stuff x 7 meters.
Mixer
Hand tools
inc Cold Chisels
Power tools /generator
Timber for windows etc
Timber for roof / lining
Bathroom / kitchen fitting.
Electrician
Plumber
Patience.
Half a brain.
That's a bloody nice house right there!
- ripple123, on 05/11/2009, -2/+13im sorry dude, but a lot of chinese products do suck. just really suck.
- boneit, on 05/11/2009, -1/+11US builders didn't have to buy it, though.
- WELLDOITLIVE, on 05/11/2009, -0/+10Leave librarians alone
- gnail, on 05/11/2009, -0/+10You do get what you are paying for.
- Rorsach, on 05/11/2009, -1/+10I don't know what they're building in other countries, but in the Netherlands all houses are still being built with bricks and concrete.
- gnail, on 05/11/2009, -5/+14"Look at the common thread" - common thread? What common thread?
"how you can actually smell the sulfur" - the Riesz family definitely didn't mention that, and I don't see people in Rotorua, New Zealand complaining about similar symptoms. You can tell you are in Rotorua by the rotten egg smell, so unless those houses are worse than that...
"the wiring and the A/C components are turning black and corroding" - Actually the PE insulator on your wires do not get attacked by sulfur, so unless you're running bare wires or something, that's complete BS. Plus, that'd only break the power point. If it's really corrosion by sulfur dioxide in the air we'd see some portable electronics dying too, but all the ones listed are mains powered, and the concentration required for this kind of speed will burn your eyes.
Hell hot springs in Rotorua are known for their sulfur content and the supposed "healing" properties, and allegedly help recovery from sinus infections and asthma.
I think a more appropriate analogy would be that a patient walks in with a fever and you diagnose African sleeping sickness due to the fact that he/she is of African descent (but otherwise has not been to Africa recently). Although it COULD be true the chances of it being a coincidence or caused by something else is so much higher that it'd require significant evidence to support that conclusion, which this article completely lacks.
And until the testing is done, any sensationalist article will only cause undue panic in the public. After all, ANYTHING can kill. Will we be seeing articles like "Kittens - they can kill" or "Oven mitts - do YOU know the dangers?" any time soon? - inactive, on 05/11/2009, -4/+13Chinese: It okay if you have red in your drywall?
American: Yes, I suppose red drywall would be fine.
Later...................
American: You dirty Chinese bastard! You sold me drywall with lead in it!
Chinese: Hey, you say red drywall okay. You a riar!!!! - inactive, on 05/11/2009, -1/+9they copy of Wolverine they sold me is crap too.
- seoul_scurry, on 05/11/2009, -0/+8"you said drywall... not *SAFE* drywall, I don't see the problem here!!"
- Recluse84, on 05/11/2009, -4/+12How is it propaganda if it's proven that the drywall has toxins and that other products contain lead or whatever else? Not to mention the Chinese eat babies.
- inactive, on 05/11/2009, -2/+9That's what you get from a knock-off based economy.
- gnail, on 05/11/2009, -2/+9"I haven't seen any mass panic from the months of articles on this."
Well this guy just peeked behind his wall, saw that it's made in China and immediately blamed every single problem he has on the walls. They did not complain of the smell, nor burning sensations or anything, only vague symptoms like sinus infection and breaking electronics. I would call that panic.
"What makes you think that it is a single agent alone possibly causing this?"
Well, care to shed some evidence for a synergy? Oh yea btw this article extensively blames sulfur, just FYI. And since we're on Digg I'm more inclined to limit this to this single article, but there have been no scientific studies, no one is sure how is it even causing these damages.
The gist of what I am saying is that the symptoms in this article are extremely vague that could be completely unrelated, or be caused by thousands of other causes. They do not suffer from the main symptoms associated with sulfur compounds exposure, therefore this article is misleading, false, and possibly causing undue fear. It advocates for irrationality, mob mentality, blaming something without even know how it affects them. The epitome of today's irrational fear-mongering journalism. - inactive, on 05/11/2009, -0/+6it's under the lead paint ?
- klipseracer, on 05/11/2009, -0/+6^^^ I love this guy.
- DangerCollie, on 05/11/2009, -1/+7Ever breath the air in Beijing? Authorities shut down factories for two weeks before the Olympics so people could breath. On a normal day you can't see across town.
