Lakewood Painters
House Painting Contractors Naperville Illinois
Lead-based paint in the United States resulted in a court case against the Lead Industries Association.
Due in great part to studies carried out by Philip J. Landrigan, paint containing more than 0.06% (by weight of dried product) lead was banned for residential use in the United States in 1978 by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (16 Code of Federal Regulations CFR 1303). The U.S. Government defines "lead-based paint" as any "paint, surface coating that contains lead equal to or exceeding one milligram per square centimeter(1.0 mg/cm2) or 0.5% by weight." [1] Some states have adopted this or similar definitions of "lead-based
house paint." These definitions are used to enforce regulations that apply to certain activities conducted in housing constructed prior to 1978, such as abatement, or the permanent elimination of a "lead-based paint hazard."
The U.S. Government and many states have regulations regarding lead-based paint. Many of them apply to evaluating a property for lead-based paint. There are two different testing procedures that are similar but yield different information. Lead-based paint inspections will evaluate all painted surfaces in a complex to determine where lead-based paint, if any, is present. The procedures for lead inspections is outlined in the HUD Guidelines, Chapter 7, 1997 Revision. The other testing is a lead-based paint risk assessment. In this testing, only deteriorated painted surfaces are tested and dust wipe samples are collected. This information will help the risk assessor determine if there are any lead hazards. Many property owners decided to get a combination of both tests to determine where are the property lead-based is present and what hazards are present as well. Risk assessments are outlined in the HUD Guidelines, Chapter 5. In addition, if a child is poisoned in a property, the owner may be required to perform abatement (permanent elimination of the lead hazard).
In 1996, the Lead-Based
house Painting Disclosure Regulation was enacted. It requires owners of pre-1978 "target housing" to disclose to potential buyers or renters all known information about the presence of lead-based paint and/or lead-based paint hazards in the property. It requires that the potential buyer or tenant be given the lead information pamphlet, "Protect Your Family from Lead in Your Home," or other United States Environmental Protection Agency-approved pamphlet as well as a specific disclosure statement. The option of whether to actually test for the presence of lead-based paint is left to the owner, so long as a decision not to test is disclosed.
EPA signed a new regulation regarding the renovation of child-occupied buildings built before 1978 on April 22, 2008. The rule becomes effective April 22, 2010. Under the rule, beginning in April 2010, contractors performing renovation, repair and painting projects that disturb lead-based paint in homes, child care facilities, and schools built before 1978 must be certified and must follow specific work practices to prevent lead contamination. EPA’s RRP rule impacts many construction trades, including general contractors and special trade contractors, painters, plumbers, carpenters and electricians. Activities performed by all of these trades can disturb lead-based paint and have the potential to create hazardous lead dust. For most individuals, eight hours of training is required. However, individuals who have successfully completed renovation courses developed by HUD or EPA, or an abatement worker or supervisor course accredited by EPA or an authorized State or Tribal program, can become certified renovators by taking a four hour EPA-accredited renovator refresher training.
Although the rule will not be fully implemented until April of 2010, certain elements are required now, and others require attention well before April 2010.
Effective now –
House Painting Contractors that disturb paint in homes, residential buildings, schools and child care facilities built prior to 1978 must provide lead hazard information prior to the start of the job to building owners, occupants, and to the families of children using the facilities by distributing EPA’s new Renovate Right brochure. As of April 2009 – Trainers can begin to apply to EPA or an EPA-approved state for accreditation, and, once approved, contractors and construction trade workers can begin to take the training to become certified. Beginning October 2009 – Firms can apply for EPA or state certification. Beginning April 2010 – All businesses engaged in renovation, repair or painting activities in homes, residential buildings, schools and child care facilities built prior to 1978 must be certified, use certified workers, and follow specific lead-safe work practices to prevent lead contamination.
State action against the lead
house painting industry
The state of Rhode Island filed a public nuisance lawsuit in 1999 State of Rhode Island v. Lead Industries Association to get the former manufacturers of lead paint to pay for the clean up of current lead hazards in Rhode Island. After a trial that ended in a hung jury in 2002, the state refiled the case. In February 2006 the jury decided in favor of the state and said that Sherwin-Williams, NL Industries and Millennium Holdings would have to pay for the clean-up of lead paint in the state. On July 1, 2008, the Rhode Island Supreme Court in a landmark decision overturned the verdict, dismissing the case stating that "the State of Rhode Island 'cannot allege' facts sufficient to state a claim for common law public nuisance against lead pigment manufacturers.
In 2007, the Missouri Supreme Court and the New Jersey Supreme Court also rejected the use of the public nuisance theory in lead paint lawsuits, leaving Ohio and California as the only two remaining public nuisance cases.
In California, the Supreme Court has reviewed the contingency fee agreement between the municipalities and private counsel. A briefing schedule is currently being set. But in recent rulings the Supreme Court held the contingent fee agreement is improper stating that “When a government attorney has a personal interest in the litigation, the neutrality so essential to the system is violated.”
While the City of Columbus, Ohio voluntary dropped its lawsuit against the
house painting industry after the Rhode Island decision, the State of Ohio's suit remains.
Real estate maintenance and renovation
Humans can be poisoned during unsafe renovations or repainting jobs on housing that has lead paint. Therefore, homeowners are encouraged to carefully stabilize any deteriorated (peeling, chipping, cracking, etc.) paint in a lead-safe manner. More than 250,000 children in the United States have dangerous levels of lead in their bodies.
Working in a lead-safe manner means avoiding dry sanding, dry scraping, removing paint by torching/burning, the use of heat guns over 1100 °F, machine-sanding or grinding without HEPA filtered dust collection or HEPA-filtered vacuum. These methods are now prohibited by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) because they have been proven to create significant levels of lead dust during remodeling, renovation and painting. They must be avoided, especially in properties where children under age six reside. Adult workers using unsafe work practices or improper protective gear may also become lead-poisoned.
There are specialized paint strippers for use with lead paint such as LEAD-OUT Paint Stripper, Strip-Tox, Lead-X, and others. Some of these specialized strippers render lead non-hazardous decreasing the risks associated with lead paint removal.
HUD requires a dust test for "clearance" at the end of any remodeling or repainting job be performed by a third-party professional who is independent of the entity performing the work. Contact your state's lead-poisoning prevention program (call the local health department or environmental department) or look in your Yellow Pages director under "lead paint" or "environmental consultants" to locate a lead-based paint professional who can do a clearance examination for your job.
Lead evaluations of paint are usually performed by a field testing method known as X-Ray fluorescence (XRF) using equipment such as the Olympus Innov-X LBP4000, RMD LPA-1, or the Thermo Scientific's Niton. XRF is the preferred method because it is not destructive and a reading is usually obtained in about 4–8 seconds with a 95% accuracy at the 2-sigma level. Instruments of this sort have an inconclusive range, and when a reading falls in this range (range is different for each instrument and model), a paint chip may be taken and sent for laboratory analysis. Testing for lead in dust, water, and air also require laboratory analysis. Commercially available lead test kits are often used to test for the presence of lead, but they are not reliable and not authorized by HUD to be used in determining if a property is lead-based paint free. The
home painting year of construction can be a clue as to the likelihood that lead is present in its paint. Generally, homes older than 1940 almost certainly contain at least some lead paint, homes built between 1940 and 1960 have a 50% chance of containing such paint, homes built between 1960 and 1978 may still contain lead paint, while homes built after 1978 are unlikely to have lead-based paint.[12] The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Office of Healthy Homes and Lead Hazard Control performs regular studies of housing-based health hazards in the U.S.
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