Last night 60 Minutes did a segment on Lumber Liquidators and their laminate flooring. Their huge profit gains were admired both by investors and other entities similar to them. Upon investigation their suppliers included several in China. The labeling indicated that it has passed regulations that were acceptable for exporting. The key component that needs strict guidelines was formaldehyde for health safety problems occurring in regard to respiratory issues. In this segment the shipments were made to Lumber Liquidators as the port of entrance in California.
To make a long story short, the hidden camera and reporting team found out that all of the labels on the crates for shipment to Lumber Liquidators stated a safe level of formaldehyde when in essence they did not. Those in charge within the factories were very open that the labels were purposefully mis-representing the formaldehyde.
For me this was personally hard to take in. I could not believe that the blatant disregard of safety for families using products such as these in their homes is still going on. In 1973, Orlin and I had purchased a 14′ x 80’mobile home for our family . . . our growing family. The mobile home was put on the site in October and our third child was due mid-December. It totally had the “new” smell as all of the interior walls were of laminate paneling. As we settled in, nothing was thought of it other than it called for windows to be cracked to help elevate the strong smell of the formaldehyde. Generally the home was closed up to accommodate cool to cold temperatures.
If the pregnancy had not been going so on target, we would have postponed the move. All markers for the first seven months indicated a healthy mother and a healthy baby. In December, the visits to the doctor became those of concern. The funeral for baby Scott Howard was on what would have been his birthday, December 13th.
It was not unusual in the headlines and news casts to come that there were concerns being levied in regard to the use of paneling containing high levels of formaldehyde. Was anything ever proven? No. In my heart, I believe that the vapors within the mobile home put me at high risk of the air I was taking in during those last months of pregnancy and how if affected the baby as well as six year old Kevin dealing with asthma.
Here we are 40 years later and there has been little done to insure that products are what they profess to be or that they have passed code safety standards. Consumers are still putting their family’s health at risk for the all mighty dollar that companies like Lumber Liquidators are taking in. Ironically, Lumber Liquidators are now crying that they were totally unaware. I don’t believe that. There is so much now known about health conditions as it relates to the air we breath, but we still need to rely on hidden cameras and reporting crews to bring out the real truth. Something really smells in the regulatory process.
