Florida based home building giant Lennar is getting pulled deeper into the Chinese drywall hubbub partly engineered by limelight hungry politicians and cash hungry personal injury lawyers.

Here's the latest news. 

Lennar has established a fund to pay for drywall replacement, though its reassured shareholders insurance would step in were Chinese drywall to become a bigger problem.

A couple hundred homes have reported wire corrosion and sulphur odors from imported drywall. Lennar is replacing drywall free of charge in a few Tampa Bay area homes and paying for temporary homes for the residents. Based on the millions of pounds of Chinese gypsum board brought into the U.S. in 2006, the problem could be much more widespread.

But that doesn't justify all the fear mongering.  As you'll notice from the news link above, the story mentions the drywall being "toxic." I read the actual testing results released by Florida's chief toxicologist last month and IT'S SIMPLY NOT TRUE.

Smelly? Yes. Corrosive? In many cases. A major nuisance if you have to move? Indeed. But we're not talking asbestos clouds and Hiroshima fallout.

The state test results showed that American made sample of drywall actually had MORE SULPHUR than did one Chinese sample. And scientists had to heat and dampen the Chinese stuff to get it to put off an odor.

Here's another anecdote that shows how distorted the issue can become.  I talked to a man from Brandon who suspected he had Chinese drywall in his house. His daughter had a chronic sore throat and other respiratory problems. He was almost certain he was a victim. 

Guess what? A testing lab found no problem. It's on to antibiotics and lozenges. Don't tell that to the tort lawyers, though. Wouldn't want to stand between an Armani suit and his pay day.