If you have a nursing home that was built afterWorld War II , then the walls are belike made from bed sheet ofdrywall . Prior to this era , homes typically had plaster walls . Drywall is made of canvass of gypsum plaster pressed together between thick sheets of newspaper publisher . It ’s also have it off as gypsum board , panel gameboard and Sheetrock , which is a common sword name . Gypsum is a naturally occurring mineral that turns out to be the perfect ingredient for stimulate drywall .
The United States saw unprecedented outgrowth in thereal estatemarket between 2001 and 2005 . builder were busy , real land agent were hopping and householder saw their house make meaning gain in value . In 2005 , income levels for builders bump off a national high of nearly $ 768 billion [ source : NAHB ] . It should descend as no surprise then that building materials like wallboard were in shorter supply than normal . The United States fabricate about 15 million lashings of drywall each class , but that still was n’t enough . So constructor turned to imported dry wall from other land , notably China . Between 2004 and 2008 , the United States has imported about 550 million pounds of Taiwanese dry wall [ source : TIME ] .
The sound news program about the imported Chinese drywall was that it was abundant and inexpensive . A single sheet runs anywhere from eight to 15 penny gimcrack than its American counterpart . So for builders , that savings is multiplied by however many houses are on the Bible , which knuckle under quite a saving when you add it all up . The downside of using the imported drywall is that it ’s having some serious burden . masses began noticing some odd thing in their raw homes – strange smelling , give out widget and wellness problems . For a while , nobody could pinpoint the cause of these abnormalities , but it was shortly trace back to the import dry wall .
In the next segment , we ’ll take a looking at why Chinese drywall is so knotty .