Lead Poison Lead Poison Information

Lead Paint What Year

What is the best way to get rid of lead paint?

I have a 1 year old, and our door frames and window frames were painted in lead paint, and there are layers of it.

Let me do a few corrections here….

Most of the 300,000 to 400,000 children poisoned in the US today get it from lead dust NOT by eating chips or or chewing on window sills.

When a professional Co. puts up containment and they pressurize it it’s NEGATIVE pressure not positive. The air is HEPA filtered before discharge.

I don’t know of ANY Fed, State or local laws that prevent YOU from removing lead paint in your own home. The only trouble you would run into would be if you dumped the chips in the street. Even current EPA regs allow you to take it to a landfill as “household waste”

I would have to agree with the posters above. The safest way to deal with this is to cover it with a coat (s) of good paint. Just keep it from becoming dust.

The biggest problem you have are the windows. That means you have “double hung” windows. (they slide up and down) It also sounds you have lead on your exterior trim work. That means you have lead in the window guides. In this case. .. Every time window is lifted, lead dust is generated and with a slight breeze is blown into the house. Lead dust from opening windows can / will be invisible

(BTW. My house was built in 1943 and I have this same problem)

If your not going to have these Professionally replaced using Lead Safe Work Practices then you have a little life style change to undergo.

1) Make the exterior window sills smooth and cleanable. A fresh coat of paint or , even better, install some sheets of hard vinyl.

2) Each time and EVERY time you open a window, use a clean wet towel/rag to whip the interior window sill then the exterior sill. Then dispose of the towel.

This will insure the lead from the window guides will not end up on your floors.

For more info please read http://home.mindspring.com/~wrltc/lswp.pdf Its a book I wrote for parents doing re-modeling or having it done. And lead issues in general. It was paid for by a fed/state grant. Which means its your book as much as mine. Education about this subject is my job.

For more direct questions please contact me at wrltc@mindspring.com And feel free to pass this along to others.