Deleading?

[brewso.livejournal.com]

I looked through the old posts, but couldn't seem to find this covered there.

I am currently 16 weeks pregnant and just told my landlord. She is being very understanding and acommodating and wants us to find a lead paint inspector as well as someone to do the actual abatement/removal if it turns out to be necessary. I called the City and they said that they only inspect/delead homes in which children are ALREADY present. Huh? So we shouldn't try to be proactive by preventing the child from exposure to lead paint before they're born? Anyway, not helpful. I really want to help keep costs down for my landlord's sake, but have no idea what costs are involved or what companies might be reputable for this sort of work. Any advice is very much appreciated! 

Comments

[ifotismeni]

my landlord just got our apartment de-leaded over the summer (there are no children in our apartment). she had to go through a private contractor that she found through angie's list. she used these guys: http://www.alpineenvironmentalinc.com/

[ceo]

I can vouch for Alpine; they did a great job for us. They turned down a friend of mine because her job was too small, though (we were replacing the siding).

[ifotismeni]

i think my landlord reads this comm, hopefully she can chime in with her view on how alpine did for the money et cetera... i'm just a tenant -- their works looks fine to me but i am just a third party :P

[janusirsasana.livejournal.com]

The cost of using Alpine was comparable to the other two estimates I got, and they were more interested than the other contractors about what my thoughts were if there was more than one option as to how to handle a specific aspect of the lead abatement; they were also much more thorough during the walk-through than the other contractors who checked out the house before providing an estimate.

[righteousness-1.livejournal.com]

Your landlord is in for major expense and headache. It's not really fair on landlords. You should consider moving out into new construction for everyones sake. Maybe your landlord would help with some moving expenses.

[ron_newman]

I tagged this home repair, and found one old post that may be useful to you.

[mistresshellena.livejournal.com]

As a landlady myself, I don't think she sounds like she's being terribly accomodating having you find the inspector and the people who will actually do the work.

As part of a standard contract, you should have received some sort of lead disclosure statement anyway.

I would go up a level from the City to the State housing office:
http://www.mass.gov/?pageID=ocasubtopic&L=4&L0=Home&L1=Consumer&L2=Housing+Information&L3=Tenant+%26+Landlord&sid=Eoca

This will, at least, give you a better understanding about what your rights and responsibilities are as a tenant.

Here's a phone number specifically on lead poisoning too:
Lead Paint Removal:
Department of Public Health
Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program
(617) 624-5757; Toll Free: (800) 532-9571

[brewso.livejournal.com]

True, it may sound like that, but she very well could have said "I'm sorry, no," and asked us to leave, as I've read has happened to many families. THat was my biggest fear. Also, she's out of state, so it's easier for me to coordinate these types of things since she can't make appointments and then be here to meet people.

[mistresshellena.livejournal.com]

Sure, that makes sense. I live in London (!) so I'm out of state too. I usually do the screening, give the name of the contractors to my tenants, and then have them coordinate a time that is convenient for them. So I guess that's similar.

Best of luck to you, and congrats on the impending wee one coming into your life!

[spacehawk.livejournal.com]

Asking you to leave would be against the law, in case you don't already know.

http://www.massfairhousing.org/sections/fhlaws.htm

The anti-discrimination laws apply to pregnant women.

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

she very well could have said "I'm sorry, no," and asked us to leave

That would have been illegal as fuck.

[brewso.livejournal.com]

It would, but it happens all the time. That, and landlords refusing to rent to families with children. You can even find ads in the housing section right now that indiscreetly say, essentially, "don't bother applying if you have kids." The law is on our side, but reality often isn't. Anyway, I'm just grateful my landlady's one of the cool ones.

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

I understand that people break the law all the time.

But I don't think that anyone deserves special praise for abiding by the law. That should be the minimum requirement of a civilized human being.

[nomacmac.livejournal.com]

There are some loopholes...If it's an owner-occupied 2 family (and maybe 3 family, I can't remember the law) the landlord/owner can discriminate against anyone.

[anomie666.livejournal.com]

I can't really help you with recommendations (others already gave you some), but congrats on the pregnancy! :)

It does seem very weird the city doesn't do anything until after the child is born, not exactly a sound health policy.

[badseed1980.livejournal.com]

I agree. A friend of mine recently found this out to her chagrin.

