Your safety could depend on this simple test
If your home was built before 1978, you could have lead paint hidden in the walls of your seemingly charming abode. This would mean that it’s time for you to learn how to test for lead paint.
The government banned lead-based paint from being used in residential projects in 1978, but many homes to this day contain lead in their walls, window sills, doorways, and more. To see if your home has lead paint without spending extra on a professional assessment, follow these steps.
Before you dive into the process of how to test for lead paint, you need to buy a kit. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recommends you use a lead test kit that complies with the Lead Renovation, Repair, and Painting (RRP) Rule. This rule has strict criteria for increasing the likelihood that a test gives an accurate reading.
Nationally-available kits that comply with the stricter rules include:
3M™ LeadCheck™ lead test kit
D-Lead® paint test kits
Safety is extremely important when dealing with potential lead paint. So, before you disturb old paint, put on gloves, wear a mask, wear long sleeves and pants, and use eye protection to avoid coming into direct contact with lead.
Before you can take a sample, plan where you’ll make an incision into the paint. Choose a discreet test site so you won’t see any gouges from your knife. This could be a windowsill, wall molding, or out-of-sight section of a wall.
To avoid cross-contamination and a possible false reading, use an alcohol wipe to sanitize your utility knife and test site. Some kits come with a disposable wipe to clean the area.
With your utility knife, make a small incision in your chosen location. Be sure to get deep into the paint—around 1/4 of an inch deep. You don’t want to miss a positive sample if you’re testing through several layers of newer paint.
Follow your test kit’s instructions to swab or remove the sample. Every test kit is different, so don’t rush this process. Read the steps before you get started because some tests have a limited amount of time after you activate it before the kit becomes void. Some test kits will have you remove a sample and add it to the solution, whereas others will provide a swab to take the sample.
In the swab tests, you’ll likely break two vials of liquid that seep into the swab before applying the swab directly to the incision you made in the previous steps. In a solution kit, you’ll need to remove a sample from the incision and drop it into a vial to test for lead.
After you’ve tested the sample, the results should appear shortly after. Depending on the kit used, it will change color to indicate lead presence.
Depending on the kit, it will either come with its own disposal bag or instructions on how to safely dispose of the sample.
Stirring up old paint can expose you to lead, so you’ll want to clean the area you tested thoroughly after you’re done. Wipe down the test site again with an alcohol wipe, then place the wipe and disposable gloves into the disposal bag or container before throwing it away.
To ensure your sample didn’t miss the presence of lead, repeat the test an additional one or two times in different locations, being sure to sanitize your tool between each test.
Even though you now know how to test for lead paint, the most accurate way to check for lead is to have a professional do the job. This is especially true if you also want to test for lead in your water or soil. A lead test kit can only inform you of the presence of lead in the exact sample you took, so there’s always room for error or false negatives.
If you still want to DIY it to save money, a laboratory analysis costs more than a test kit but less than a professional assessment. It also gives you a better understanding of the amount of lead in a given sample.
By far, though, the best way to ensure there’s no lead in your paint is to hire a certified lead paint inspector near you to test for lead using an x-ray fluorescence machine. You’ll get instant results, and if the paint shows as positive, your assessor can then send it to the lab for further testing.
The average cost for lead paint inspection is around $600, but can be $800 or more if you are testing a larger area. While kits are a helpful DIY option, they also have limitations, including:
Accuracy: False positives or negatives are possible with an at-home testing kit due to user error, the environment, or the condition of the paint sample.
Surace limitations: Testing kits mainly work on wood, drywall, and plaster surfaces.
Contamination risk: Proper protective gear and disposal of samples is critical while using a lead inspection kit.
Lack of certification: Test kits don’t meet legal standards for when a lead inspection is required (like during selling a home).
You may want to consider having a professional inspect for lead over a kit if you have concerns about the accuracy or you’re planning to sell your home soon.
Lead paint test kits are not always accurate. Several factors can play into why a test kit provides an inaccurate result such as user error, sample viability, the age and condition of the paint, or difficulty interpreting the final result. If you are looking for 100% accuracy, hiring a professional lead paint test is the only way to get that piece of mind.
While not all homes built before 1978 contain lead paint, enough do, so you’ll still want to test to be on the safe side. The federal government banned lead-based paint for homes in 1978, but your state may have banned lead before that time. Around 24% of homes built between 1960 and 1977 contained lead-based paint, while 87% of homes built before 1940 contained lead-based paint.
The safest way to remove lead-based paint is by letting a professional take over. For most people, lead paint removal costs an average of $3,400. You should never attempt to dry sand old lead-based paint surfaces by hand. Most professionals use a paint stripper to do the job followed by wet scraping, but if you don’t want to remove lead paint, another option is to paint over it. Only consider this option if the old lead paint finish isn’t flaking or cracked.
