OK, I admit I don't know the standard procedure.

I would probably use a paint stripper and line the ground with large pieces of drop cloth so that you can clean the paint chips off. After that, I would see how much of a problem remains and go from there. Whoever does the work should take precautions. I would wear a mask at a minimum and remove my clothes before going back inside and then shower immediately. I wouldn't do it in the summer because the mask would drive me crazy. I wouldn't have someone pregnant, nursing, or immune deficient doing it. I would also take very good care of my liver in advance so it can deal with the load.

I don't know the procedure either but I would guess that no matter how you removed the chipping paint you would lay out drop clothes to collect the chips.
I think the disposal of the chips and drop clothes would be the big issue after of course protecting yourself or whom ever did the scraping and painting from contact.
You should be able to test if the paint contains lead. You may be pleasantly surprised to find your assumtion wrong.
I think lead testing kits can be gotten at hardware stores or from your county co-operative extention.

yes you should test first!!
If you do have lead, you may be better off hiring someone to scrape and paint the house.
Professionals now have special "vacuum" sanders and they are better equiped to handle this.
If you do this yourself and collect the paint chips the town usually will NOT pick up the garbage. However I am sure some people just throw it in their cans and don't say anything.
Our town has a waste disposal site which properly disposes of stuff like that and it is free. You will have to call your town to see how you can discard of it. If you hire someone though, they should take care of this for you!
Lead can also get into the soil and although I am not sure if it gets into plants, the greatest danger comes from you, children and even pets, walking in the lead contamined dirt and then tracking it into your living areas.
My sister is actually does environmental testing, so I think I will ask her if lead gets into plants. I should know that!
My gut feeling is that lead is too heavy and not useful so therefore is not absorbed into the plant. Remember plants usually just suck up water (and water soluable minerals and toxins) I don't think lead is water soluble at all
-renee

Thanks for the help.

We do have a little testing kit we can use, I'm willing to bet my life on it being lead tho...all the interior paint has lead, and it was last painted well over 50 yrs ago.

I don't believe the town has any restrictions on this - other than that we have to be given the info by the realtor, which we were and basically it says "be careful'. We have a power washer we can use to do it ourselves, but if it has to be hand down we'll hire someone. We can still paint ourselves.

Where the paint is loose and peeling, you can apply a layer of duct tape, and press the tape down with a rubber roller. When the tape is peeled up, the paint chips remain stuck to the tape, including most of the small particles.

ya, that is a thought. You can hire a crew to remove and sand and then just paint yourself.
I think that would be what I would do. sanding and cleanup is the worst part of painting BY FAR! sooooooooooo boring..and messy.
I know someone who just had a crew sand/repaint their house and it wasn't as expensive as I thought it would be.
Get some estimates. It won't hurt. you may be surprised (in a good way!)
-renee

Unfortunately, I come to this with some experience. We live in an 1882 home. Our middle child was lead poisened here, 5.5 years ago (at 14 months old), probably as a result of interior lead paint dust. I say probably, because once the poisoning was diagnosed and we had everything tested (by our local health dept), we found lead everywhere.
Interior paint, exterior trim paint and, yes, the yard soil itself. For a short time, we moved out of our home.

All our interior doors were removed, stripped, rehung and repainted. All of our interior trim was repainted. We now have a regular sill washing routine (weekly) to remove dust caused by window opening/shutting. Also, we keep our floors and baseboards (that is where the dust settles) meticulously clean. We had the top 4 inches of soil removed from about 1000 square feet of our yard (the rest tested fine). It took almost two years for our daughter lead levels to fall into the "normal" range (under 5 parts per billion). Our youngest child has never tested higher than 3 parts per billion.

We are now about to have our home exterior repainted. Only our trim paint has lead. The ground will be draped daily with plastic drop cloths and a vacuum shaver will be used (you can buy one of these for less than $500). Yes, it is a pain and it makes painting cost a bit more.

Good luck. Oh, and my experience with the cheap OTC test kits, is that they are worthless.

I assume the kits may not work well if the lead paint is painted over with latex.
You can hire people to come in with new technology that can accurately test through multiple layers of paint. The town or city should be able to suggest someone to you that can do this. Home inspectors (like when you buy a house) should be able to do this for you also.
Dierdre has a good point. It is always a good idea to test your children (and yourself!) once a year if you have an older house with lead (or one that hasn't been tested for it) Testing often will prevent children from accumilating high levels as you can detect it as soon as it happens before it gets too high. I don't have children yet but I plan to have lead tests before I decide to have them.
Lead shouldn't scare you or deter you from buying an old home. you can live and be healthy if you just take the time to keep paint from peeling and keeping certain "problem" areas clean from dust.

