CDC SAYS LUMBER LIQUIDATORS FLOORING CANCER RISKS ARE ACTUALLY WAY HIGHER THAN PREVIOUSLY ANNOUNCED 
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention issued a correction to a report from earlier this month, which summarized the agency’s findings on potentially elevated cancer risks from exposure to certain types of laminate flooring previously sold by Lumber Liquidators. Last year the company (which has 7 stores across the Houston area) was the subject of a 60 Minutes investigation, which claimed that high levels of formaldehyde in some products were the result of cost-saving measures at subcontracting factories in China. Lumber Liquidators reportedly cut ties with its Chinese suppliers, but company stocks are still down roughly 80% from pre-investigation levels. This morning, Reuters reports that the health agency hadn’t converted between feet and meters in some calculations of exposure concentrations, which gave markedly lower estimates of airborne formaldehyde levels than what may actually be produced by the flooring. The corrected numbers paint a more serious picture of health problems allegedly stemming from the products, including an estimated rate of 6 to 30 cancer cases per 100,000 exposures, about 3 times greater than the previously announced 2 to 9. [CBS News, Reuters] Photo of Lumber Liquidators on W. Sam Houston Pkwy: Todd M.
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Still very happy that I did not use this company when I was replacing my floor. They have some decent options that are dirt cheap – at least they would be decent options if you didn’t have to deal with that nagging risk of cancer. The prices were fractions of the prices at other places.
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If you buy a house and they used lumber liquidators, you have to factor in complete replacement costs into the negotiation. That should be a required disclosure but it is not. Proceed with caution.
I will add that this was by far the busiest flooring shop that I went to. By far. Even despite the first Google hit for the company talking about the cancer issues. Sad.
Is there anything that doesn’t cause cancer?
Seems like, if the mistake was feet v. meters, the numbers should have gone up nine-fold, since we are dealing in sq. feet v. sq. meters, roughly 9-10 to 1. Curious it was only 3.
Al, isn’t the issue really a cubic measurement and the other two sides of the cube were correctly measured, so only the height of the wall difference needs to be addressed?
Because the metric system causes cancer.
Not to let these guys off the hook, but SO MUCH of the flooring you buy from just about anyone is made-in-china garbage. It’s pretty frustrating.
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I don’t even want that stuff in your budget apts.
Something else to worry about:
I’m certain I imported silverfish into my home with the laminate flooring.
I found them among the ends and packaging left behind by the installers.
And it’s been the gift that keeps on giving…
Flooring is like anything else – you get what you pay for. If you want quality, I believe the top guys in Houston are Clouse Floors and Schenck and Company. While of course they deal in the high end fully-custom products, I think they both offer some cheaper options too, e.g. engineered products that can still handle a refinishing down the road.
Never put anything from China that can off gas in a house. The next frontier is checking to see if “China Birch” was used in the cabinets. Probably nuclear waste and political dissidents ground up in the glue.