Looking Out For Lead Paint
A primer on dealing with lead-based coatings in old houses.

By Marylee McDonald

Photo Courtesy of Gordon Bock

As a former contractor and now a grandmother, I confess that I was once oblivious to lead's hazards. Thank goodness my children were over six when I moved into our 1869 Queen Anne house. I cringe when I think of the lead dust from demolished plaster that circulated in the forced-air heating system, or the way I stripped paint from wood trim, a heat gun vaporizing the lead. At dinnertime, I washed my hands and pulled apart lettuce, giving no thought to the dust on my overalls or the lead-paint chips dry swept into a dustpan beneath the kitchen window. Today we all know these are big no-nos.

Since lead paint is a given in any house 50 or more years old, residents and restorers of old houses need to take special precautions to minimize their exposure to this heavy metal—especially during major work. The best way to reduce risk, however, is not radical abatement—that is, permanent elimination of lead paint—but careful housekeeping. Don't panic, but do be proactive. There's no need to compromise your family's health in order to restore your home's historic character. The way you work, though, may have to be different from your original plan. Instead of transforming your fixer-upper in the initial three or four years of ownership—the "gonzo" approach to restoration—you may have to take your time. Particularly with young children, your first consideration must be your family's health. To help you make informed decisions about working and living with lead paint, here's some background on the basic issues and current thinking, with strategies and information to help you manage lead risks.

Lead's Hidden Dangers
Lead damages nervous systems and kidneys. Babies in utero can be exposed during the critical months of brain development by, say, a mother stripping paint from a mantel. Children's brains grow rapidly during the first six years, when lead can "jump into" the cells normally reserved for calcium and iron. This can cause retardation and irreversible behavioral disorders. Because symptoms mimic common illnesses—headaches, stomachaches, cramps, constipation, poor appetite, anorexia, sleep disorders, fatigue, vomiting, crankiness, and clumsiness—they may go undetected. The good news is there has been a 40 to 88 percent drop (depending on the locality) in childhood lead poisoning since the federal government began to push for elimination of lead hazards, banning the use of lead paint in residences in 1978.

So it's important to protect children and pregnant women (pets, too) from lead. Before you begin a renovation, first have everyone in your household go for a baseline blood test to establish their existing lead levels and determine if anyone is already at risk. Then, as work progresses, have them retested periodically.

Next, determine possible sources of risk. Though residential lead can have several origins, such as drinking water (from lead pipes), soil (from leaded gasoline), tableware (from lead-glazed ceramics, leaded crystal), and even painted toys, house paint is the source we're concerned about here. To find out if your house poses a health hazard, hire professional help to perform a Lead Risk Assessment. They'll test all the places where lead paint might be found, determine if the paint is, indeed, lead, and evaluate the paint's condition. The assessment should describe the kind of lead-painted surface and whether it is subject to friction, impact, or within reach of children. The assessors will then provide strategies to fix or control known lead hazards. You can also use your own common sense and check areas that are likely to put you at risk.

While paint coming off in flakes is an obvious culprit, lead-paint dust is just as dangerous and the most common lead hazard. Only 15 percent of children actually eat paint chips, perhaps attracted by the slightly sweet taste. Dust, though, puts children at risk because toddlers spend so much time on the floor. Most children's lead contamination comes from unwashed pacifiers, hand-to-mouth behavior, or dusty stuffed animals. Remember, lead dust is what you need to worry about, not lead paint.

Planning to Manage Lead
The thinking on how best to reduce general lead hazards has changed in the last few years. Once, when children tested positive for lead, building owners were forced to rip out old wood windows. That practice still pops up occasionally. In Rhode Island, for instance, Medicaid pays to replace the windows with vinyl when a child's blood-lead level exceeds 20 micrograms per deciliter. In most of these cases, though, the lead source is substandard housing, not a restoration project. The fact is, such wholesale removal of building parts is not only expensive, it also tends to create dust, increasing the lead risk. Lately, a more moderate approach has caught on among many public health departments.

New Orleans, for instance, has no money to remove windows or repaint, despite the many children affected by lead, so the city emphasizes education of parents who live in unsafe housing. They've found they can make a dent in the lead problem by teaching parents to wash children's hands, improve their diets, use playpens or blankets spread on floors, and keep their homes dust free. Moderation is good preservation too. In Preservation Brief 37, the National Park Service stresses the value of controlling or managing potential lead hazards rather than removing important architectural elements of the building.

