Florida Stung by the Not-So-Great (Dry) Wall of China

By Tim Padgett / Miami | TIME Magazine in Partnership with CNN
March 23, 2009

Soon after Danie Beck and her husband bought their two-story townhouse west of Miami in the summer of 2006, she thought an animal had died somewhere behind the walls. The strong sulfurous odor lingered, she says, and she began having dizzy spells that would keep her in bed for days. She began suffering from insomnia and sore, swollen joints. The house, too, appeared to be ailing: Lights began blinking on and off, and Beck noticed discoloring of her wood furniture. The air conditioner, an indispensable appliance in South Florida, kept conking out. "It was an absolute nightmare," the 67-year-old dance teacher. "I felt as if something in this house was hammering me into the ground every day."

It wasn't until her repairman got fed up with fixing inexplicably corroded air-conditioner coils that Beck finally discovered what she and her homebuilder suspect is the source of the poltergeist: the Chinese drywall of the house's interiors. Beck is among hundreds of homeowners in Florida alleging that toxic levels of chemical pollutants such as sulfur are issuing from contaminated drywall made in some Chinese factories. At least four class-action lawsuits have been filed in Florida; others have been filed in California, Louisiana and Alabama.

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