Many homes built before 1978 contain lead paint and other forms of lead in them. Having this dangerous material in your home leads to health complications, such as brain and organ damage. In order to avoid these health problems, home owners need to contact a lead abatement company to safely remove the lead in their home. Not all lead abatement companies properly remove lead, however, which makes it extremely important to vet a lead abatement company before hiring them and make sure that they are following the proper procedures.
One of the most common mistakes made by a lead abatement crew is dry scraping the lead based paint in a contaminated home. Oftentimes, lead abatement crews work under a tight schedule. Incompteant teams will attempt to cut corners in order to get the job done faster and make more money. Dry scraping is an example of one these shortcuts taken by some lead abatement crews. When lead based paint is being removed, it has to be wetted down before being scraped off. Wetting down the lead based paint before removing it will lead to less lead dust in the air after the job is finished. Some workers justify dry scraping the lead paint in a home by saying that they will be sure to clear all of the lead dust off of the floor after scraping the paint off. This is not acceptable, as the lead dust may not be fully removed off of the ground and the solution also does not consider all of the airborne lead particles that resulted from the dry scraping. Trustworthy lead abatement companies will never cut corners to finish a job faster or make more money.
Removal of lead based paint is an expensive and time consuming process, that doesn’t mean that corners can be cut while performing a lead removal and replacement. One of the downsides of a full lead removal is the amount of dust that is made by the complete removal. When lead paint is simply covered by another layer of paint, there is no risk for airborne lead dust particles. However, once lead-based paint begins to deteriorate, it cannot simply be covered up and must be removed and replaced. When this is the case, good lead abatement teams will take precautions to make sure they minimize the amount of lead dust left over. This includes the wet scraping mentioned earlier, and also properly cleaning up the area with a HEPA vacuum after the removal has taken place. A poorly run lead abatement business will not use a HEPA vacuum to clean the area up after a lead removal. They may simply remove the plastic sheeting on the floor that is covered in lead dust.
It’s important to have a lead removal performed on your home if it has lead in it. It’s equally important, however, to hire a trustworthy and professional lead abatement company.