Dierdre: did they mention that plants can absorb the lead at all? I was just curious about that.

best of luck!
-renee

Test your pets, too any time blood is drawn. Their little bodies can get poisoned pretty easily. They walk, eat and groom right on lead dust contaminated surfaces (floors, windowsills and the ground outside your house).

Also don't burn off lead paint with plates or torches. This just vaporizes the lead. I believe the safest way is a vacuum system, and meticulous collection and disposal of the waste.

Molly~

Thanks for all the advice. It's a huge concern for me since we're trying to get pregnant (I was but miscarried recently). There's only one layer, and much is chipped away. I forgot about the tape issue - that has worked unintentionally inside - thanks for reminding me!

We're already stripping all the interior wood (did some ourselves pre-pregnancy, now taking everything to someone else to do it for safety).

I guess I was mostly worried about the soil - even if we pay someone to do it I want to make sure proper procedures are followed (this area has NO rules!) because I want our soil to be free of lead...

Thanks again for all the advice. We're applying for a city grant to do it, so if we get it (and we should get some), then expense is fortunately not a huge issue. But now I am imagining our house wrapped in duct tape.....

Oh! I never thought about testing our Dog. what and excellent idea. Too bad we just went to the vet. They took blood and it would have been a perfect time to test him.
Oh well.
-renee

The health department didn't mention plant uptake of lead, but I did run across some information on it while I was researching our problem. Apparently, many of the "urban garden" projects of the 70's and 80's produced lead poisoned produce. Removing the soil seems to be the only solution. Those gardens were more affected by leaded gasoline exhaust than by paint.

My problem with the over the counter tests is that they seem to test everything positive-- The kind I am talking about direct you to nick the paint (to expose all layers) and then rub with a little testing stick. Any red discoloration supposedly indicates lead. Everything (even my parents white painted circa 1990 drywall!) turned the stick red. The Health department brought out a hand held device that tests multiple layers on a sliding scale (1-9). They tested our dishes, walls, trim, soil and took dust samples back to a lab for testing.

If you have tiny children and are actively remodeling, yearly testing probably isn't enough. Lead poisoning can occur very quickly. And, once in the body, it is retained for a long time. We were directed, once our daughter was diagnosed, to give her daily iron and calcium supplements-- lead interfers witht the absorption of these minerals by the body. Knowing what I know now, I would start those supplements before beginning any remodeling/repainting, and keep the areas where work is being done completely free of children (parents should change and shower prior to contact).

Now, all of that being said-- Our daughter appears to be a perfectly normal almost 7 year old today. Her height is at the 60%, weight at the 50% and she is performing on grade level (when her lead levers were highest, 26 ppb, she fell to 15% for height/weight and was very slightly speech delayed).
Her brother and sister are both at the 95% for height and are both highly gifted. How much, if any, of this difference is normal variation and how much is lead affect? We will never know.

Deirdre,

Did your daughter have blood tests or a hair analysis?

Amanda

GaleForce-- All her tests were blood. I wasn't even aware of hair testing-- it seems like it would be hard to judge current levels from hair.

I would hire a painting crew certified in lead removal, especially since you are planning on having children. The younger the child, the worse lead poisoning affects them.

Last September, I read an article in the Chicago Reporter about lead poisoning in middle- and upper-class homes. They found even posh suburbs with old housing stock can have serious lead problems but since we usually associate lead poisoning with poor children in deteriorating homes, more affluent parents don't regularly test their children.

Home renovation creates dust which may contain lead. This can get tracked outside, absorbed into the soil and basically stick around for some time. A parent interviewed for the Chicago Reporter story had finished remodelling her home months before her son was born but he still developed serious lead poisoning from the dust outside and along the windowsills.

Incidentally, if you want to read the article, you can visit the Reporter's Web site and search on "lead poisoning." Good luck to you.

PS Keep in mind if you do lead testing in the home you will have to disclose that when you sell.

Here is a link that might be useful: Chicago Reporter

Deirdre -- After I posted that I realized it was probably blood. Hair shows some levels better, but there is a lag time of a month or so between exposure and a positive hair test. We've had hair analyses for uranium.