Over the past few weeks, American homeowners have learned that millions of square feet of laminated flooring manufactured in China and sold by Lumber Liquidators contain levels of formaldehyde many times higher than the safety standard set by the California Air Resources Board (CARB), a standard that will become federal law later this year.

Formaldehyde (CH2O) is found in hundreds of common products including particle board, plywood, permanent press fabrics, carpets, some foam insulation, and shampoos and cosmetics. According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), formaldehyde is a cancer hazard and can be fatal if ingested. It can cause severe allergic reactions of the skin, eyes and respiratory tract. Low-level, long-term exposure can cause asthma-like respiratory problems and skin irritation. It’s easy to understand why consumers are alarmed at the news that their flooring may be off-gassing formaldehyde at levels as high as 20 times the standard developed by CARB.

Of course, the discovery that our homes may contain toxic materials is nothing new. In fact, home improvement in the 19th century was positively deadly. For example, the fashion for vivid green wallpapers created a poisoning hazard because arsenic compounds were used to achieve the elusive color. Countless trendy homeowners were sickened by their décor, including Frederick Law Olmstead, who recovered only after abandoning his green-papered bedroom. Wall paints were equally toxic. To produce white pigment, workers soaked huge sheets of lead in vinegar and scraped or pounded the resulting white powder off the surface. White lead was the base for many other colors that contained additional poisonous compounds. The workers who manufactured, mixed and applied these products suffered the most extreme health effects. Lead poisoning was referred to as “painter’s colic” and the life expectancy in certain building trades was notoriously short. Lead was finally removed from house paint in the U.S. in the 1970s.

Over the years, we’ve realized that numerous other products once considered safe, including asbestos insulation and pressure treated lumber made with chromated copper arsenate, were in fact harmful and should be removed from the market or reformulated.

What struck me as new about the Lumber Liquidators story is the fact that the whistleblowers in this instance are not environmentalists but Wall Street hedge fund managers who grew suspicious of a sudden jump in the company’s stock price and profit margins. Their research led the CBS program “60 Minutes” to investigate whether the Chinese factories working with Lumber Liquidators were knowingly delivering a more cheaply made, non-compliant product falsely labeled as meeting California’s CARB 2 standard, a deception that boosted the company’s profit on sales of the flooring by as much as 10%.

Earlier this month, Lumber Liquidators dropped its Chinese flooring suppliers. But the story still raises bigger questions about corporate accountability and the enforceability of product standards within a complex global supply chain, and brings home the possible consequences to our health. Add to that mix of issues the fact that exports of U.S. forest products to China has risen by 487% in the past five years, and the carbon footprint of transporting these materials becomes equally troubling: why are we shipping raw materials to China and then importing a product that we can and do manufacture here at home in a way that complies with our environmental standards and carries a smaller carbon cost? From a sustainability viewpoint, it really doesn’t add up.