Found lead in the paint after sanding it, so distressed

[tallrectangle]

Hi all,
We were in the middle of renovating and decided to sand (strip off) and ild door framme that had 4-5 layers of paint. Closer to the end of the stripping I started to be suspicious as the underneath paint layers were light green, yellow and even red.
I have ordered a lead paint testing kit and on some parts of the door the test swabs turned light pink, which means lead positive positive!

I feel so stressed and mad at myself for not checking earlier, so so worried for our child exposed to it. The child is primary school age.

As we didn't expect the paint to have lead (the house was built very late 60s), my husband did not take any extra precautions. When he was sanding, me and my child were away, when we returned, he was done and just lightly hovered, so it was still dusty. It is a high traffic area (corridor), so for another 3-5 days we were walking around...even our dining table is only 2m away from it. I cannot think of a worse exposure.

We are now away from the for a couple of weeks, so will make sure the place is dust free and the door frame is either replaced or sealed properly.

I am stressed of what to do, spent 1.5h waiting on the nhs line with no result or advice.

I am such an idiot

Is there any advice at all @pigletjohn or anyone?

I understand the worry but you'll all be okay with just a couple of days

Hi @tallrectangle ,
you are right to be worried - the UK is much less vigilant about lead than the US and it doesn't even do surveys of blood lead levels for children and people are not vigilant because they don't know. I don't understand why asbestos is a big deal but lead isn't. In children lead can lead to behavioral issues and lower IQ (about 1-3 pts from 0 to 5mcg/dL blood lead level). So pls ignore the armchair psychologists who offered you a diagnosis of OCD - they don't know any better. Having said that - it is not like radiation - you don't want to panic about it. But good to learn and be careful in the future.

However, what is done is done now. I am assuming that you have cleaned up (wet cleaning is better). You can do a lead level assessment for your child. If your GP refuses, get a private test for some peace of mind.

The blood level of concern for kids in the US is 3.4 mcg/dL but that is when they start investigating and looking for sources and how to do abatement. They don't do treatment until 40 mcg/dL is reached because the treatment itself is risky and does not necessarily provide. If you have lead paint in the house, it is possible that there is already lead dust in your house - you can do testing of the dust (there are labs). But I would first do a blood level for your child. In the times of leaded petrol, 10 mcg/dL was routine in children. Now levels in the US are about 0.5 mcg/dL based on surveys and adults more (because adults who lived through leaded gasoline years accumulated the lead in their bones and are now releasing it.

Children absorb between 50-100% of the lead that they come across (more through inhalation than ingestion). Children also get more lead because they are closer to the floor/earth and so inhale more. You do not absorb lead through t your skin very much. Adults absorb much less - 20-80%. We absorb less on a full stomach but fat in the food seems to make it more absorbable. Calcium competes with lead because they are both bivalent so milk will help.

Lead Safe Mama has more resources https://tamararubin.com/
Lead is everywhere still, unfortunately - the UK allows it to be in crockery (limits the amounts but I doubt there is much testing) but Ikea has lead free crockery. It is in salt, dark chocolate, spinach, some supplements, in some turmeric, in children's toys. Our body can handle some of it though there is now the idea that there is no safe level of lead. However, again, it is not an acute poison, do your best - use a HEPA vacuum (not just a vacuum with a HEPA filter), mop often, wash your child's hands often, wash toys often if the child is small.

Hope you are calmer by now and you can educate yourself for future DIY projects :)

I think this worrying you are doing is way more harmful that what has happened, that should be addressed first

Pretty much all older house will have lead paint because that was how paint was made then, we just painted over ours after keying it up, we didn't bother testing as we just assumed it would be lead paint.

Came across this thread when panicking last week... Long story... My husband and dad sanded down our kitchen doors (rotary sander and heat gun to melt the paint). It was the outside of the French doors, but they were open at times, so the kitchen did fill with dust. We ate lunch at the kitchen table halfway through, our plates live on a shelf by the doors. My two year old son was crawling around with his teddy (although I did take him out for a couple of hours to get away from the dust). Oh and I'm 20 weeks pregnant. No PPE and the clean up job was a sweeping of the floor.

I had no idea paint could have lead in it... Only found out later that night when googling painting tips. We tested the doors (had some lead test strips as we renovated an old house) and the paint was positive for lead. Needless to say I was terrified.

But I got a blood test, as did my husband and both came up with minimal levels (0.06). So just wanted to reassure anyone else in a similar situation. We will obviously be a lot more careful with DIY jobs in the future, but a one off incident isn't as bad as the Internet makes out!