[ron_newman]

That sounds wrong to me, too. Who did you talk to at City Hall?

[clevernonsense.livejournal.com]

I could be wrong, but I think the only danger is if the child actually eats the paint chips, so infants should be safe. Obviously, I'd check into this a bit more :)

De-leading actually only takes care of the paint around the doors and windows, not the walls.

[ifotismeni]

if there's lead in the windowsills (often there is), lead dust from opening and shutting the windows is a big problem and can affect child development. (it only makes adults sick, so we don't count :P)

[clevernonsense.livejournal.com]

that makes sense.

I'm pretty sure my brain is 73% heavy metals and other toxic compounds by now anyhow, so I don't really worry about this stuff.

[ifotismeni]

the lead has already made its delicious, delicious effect.

[clevernonsense.livejournal.com]

i cmolpteley raege!

[eeyorecol.livejournal.com]

Pediatricians first test a child's lead levels at 9 months (my daughter just got a blood draw at her last appointment for this purpose). Also, babies start putting everything in their mouths pretty early (my daughter was about 4 months when I watched her pull a blanket up to her face to chew on for the first time...)

[emcicle.livejournal.com]

just wanted to say not all pediatricians check lead levels that early. mine doesn't until 15 months after they are good and mobile, since at 9 months they put stuff in their mouth, but (can be) fairly stationary and aren't right at windowsill level yet.

[emcicle.livejournal.com]

that should read "until 15 months, after they are good and mobile"...

[eeyorecol.livejournal.com]

My daughter is now 10 months and walking (she was crawling at 7), as well as being super tall, so that might have influenced it. I just thought that the idea that infants don't eat paint chips should be addressed. My daughter eats everything :-)

[emcicle.livejournal.com]

oh yeah yeah, everyone does stuff differently, I just wanted to say not everyone tests that early! and wow, walking at 10 months! you must be busy! ;)

[nomacmac.livejournal.com]

Who did you talk to? The city has a Lead Hazard Abatement Program that should be able to help 617-625-6600x2568.

[dphilli1.livejournal.com]

deleading is expensive. very much. Any you can't be in the house from the time the project starts until the house is certified lead-free by the state.
And you have to use a state-certified deleading contractor, of which there are only a few. This is based on what the state deleading people told us, and what a contractor told us. The estimate to remove the paint from our woodwork was around 70K if we did it with the stuff still on the walls to 30K to have it removed and dip-stripped.

Most people will either encapusate the paint with another layer of paint, or just remove the lead-paint covered material.

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

this doesn't even address the exterior of the buildings, and the rather high levels of lead in the soil (so i'm told)... apparently leached out of the houses over decades and decades...

it'll be FAR more convenient if your landlady can get you into another apartment/house if she has such, or move elsewhere that is already lead free. which, isn't exactly a joy either.

http://www.homesinboston.com/faq/entry/88/

#

[intuition-ist.livejournal.com]

my god, for that amount of money, you could pull out the windowframes entirely and replace them with something else.

[dphilli1.livejournal.com]

well, what the people at the state told me was that if you want to _delead_, you have to use a certified person.

If you just want to remove the paint, you can use whomever you want, or do it yourself.

So we did it ourselves, using chemical strippers and a steamer. Took about 6wks of working in the evenings and weekends to get through ~75% of a room, then it got cold and we had to stop.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

Here's the thing. If I remember correctly what our deleading people told us, once you get the initial inspection and find out what lead you have, it is for the most part illegal for you to do the work unless you are a certified deleader. And I don't think it would be possible for you to get the proper paperwork afterward certifying your deleadedness.

This is part of why people tend to be very, very careful to not have any idea what the lead status of their property is (hence, when you buy or rent the property, the lead disclosure you get tends to be something like "we have no idea") -- once you know, you trigger legal obligations about how any subsequent work touching on the leaded areas gets done.

If, however, you were to be completely unaware of whether your windows had any lead, and rip them out and redo them, and subsequently get a lead inspection that was clean, as far as I know that would be fine.

IANAL.

what about walls

[pjmorgan.livejournal.com]

It seems that most folks discuss lead on windowsills and casings. What about walls? Is that not a risk?

