
Millions of Children at Risk as War on Lead Paint Stalls - igonvalue
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/04/us/lead-paint-contamination-persists-in-many-cities-as-cleanup-falters.html
======
n0us
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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

~~~
guelo
You need a power scraper with a vacuum for that type of job, something like
this [http://paintshaver.com/](http://paintshaver.com/)

~~~
n0us
With that sort of tool, it sounds nice but you have to consider how much the
tool costs, how many times you use it, how long it will last, etc. One thing
that the job taught me was how to wisely allocate money towards a business and
not buy stuff like this that you don't need.

As long as the client was happy and we were complying with regulation, we used
the cheapest tools possible. You could spend spend 1000 or whatever it costs
on this thing that vacuumes up paint and put the job in the red or you could
spend 10 bucks on some paint scrapers and get shit done in the same amount of
time. These kinds of tools also don't always work or take a lot of overhead to
set up which is lost money in wages as well as time on the job that could be
spend painting the house. The difference between 50% profit and a loss is
surprisingly thin.

For a house with a huge amount of lead paint this kind of tool might be useful
but that job would be quoted differently and likely would go to a specialist
that charges more accordingly and maybe even contracts someone else to do the
actual painting. These days most houses that need it have been done.

~~~
falsestprophet
"You could spend spend 1000 or whatever it costs on this thing that vacuumes
up paint and put the job in the red or you could spend 10 bucks on some paint
scrapers and get shit done in the same amount of time."

Ideally, you would reuse the vacuum for other jobs in the future.

------
_delirium
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 _some_ old residences with lead paint even if
it had been phased out in the 1920s, but the numbers would have been much
lower.

(Lead pipes have a similar history, phased out in many countries by the
1910s-20s, but installed in the US up until the 1960s.)

~~~
ideonexus
I highly recommend the Neil DeGrasse Tyson Cosmos episode "The Clean Room"
[1], which is about the prevalence of lead gasoline saturating our environment
so thoroughly with lead that researcher Clair Patterson's research on the age
of the Earth was rendered nearly impossible. Patterson made it his mission to
get lead out of gasoline for the detrimental cognitive effects it would have
on the populace, but corporations fought him (with the same tactics they use
to fight climate scientists today) and lead was not phased out of gasoline
until the mid-1970s [2].

It's unfortunate, research in recent years has shown a stronger and stronger
positive correlation between lead in the environment during childhood and
violent crime later in life [3][4][5]. This is why what happened in Flint
Michigan is a crime against society. That community is going to suffer the
consequences of the lead in their water supply for an entire generation.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Clean_Room](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Clean_Room)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead)

[3]
[http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/jfeigenbaum/files/feigenbau...](http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/jfeigenbaum/files/feigenbaum_muller_lead_crime.pdf)

[4]
[http://www.ricknevin.com/uploads/Nevin_2000_Env_Res_Author_M...](http://www.ricknevin.com/uploads/Nevin_2000_Env_Res_Author_Manuscript.pdf)

[5]
[http://www.ricknevin.com/uploads/Nevin_2007_Env_Res_Author_M...](http://www.ricknevin.com/uploads/Nevin_2007_Env_Res_Author_Manuscript.pdf)

------
guelo
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.

~~~
hudibras
$2.1 billion over ten years, too. 65 cents a year for ten years, per person.

------
CrazyCatDog
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.

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 :(

~~~
xenadu02
My understanding is that the safest thing to do with lead paint is leave it
alone. Paint over it and keep everything in excellent shape (no
peeling/cracking paint anywhere).

Once you touch it you risk sending it airborne or spreading it all over the
environment, including as dust or in the soil, both of which are much more
likely to expose children to it.

------
baldfat
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.

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.

~~~
HillaryBriss
Yes. And yet ... there's a trade off to consider.

e.g. for asbestos, occasionally the best choice (depending on the location of
the asbestos containing material and its current condition) is to leave it in
place and secure it / envelop it.

In some cases, removing the asbestos bearing material entirely would increase
the chance of it entering someone's lungs.

I believe this kind of tradeoff can be applied to lead bearing materials too.

Of course, there's also the peace of mind factor. And that's valued
differently by people. Given a high enough budget, removal can probably always
be done safely. But sometimes the required budget is awfully high.

------
GigabyteCoin
Does anyone know how the lead in paint gets into a person's bloodstream?

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?

