[Greenbuilding] Removing old paint

[Bruce Donelson]

Hi,
  Anybody have ideas on how to safely remove old paint that's probably
lead-based.  The house is 100 years old and I'd love to strip all the paint
and have a more natural finish.  Then I'll have to decide on products
probably from Bio-Shield.  I haven't done any of this before.  I'm trying to
learn how to do things and be green at the same time.
  Thanks,
  Tracy


Hey Tracy,
I took a one week class on this subject. It is important to do properly, as
lead is more poisonous than many people give it credit for. This is probably
because it doesn't stink or burn right away. There is a lot to this subject.
You might be able to t ake a class on it for free or cheap, the USDA was
sponsoring people to take the classes a few years ago, but the gov't has
other priorities now.

Even amounts of lead that are almost impossible to see can have a lasting
effect inside your body. It is even worse for children, though bad for
everybody. Little kids are more likely to ingest it because the tiny dust
particles tend to land on floors and then get taken up by crawlers who put
their little hands in their mouths. It can damage virtually all of the
systems in the human body, including the nervous system, digestive system,
kidneys, well you get the idea. A few parts per billion in the bloodstream
can lower the IQ by about 10 points, and can also lead to ADS and aggressive
behaviors. My theory is that the popularity of Roman gladitorial contests
might be linked to lead in Roman water delivery sytems.

Basically, first one makes a tent out of plastic and expensive duct tape.
Seal off the entire room you want to work in. Set up an exhaust fan to
provide negative pressure to the work environment. The green way to do this
is to have a HEPA-filter on the air machine. Otherwise lead is distributed
outside your building, where it will never degrade and will remain a toxin.
Many children have been poisoned by lead in soil that is tracked back into
houses, sometimes by pets.

The entrance to the tent is through a plastic-flapped door. Outside the door
is a tent-type shower. Everything that leaves the room gets washed off. You,
your tools, your Tyvek suit, plastic trash bags (doubled and both marked
with signs saying they contain lead based paint hazards), and your
respirator. You keep the respirator on until last. The water is then run
through a wet-dry HEPA-vac.

Paint that is removed is considered hazardous waste and must be disposed of
in a hazardous waste landfill. If you give it somebody else to haul it off,
get a receipt for it, and get a copy of their disposal receipt. In the
hazmat biz, the generator of the waste is responsible for the waste until it
gets to an approved disposal site. Makes sense: if you give somebody $20
bucks to dispose of it, we know they are just going to drop it in somebody's
dumpster.

The tent gets disassembled from the top down, the floor last. You wash the
walls off (an airless sprayer works well for this, use a small tip, high
pressure, and wash slowly, down all the while.) The floor plastic gets
rolled up last. Then the whole room gets vacuumed out with the HEPA-vac.
I've heard of people who used a shop vac for clean up: its amazing how far
the little lead dust can go as it gets blasted out the shop vac exhaust! You
can replace carpets and furniture in an entire house.

One of my classmates was in there because he (a general contractor) had
subbed out an exterior paint job to a sub who mostly ignored all of the best
practices. Luckily his client's kids blood tested OK, but he had to replace
all their furniture, carpets, and the top six inches of their topsoil. I
think he got off for about $20,000.

Cheaper than removing lead paint is to encapsulate it. This will pretty much
not work for windows, because they move and generate a little dust every
time they are operated. Lead inspectors usually test floors near windows
(and window sills) to see how much lead is present.

Other basic information can be had from the EPA's website.

Sorry for the long post, but the short version seemed inadequate considering
the consequences.

Bruce Donelson
A Better Builder