The AP reports:
A federal judge presiding over hundreds of lawsuits against Chinese drywall makers and installers said Thursday that he plans to hold the first trial in January for the cases, which claim the imported products emit sulfur, methane and other chemical compounds that have ruined homes and harmed residents' health.
U.S. District Judge Eldon Fallon told attorneys that he expects them to pick six plaintiffs whose cases could be tried in early 2010, with the first trial starting in January.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission, in its August drywall update, reported that new complaints continue to come in, and "the majority of the reports continue to be from Florida, Louisiana, and Virginia." And:
To date, CPSC staff has confirmed 6,211,200 sheets of Chinese drywall were imported into the U.S., plus 28,778 sheets imported into Guam, Saipan, and American Samoa during 2006. The staff is continuing to verify more shipments.
Oh, and the whole notion that it's as simple as phosphogypsum? Not so fast, a group of federal and state scientists suggest. Here's what those scientists (from CPSC, EPA, CDC, as well as the health departments of Florida, Louisiana, and Virginia) said in an August memo after testing 21 drywall samples, from foreign and domestic sources, including from houses with pipes that had become corroded:
Based on the data from the two laboratories, the Technical Team concludes that there is no phosphogypsum contamination in the drywall samples tested. In particular, the levels of 226Ra found in these samples were generally more than a factor of 10 lower than those found in phosphogypsum (10 to 35 pCi/g), but comparable to levels found in other commonly used building materials including bricks and concrete.
...
The conclusions that can be reached are that there is no indication that these drywall samples contain phosphogypsum, there is no indication that imported drywall contains any more radioactive material than domestic sources, and drywall associated with these samples would not represent a significant source of radiation exposure.
But: "Results of these 21 drywall samples may not be representative of all domestic or all imported drywall."
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Ben Somberg | September 4, 2009
The AP reports: A federal judge presiding over hundreds of lawsuits against Chinese drywall makers and installers said Thursday that he plans to hold the first trial in January for the cases, which claim the imported products emit sulfur, methane and other chemical compounds that have ruined homes and harmed residents’ health. U.S. District Judge […]
Holly Doremus | September 3, 2009
This item cross-posted by permission from Legal Planet. We had a flurry of posts on geoengineering a while back (see here, here, here, and here). If you want to learn more about geoengineering, a great resource is this report, just issued by the Royal Society. It clearly explains the background, the approaches being proposed (which […]
Rena Steinzor | September 2, 2009
Those of us worried sick over climate change confronted a depressing piece of excellent reporting in Monday’s Washington Post. Environment reporter David Fahrenthold wrote that environmental organizations are getting their proverbial clocks cleaned by a well-organized and pervasive campaign mounted by affected industries in small and mid-size communities throughout America. “It seems that environmentalists are […]
Ben Somberg | September 1, 2009
A recent article on Forbes.com, “China: Where Poisoning People Is Almost Free,” gave great examples of just how cheap it often is to pollute in China. And it pointed to potential consequences: While companies can get away with pollution atrocities for years, the Chinese government, in the long run, may have to pay a high […]
Matt Shudtz | August 31, 2009
Earlier this month, EPA released for public comment a new white paper on probabilistic risk assessment, marking the Obama Administration’s first major foray into the contentious debate about EPA’s evolving risk assessment methods. Back in May, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announced changes to the way the Office of Research and Development (ORD) will update risk […]
Yee Huang | August 28, 2009
Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency agreed to set specific, statewide numeric standards for nutrient pollution in Florida, marking the first time the EPA has forced numeric limits for nutrient runoff for an entire state. This settlement, based on a 1998 EPA determination that under the Clean Water Act all states were required to develop […]
Yee Huang | August 27, 2009
In July, a federal judge settled a nearly 20-year legal dispute among Alabama, Florida, and Georgia over the use of water from Lake Lanier, dealing a tough blow to Georgia. The Army Corps of Engineers constructed Buford Dam in the 1950s, creating Lake Lanier as a reservoir for flood control, navigation, and hydropower. But Atlanta […]
Holly Doremus | August 26, 2009
Cross-posted by permission from Legal Planet. As reported in the L.A. Times and Wall Street Journal, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has petitioned EPA to hold a trial-type hearing before finalizing its proposed finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare. (We blogged about the proposed endangerment finding here.) The main argument in […]
Alice Kaswan | August 26, 2009
As fellow environmental law professors David Schoenbrod and Richard Stewart take their advocacy for market mechanisms and skepticism about regulation public, with an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on Monday, I thought it was time to speak out in favor of a role for regulation. They claim that the climate change bill that passed […]