Re: what about walls

[nomacmac.livejournal.com]

From my understanding of the law (which I read thoroughly 5 yrs ago, so it could have changed), if the paint is not peeling, walls are not required to be deleaded. Things that move or are in contact with things that move, like doors and windows, must be deleaded because the movement disturbs the paint. Also, surfaces "deemed chewable" by a child must be deleaded....basically, a portion of the painted surface must stick out enough for a kid to put their mouth on. If a baseboard has an angled or rounded trim on top, it's OK to have lead paint if it's not peeling. Trim around an archway would need to be deleaded up to 4 or 5 feet, but not the top because a kid couldn't reach it to chew on it, and it's not in contact with moving parts. There are many, many rules and exceptions to them.

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

in-utero heavy metal exposure can be determined by checking the mom -- so if you are concerned about this, go get your blood tested.

it's more of a concern with kids after birth though as they are both prone to eating paint chips and more vulnerable (being smaller) to inhaling lead in dust particles.

Lead Hazard Abatement Program

[danahousing.livejournal.com]

I work for the City's Housing Division. We have a Lead Hazard Abatement Program and you do not need to have a child present to do deleading work. Our program is based on income eligibility. If you are not eligible for our program, we may still be able to offer you some assistance in the form of contractor listings or process explanations. Please call us at 617-625-6600 x2588 to find out if you are eligible and to get more information about our services.

Re: Lead Hazard Abatement Program

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

Thank you for posting this.

brewso, Somerville has a decent abatement program (as a real estate agent, I've sat through many presentations on the subject :) and, depending on your household income and rent, your landlord may be eligible for free money to do the work, so please do call and find out the details.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

We had friends who had good experiences with Alpine. We used the Lead Lab (they're in Belmont, (617) 489-5409, no web site) for the inspection and Ron Barone ((617) 908-7008) for the removal; happy with both.

If your landlord is not already signed up for Angie's List, I strongly recommend that she do so; it's a great way to find recommendations for contractors. (It's much more useful for homeowners than renters, so it should be your landlord who signs up.)

Your costs will depend on two things:
1) The amount of lead in your home. There is really no way to tell this without doing a lead inspection. Since the homes around here are old they are likely to have *some* lead paint, but whether it's, e.g., confined to trim, or all over everything interior and exterior, who knows?
2) How thoroughly you delead it (a matter of your budget and comfort levels). You can encapsulate it or remove it entirely; you can opt to leave stuff alone if it's behind wallpaper, or to take it out; you can do just the interior or the exterior as well.

We had a surprisingly small amount of lead and went with the cheaper options for most of the work, so we came in under $10K, but it is not at all uncommon for deleading to run into the tens of thousands. And, as mentioned, you cannot live in the house (not you, not any other humans, not even pets) from the time the deleading work starts until it is done and you have passed inspection (we did this before we moved in so I don't remember how long it took for us -- a week, maybe?). So if it's at all possible to get this done before the baby arrives, do so; it will be much simpler logistically.

The basic process, by the way, is:
* Inspection company does an interesting walkthrough, tells you where the lead is. (Your landlord absolutely needs to be here for this; you probably want to be as well. Oh, and it's a couple hundred bucks, iirc. You will forget what this costs by the time the deleading is done as it pales in comparison.)
* Deleading company -- which should be a different set of people -- consults with you on what you want to have done.
* You move out.
* They actually do the work.
* They make your house cleaner than it has ever been, because the inspectors will test every bit of dust they find. Your house will be spotless.
* Inspectors inspect. Wait for lab results on dust to come back.
* If anything fails inspection, deleaders have to fix it, and subsequent inspections are at their cost, not the property owner's (so they're pretty incentivized).
* You move back in.

If I've made this out to sound like it's intimidating and sucky...that's because it's intimidating and it sucks, actually. But it's also important and necessary (and your landlord ought to be taking the lead on it). Good luck with the process, and congratulations on the pregnancy!

[dphilli1.livejournal.com]

what process did you use for your work (ie on site, remove-dipstrip-reinstall, something else)? All the woodwork on our first floor has at least one layer of lead paint (there are at least 4 layers of paint on it) and we'd like to get rid of it. The problem is that we have very soft plaster walls, and when i tried to remove a small section of trim, I ended up chewing the wall pretty badly. Also, we have a built-in that really can't be removed.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

We mostly encapsulated, although with one situation where there was lead paint behind a *really ugly* veneer wall we had them rip it down for us and put up new drywall (our drywall is also in awful shape). We didn't rip down any trim (mostly our lead was on windows).