I worked as a painter one summer and we painted several houses which had lead paint (either still or at some point in the past) For the most part we would try to do something about it but when you are 40 feet up on a ladder and scraping paint off a windowsill that hasn't been touched in as many years it's very difficult to contain.<p>For one, you have to wear protective suits and respiratory gear, neither of which was really that effective. They really inhibited my ability to move so a lot of times I would just go gloves and mask. Second, you have to prep ground beneath with thicker than usual plastic sheets to catch the paint scrapings that fall down. This just doesn't really work that well and there isn't always an effective solution. People have bushes against the house most of the time and you can't really control where the paint falls so most of it just ends up on the ground and then gets cleaned up later.<p>The fines for avoiding regulation are extremely high but I never once saw an EPA person the entire summer and on the occasions where it might have been possible we were warned ahead of time. There is an unspoken agreement that you try to contain the lead paint but you can't really do that much about it.<p>The main difference that you notice about lead paint is the thickness of the paint. After main years it kind of "cakes", but also that it still looks relatively nice after a long time. In comparison to latex paint it just has a much nicer look and I can see why they used it.<p>Edit: as a response to other comments, it's relatively easy to detect lead paint, I could usually spot it when we showed up/based on the type of house. I don't know about other sources like pipes though.
The galling thing is that this really should have been a much smaller problem, since the health issue with lead paint has been known since the early 20th century. Many countries started banning it for interior use around then, e.g. France in 1909, and the UK in 1926. The US eventually did so too, but not until 1978, meaning that a whole bunch of post-WW2 buildings were painted with lead-containing paint, when that was already well known to be a bad idea by that time. There would still be <i>some</i> old residences with lead paint even if it had been phased out in the 1920s, but the numbers would have been much lower.<p>(Lead pipes have a similar history, phased out in many countries by the 1910s-20s, but installed in the US up until the 1960s.)
Wow, $2.1 billion to fix the problem for the whole country. That's nothing. That's got to be the lowest hanging fruit with the biggest bang for the buck with ROI paying off for the next century or more.
In SLC over 95% of the homes have lead paint. I was advised to give a pamphlet to tenants notifying them that the home has lead paint... and that's it! I was now 100% compliant with the law.<p>What I found most shocking was that in a city with this great a density of lead contaminated homes, I could only find 5 professional outfits capable of removing lead paint! The only way to get traction on this issue (at least in Utah) is to pass a law against it :(
I live in Allentown, Pa., where a remarkable 23.1 percent of children tested had excessive lead. I also work with Head Start and we actually had our funding cut for testing children because they general idea was it wasn't a thing in 2016. Now it is a thing against and we again start testing every child in school. We just had to switch to getting them going to their doctor to check their blood.<p>My home was built in 1894 and the original wall paper was removed in 2007 before we moved in and all the wood work isn't painted. I found lead all over the house where a few doors or wall was painted in the bathroom and kitchen. Everyone just told me to paint over it but I actually stripped it all and what a pain! No wonder it is an issue no one want's to spend the time or energy removing this stuff when you can just paint over it.
Does anyone know how the lead in paint gets into a person's bloodstream?<p>Is it by "eating paint chips" as the old joke goes? Or does the paint eventually flake microscopically and end up in food and on eating surfaces or something?
I'm surprised that there isn't more awareness of the problem. Hopefully the Flint publicity will help. looks like there is advice online but I've never heard anyone mention it despite living in an area with lots of old houses.<p><a href="http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/program_offices/healthy_homes/healthyhomes/lead" rel="nofollow">http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/program_offices/hea...</a><p>>>>> For your child:<p>> Have your child's blood lead level tested at age 1 and 2. Children from 3 to 6 years of age should have their blood tested, if they have not been tested before and:
They live in or regularly visit a house built before 1950,
They live in or regularly visit a house built before 1978 with on-going or recent renovations or remodeling
They have a sibling or playmate who has or did have lead poisoning
I'm curious to see how die-hard free marketeers would solve this problem. To me, this (and similar examples) is proof that strong government is needed so that it can stand up to strong private corporations.
Many of the chemical companies that made lead paint still exist, and the risks of lead have been known for hundreds of years. Europe banned lead in the 1920s. I do not think that there should be a statute of limitations on these things, I think that the big old chemical giants should pay for fixing this.
We can [partly] solve this in the tech field. (Startup idea.)<p>A cheap (very cheap!) device to detect lead in paint. It would have to cost under $50, and better under $30.<p>If you can detect it you can work on it because you can see the problem.<p>The only way I know to detect lead with a device (as opposed to chemically) is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray_fluorescence" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray_fluorescence</a><p>So, how to make a cheap enough device? You don't need great accuracy - 20% accuracy is fine for this. You need very high sensitivity in the detector because you don't want to generate a lot of x-ray energy in a device hold for household use.<p>To be practical the device would have to emit so little energy as to be basically harmless even if used on a person. (Low power, but also short duration.)