Experts Skeptical of New Report on Infant Deaths at Fort Bragg

[unhappycamper]

The Consumer Product Safety Commission disclosed the results of its assessment of the drywall used in two homes at Fort Bragg, N.C., including 144 Groesbeek Street.


Experts Skeptical of New Report on Infant Deaths at Fort Bragg
by Aaron Kessler, Sarasota Herald-Tribune, and Joaquin Sapien, ProPublica Feb. 10, 2011, 11:04 p.m.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission and the U.S. Army released a long-awaited report Thursday about a rash of unexplained infant deaths at Fort Bragg, N.C., concluding that no environmental issue—including contaminated drywall—was to blame for the babies’ deaths.

But three experts who reviewed the report for the Herald-Tribune and ProPublica said the tests used to examine the drywall were unreliable and incomplete—and that more tests should have been done.

At least nine infants have died of unknown causes at Fort Bragg since 2007, including three infants of different parents who lived in a single house.

In Spring 2010, Army criminal investigators who probed one baby’s death noticed corrosion and other signs that can point to problematic drywall—most of it imported from China during the housing boom—and ordered that a sample from the infant’s room be tested.

The results from a laboratory chamber test revealed high levels of two sulfur gases associated with contaminated drywall—levels that exceeded a known sample of tainted Chinese board used for comparison and that were 14 to 18 times greater than an untainted control sample. Many experts consider the chamber test the most definitive for tainted drywall.

[Bunny]

1. So, in three years, three different families rotated in and out of the same house,

and three infants died while living in that house? Did I read that right? Wow - if there's no causation of some kind involved, it's certainly a freakishly weird coincidence.

[Bunny]

2. Kick