Good preservation always starts with the "gentlest means possible," and this is an excellent way to think about the two scenarios most old-house owner/restorers face: the short-term need to control lead-paint residue so that you can safely work on the building, and the long-term need to minimize the risk from lead paint while you live in the building. To help you manage lead, it's important to enlist the services of a professional before you begin remodeling. This way, you can plan how to time your remodel, perhaps deferring major demolition until the kids are older, and how to deal with risks. Remember, a prime preservation goal is to not do anything that can't later be undone.

Work Safe, Work Clean
If you'll be starting an extensive renovation—or even limited lead abatement, such as removing failing paint—pay special attention to daily cleanup. More than anything else, this will minimize your exposure to lead dust. The booklet "Lead In Your Home" from the Environmental Protection Agency (see "Resources" page 49) is essential reading. Although the print version is no longer available, you can read it online and download it to your printer. As you map out your strategy, include these critical points:

Protect yourself. Wear rubber gloves and a NIOSH-certified respirator with a HEPA filter and have the respirator tested to make sure it fits. Simple dust masks are not sufficient. Wear an outer layer of clothing and wash it separately when you leave the work area so as to not track dust through the house.

Set up a safe work area. Seal off the work site. Creating an "air lock" over the entrance with two sheets of overlapping plastic will keep lead dust out of the rest of the house. Cover vents and heating ducts and shut off air conditioning or the furnace to keep lead dust from circulating. Cover furniture and floors. Work in one room at a time and ventilate the area.

Clean up daily. Wet sweep and wet mop the work area, using phosphate-containing wash water, then rinse. Besides being good at loosening soil from hard surfaces, phosphate binds with lead and makes it harmless. Some states forbid the use of tri-sodium phosphate (TSP), the old standby cleaner, because of phosphate runoff to sewage treatment plants. Don't despair; other cleaners work just as well. Try Simple Green or phosphated dishwasher detergent. Make sure you change the mop water frequently and use clean rinse water. You don't want to simply swirl the lead around with a dirty mop. Strain out paint chips and debris from the mop water and dispose of the solids in a plastic bag.

Vacuum your walls, the tops of doors and windows, and the plastic barrier to your work area. Use a vacuum cleaner equipped with a HEPA filter—the only vacuum that can filter out fine lead particles. Regular vacuums will exhaust some fine lead into the air, where it will float indefinitely.

Mist regularly. Always spray water on lead-painted areas to keep down dust. If you must sand, mist first, then use a flexible pad sander and wet/dry sandpaper. When you sweep, wet down the broom. Chase every dampened paint chip with a vacuum. When drilling or pounding, stop every few minutes to vacuum.

Strip paint carefully. If you must remove paint from woodwork, never use an open flame (a propane torch) or heat guns with temperatures above 1,100 degrees. They increase the chances of releasing lead into the air. Always work with a properly fitted respirator. Never use a heat gun or heat plate if there is a baby or child nearby who might breathe the vapors. Weigh the pros and cons of total paint removal before you begin. Consider stripping the item off site or using a contractor who is state certified to remove lead paint.

Avoid ingesting dust. Do not eat, drink, or smoke in the work area. Wash thoroughly before eating.

Living with Lead
Even if you are not actively restoring the building and the existing painted surfaces are in good condition, many of the working parts of an old house can still pose a potential lead-paint hazard. To manage the lead dust that may occur from day-to-day use, review the red flags on your lead risk assessment, paying particular attention to these areas:

Painted stairs. Because foot traffic on painted stairs knocks paint loose, they can be a source of lead dust. The easiest management option—one that usually qualifies as a lead enclosure (a stiff material covering)—is carpet. Cheap carpet works just as well as expensive carpet, and rubber tread covers are even cheaper (although less aesthetically pleasing). If you have historic paint on your stairs, such as graining, carpet or covers will save those paint layers until your children are out of danger.

Window pockets. The friction of moving sash can release lead particles because window pockets (the channels where the sashes slide) often contain years of paint. If a risk assessment report identifies your window pockets as a lead source, one option is to install metal jamb liners that will retain the original sash while enclosing the potential hazard. If the windows stick, mist the edges of the sash and remove a fraction of an inch of built-up paint. Later you can remove these tracks and thoroughly strip the jambs and window wells if you like. Also, mist and scrape loose paint from the sills, fill, then paint. (Never dry scrape.) Don't rush into a massive stripping job; you might destroy important color information in your haste.