I don't want our factories or our housing to be built to the standards in mainland China. I don't want to see people living in cardboard slums like they do in Mumbai. And it's our regulatory environment that keeps companies from turning out cities into industrial wastelands. - thekornreeper, on 05/11/2009, -2/+8I agree. Why do we build wood houses, and get surprised when a forest fire + wind makes them all burn down (they are just firewood structures ready to go up). Stone/metal house = won't burn down. Then you won't have millions in losses from houses being burned down (like in the current fire in Santa Barbara, CA).
- Marmot, on 05/11/2009, -1/+7Check the coils in your AC air handler -- they get covered in this black layer of oxidation / corrosion.
Also, pull off a couple of wall plates and check the bare copper ground wire. We found ours were completely black until I scraped some of the black stuff off with a knife.
Also, in our case there was the faintest whiff of sulfur in the wallplate (vaguely like the smell of a lit match). - vilago, on 05/11/2009, -0/+6if houses are so cheaply built, then why are they so overpriced???
- Shwaavay, on 05/11/2009, -0/+6Will you idiots lighten up! He's quoting Cartman.
- dattaway, on 05/11/2009, -0/+6Monsanto open up more plants in China?
- inactive, on 05/11/2009, -0/+6There you go Swine Flu protection..
- ChuckDees, on 05/11/2009, -1/+6I read over at conspiracytheorynutjob.com that tinfoil hats are 25% off and that all this toxic crap from China is a gimmick to help Pinky and the Brain.
- eShinn, on 05/11/2009, -0/+5The most intellectually sound post to this article so far.
- klipseracer, on 05/11/2009, -5/+10Its those damn white people who would rather buy cheap work from chinese people... Obviously.
Fortune cookie fo' yu?
No buy cheap wok if yu don' wan cheep shiit! - nysus, on 05/11/2009, -5/+10Note to libertarians: this is one example of why doing away with regulation will never work.
- inactive, on 05/11/2009, -1/+6Or do what I did and get a sledge hammer, make a small intrusion, poke your head in, if it does not work smash the opposite wall too. You should be able to see the label clearly now.
Or get a small PC camera and a light and tape it to a coat hanger.
Another test is to see if high sulphate levels exist simply by using a soil PH test kit.
Use a safe product as a standard. You only need a few small lumps. - TigerStar337, on 05/11/2009, -3/+8No one forced the USA builders to buy it.
- Ibox, on 05/11/2009, -1/+5Sure no one is forcing people to buy this, but there is no disclaimer on the product to say that this drywall will corrode your wiring in humid environments. people wouldn't buy it if they new.
- acegi, on 05/11/2009, -0/+4I concur
- brainflakes, on 05/11/2009, -2/+6What ever happened to making homes out of those things called, you know, bricks.
- MistySteele, on 05/11/2009, -0/+4Are you saying that other parties also don't have kooks who are against all regulations?
Not all libertarians are knee-jerk against any regulation. Libertarians just believe in keeping regulations to the minimum necessary and there are spirited debates and discussions in the party and in governmental discourse on where those lines are (as it should be).
However, an important topic not brought up in this discussion is international quality standards. In most industries, there are ISO and other standards of quality for different grades of products and materials, and these are audited by the issuing agencies. Minimum quality regulations are probably required in this case, but more than this, I would suggest regulations requiring builder practices and materials to be more transparent to end customers.
The best regulations to prevent abuses like this are usually those that improve transparency along the entire end-customer chain, not those that simply regulate the initial builder. - nonymous666, on 05/11/2009, -0/+4"Drywall is made out of gypsum, made of calcium sulfate dihydrate, or CaSO4·2H2O. Notice the sulfur in there? If drywalls don't have sulfur in it it wouldn't be a drywall."
Yeah. And don't light any matches around water. The hydrogen in it will explode. - TigerStar337, on 05/11/2009, -2/+6Capitalism. Nikita Kruschev, the Soviet Union’s Premier, and unwittingly astute clairvoyant, once said, “Give the Capitalists enough rope, and they will hang themselves with it.” He also made another prophetic statement “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
- inactive, on 05/11/2009, -1/+5In India wood is expensive and weak. Cant handle the local weather so we have houses of Concrete and Stone only and i am so grateful for it. It might be easier to modify a wooden house bu nothing beats Stones and bricks for stability and durability.
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