WASHINGTON—The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission released results Tuesday from an indoor study of homes built with Chinese drywall that found a link between the drywall and corrosion of metals in those homes.

The CPSC, which is part of the Interagency Drywall Task Force, said in its report that defining the link between Chinese drywall and metal corrosion allows it to move ahead with developing protocols that will help identify homes with the corrosive drywall and determine remediation methods.

The study was contracted by the CPSC and was conducted by Needham, Mass.-based Environmental Health & Engineering Inc., an environmental testing firm.

“We now have science that enables the task force to move ahead to the next phase to develop both a screening process and effective remediation methods,” said Inez Tenenbaum, chairman of the CPSC, in a statement. “Ongoing studies will examine health and safety effects, but we are now ready to get to work fixing this problem.”

EH&E compared 41 “complaint” homes in five states selected from the CPSC consumer incident report database with 10 “noncomplaint” homes built around the same time and same area as the complaint homes. The environmental firm discovered that hydrogen sulfide gas found in Chinese drywall is the essential component that causes copper and silver sulfide corrosion in the complaint homes.

The CPSC said it still is trying to determine how hydrogen sulfide gas is being created in homes built with Chinese drywall, adding that previous studies found large amounts of elemental sulfur in the Chinese drywall.

While drywall-related corrosion is evident, the CPSC said long-term safety effects still are under investigation. To date, the CPSC has received more than 2,000 reports from 32 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico from consumers and homeowners concerned about Chinese drywall in their homes.

The drywall task force is working with U.S. Customs and Border Protection to monitor imports of possible Chinese drywall. The CPSC said no Chinese drywall has entered the United States in 2009.

About 500 million pounds of drywall was imported to the United States between 2004 and 2007, when the housing market peaked and the Southeast was rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina. The drywall was traced to Chinese subsidiaries of German manufacturer Knauf Plasterboard Tianjin Co. Ltd.

For more information, visit www.drywallresponse.gov.