Friction on doors. Where a door binds, paint will chip off, and making sure doors don't stick will net you a big return on the lead front. Seal off the room, then mist and plane down the edges of doors. Make sure the door is beveled properly and that the hinges aren't pulling loose. The advantage of planing, from a preservation standpoint, is that the doors may very well have historic graining. Planed edges can be easily touched up, and the door can then be varnished, with less impact on the historic fabric of the house.

Paint on walls. In the event a risk assessment report identifies your walls as a lead source, it will probably suggest one of the following options. The covering for a lead-painted surface like brick or damaged plaster is often an enclosure, such as the heavy duty wall liner usually referred to as the "bridging material." The benefit of enclosure is reversibility: You can strip off the covering later, and you won't contaminate the room by excess sanding or paint prep.

If you should be lucky enough to find your plaster or paint in good shape, you can go over it with an encapsulant (special liquid coating). You might think that a coat of latex or alkyd paint on top of your home's lead paint would do just as good a job, but that's not the way the EPA sees it. Approved encapsulants are typically acrylic coatings that form a stiff barrier. After application you can paint the encapsulant the color of your choice or place a wall liner over it if you're going to use wallpaper. An encapsulant prevents lead dust from spreading but, from the restorer's perspective, it can be difficult to remove later. Nonetheless, you should know that these products are available. They might be appropriate for a hallway, below a chair rail (touched by little hands), or for an area where you plan to replaster later.

Lead poisoning is simple to avoid. Awareness and good housekeeping go a long way toward preventing lead paint health problems while still allowing us to work on and live in our prized older homes.

LEAD PAINT ASSESSMENT CHECKLIST Friction points, such as jambs around doors and windows* Window wells where sashes slide up and down and sun breaks down the lead pigment on the sills* Baseboards and quarter round, especially if they are bumped by chair legs or children's toys Chair rails and window stools, if they are bumped by chairs or furniture, or if children can reach them Interior and exterior stair balusters and painted treads, again, because the friction of foot traffic may knock paint loose Porch flooring, where built-up layers are peeling Metal railings and radiators where paint is loose and chipped Clapboard siding, especially loose or chalky paint Exterior porch columns with layers of flaking, built-up paint Stucco or plaster with a chalky or flaking surface Any house with recent plaster demolition (fine lead particles float in the air six months or more) Dust in ducts of forced-air systems Dusty, inaccessible areas, such as beneath radiators Lead in the soil around the drip line of eaves, especially in urban areas (caused by rain runoff and lead in gasoline exhaust) Lead in a 3«-5« soil moat around the house where exterior waterblasting, paint scraping, or heat removal has sprinkled old paint *These are the most likely sources for interior household lead

Assessing Your Risk There are several common tests for lead paint, each with their own capabilities and applications. X-ray Fluorescence If you want to know where your house contains lead paint, you can engage an inspector to survey the building with a portable X-ray fluorescence analyzer. Without disturbing the surface, the analyzer can determine the presence of lead, but not its quantity or exact location in the paint layers. Laboratory Analysis You or an inspector can send paint samples (typically at least 1" square) to a laboratory for testing (usually by the weight method). If the reading comes back above 1 mg/cm2, that's cause for concern.) Your local heath department, the Yellow Pages, or the Directory of Testing Laboratories can suggest a local lab. Home Test Kits While over-the-counter lead-test kits are available, the EPA says that they are not accurate enough to distinguish between high and low levels of lead. In addition, they may give a false positive if they react with lead from another source. If you do choose a home test kit to "flag" a problem, you should still have a professional screening or risk assessment. "Swipe" Tests Swabbing a surface with a moist towelette, then sending it to a laboratory that will check for lead dust, can be a good tool for monitoring the effectiveness of cleanup efforts. Be concerned about the following lead levels: floors, 100 mg/ft2; window sills, 500 mg/ft2; and window wells, 800 mg/ft2.

Filter Facts Two essential tools for working around lead-paint dust are a NIOSH-certified respirator (right) and a HEPA-filter vacuum cleaner (below). Simpler tools, such as inexpensive "comfort masks" or common household vacuums, can't block fine particles. The key element in both tools is the HEPA (high-efficiency particulate air) filter. First developed in the 1940s for atomic energy research, HEPA filters are designed to capture a minimum of 99.97 percent of contaminants 0.3 microns in size and are common today for "absolute" filtration in hospital operating rooms and computer-chip manufacturing plants. You can rent a HEPA vacuum at most good rental outlets or buy your own ($300 and up). Either way, be sure to lay in a supply of extra filters. When buying a respirator (at industrial supply centers or good hardware stores), make sure the filter is rated for lead dust (purple marking) and to make sure it fits your face without leaks.

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