~~~
Gibbon1
Yes. Literally eating paint chips from pealing paint, windows and moldings are
usually the most common sources. Toddlers and young children are both the most
susceptible and the most likely to be exposed. I helped a friend fix up a half
remodeled POS house he bought where the previous owner was sloppy and his two
year old son developed severe lead poisoning.

Lead is insidious. Usually in the environment it gets sequestered as the
phosphate or sulfate. Except when it doesn't. The bio-availability of lead
phosphate/sulfate is low. However lead paint uses lead-oxide which is highly
available.

I think lead-oxide was used for oil based paints because it's pure white,
highly opaque, and catalyses polymerization. It's almost perfect except that
it's poison.

Oh yeah lead/tin solder is wonderful to work with. _makes sad face_

~~~
sitkack
Lead paint also tastes sweet. Wall Candy.

------
minikites
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.

~~~
refurb
Ummm... the dangers of lead paint would be noticed by consumers who would
demand an alternative and corporations would provide it.

If you look at a lot of the health concerns in our society, that's how it
works. Often companies change what they are offering long before the gov't
passes any laws forcing them to.

~~~
seren
> If you look at a lot of the health concerns in our society, that's how it
> works. Often companies change what they are offering long before the gov't
> passes any laws forcing them to.

Yes, like the well known example of Tobacco and Asbestos.

~~~
jvandonsel
...and seat belts and airbags and food labels.

Meddlin' guvment...

------
rb808
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.

[http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/program_offices/hea...](http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/program_offices/healthy_homes/healthyhomes/lead)

>>>> For your child:

> 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

------
timthelion
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.

------
thrownaway2424
What are you, a communist?

~~~
dang
Please don't do this here.

We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11221679](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11221679)
and marked it off-topic.

------
ars
We can [partly] solve this in the tech field. (Startup idea.)

A cheap (very cheap!) device to detect lead in paint. It would have to cost
under $50, and better under $30.

If you can detect it you can work on it because you can see the problem.

The only way I know to detect lead with a device (as opposed to chemically) is
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray_fluorescence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray_fluorescence)

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.

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.)

~~~
manyxcxi
I'm curious and know nothing of the subject, but what's wrong with the
chemical testing? I thought they had home lead paint test kits.

Living in the Pacific NW, we don't really have a lot of lead paint issues like
back east.

~~~
ars
If you have lead paint that has been painted over the chemical test will not
detect it.

You have to scratch the paint to search each layer and people don't want to do
that.

You also can't offer to visit someone for free and do a quick test since each
test costs you money.

~~~
thrownaway2424
If you have lead paint that has been painted over, you don't really have a
problem.

~~~
ars
That's not true at all. Most lead pain has been painted over by now - it's
almost 40 years old.

Yet people are still exposed to it.

~~~
CamperBob2
(Shrug) You could always teach your kids not to eat paint chips.

~~~
OneOneOneOne
Infants put everything in their mouths. They may be poisoned before they
understand.

~~~
CamperBob2
Sounds like an _excellent_ reason not to leave infants unsupervised, then.

~~~
massysett
Go raise an infant and report back with your luck on this method.

~~~
CamperBob2
This is why the human race is pretty much doomed.

"Lead paint is poisonous. Your child shouldn't be allowed to consume it."

"No, actually, you're wrong. Have a downvote."

Eventually all civil discourse will look like this. We're already starting to
see it in Presidential debates.

~~~
massysett
No, if the human race is doomed, it's because ignorant people think it's okay
to leave children exposed to known toxic substances.

No amount of "supervision" is going to keep a child from consuming lead paint.
Children do not get lead poisoning because they walk up to lead-painted walls
and start gnawing on them like they are corncobs.

Lead paint forms toxic dust. The dust gets on floors and into dirt. Children
crawl around, and they WILL put their hands in their mouths even if they are
"supervised" at all times.

What we are starting to see in presidential debates is an ignorant man talking
like he knows everything.

