Lowe's has pulled a line of flooring that a blogger claimed had toxic levels of formaldehyde
Quoting a Lowe's spokesperson, Bloomberg report's the home improvement chain recalled its Tecsun line of flooring, which was only sold online, and plans to do an investigation.
This follows a blogger's claims that this flooring posed similar health hazards as flooring sold by Lumber Liquidators.
Back in June 2013, Xuhua Zhou claimed that Lumber Liquidators flooring sourced in China had toxic levels of formaldehyde, in a blog post on Seeking Alpha. And on Friday, Zhou, who says he's an individual investor that's shorting Lowe's stock (or betting its price will fall,) wrote new allegations Lowe's.
In Zhou's post first reported by Bloomberg, Zhou wrote that industry sources familiar with Lowe's product told him that it has similar issues with Lumber Liquidators' China-sourced laminate flooring.
Zhou wrote that in an audio recording of a conversation between one of his sources close to Lowe's and company representatives, it appeared that Lowe's was sourcing wood that's not compliant with regulations.
The source tested samples of the product bought in Texas late in March, and the tests showed formaldehyde levels ten times more than the limit established by the California Air Resources Board, Zhou wrote.
Early in March, CBS' "60 Minutes" detailed results of its investigation into Lumber Liquidators' laminate flooring sourced in China, which found excessive levels of formaldehyde. The company is under a federal investigation.
"To put Lowe's results in context, "60 Minutes" tested 31 samples from Lumber Liquidators and Lowe's Chocolate Cherry Hickory would have been the third worst of all 31 samples had it been included by "60 Minutes"," Zhou wrote on Seeking Alpha.
We've reached out to Lowe's and will update this post if we hear back.