For Code Enforcement Officers

Spot check locations for lead and lead hazards before you leave the property.

And double check yourself if you're concerned about take-home contamination.

What you can spot check in the field

Code enforcement work runs into lead in four shapes. FluoroSpec reads all four.

Painted surfaces

Window casings, jambs, baseboards, porch railings, peeling exterior trim on pre-1978 housing. Spray the reagent on the paint, shine the UV light, the lead pigment lights up green.

Paint chips and debris

Chips on the porch floor, chips inside a tot lot, sanding debris around a renovation. Drop the chip into a puddle of reagent and read it in seconds.

Settled dust

Windowsills, window troughs, floors, and yes, carpet. You can even find lead based paint dust particles inside a carpet pile. The reagent finds the lead pigment in the dust itself, not just the surface it sits on.

Other lead bearing items

Vintage dishes, painted toys, antique jewelry, leaded crystal, fishing weights, old solder, bullet residue. Anything you suspect carries lead can be sprayed and read.

The carpet test that matters

The hardest dust to read with anything else is the dust inside a carpet pile. FluoroSpec sprays a carpet sample and the lead pigment particles light up. The pile traps them and a vacuum will not fully pull them out. That is exactly the hazard kids crawl through.

Carpet swatch sprayed with reagent under a 365 nm UV flashlight. The bright specks are lead pigment dust. The reagent only reacts with lead.
"Super sensitive to not being wrong, because it only reacts with lead." No false positives from copper, calcium, fluorescent dyes, optical brighteners, or anything else that glows under a UV light.

How it works, briefly

The reagent is methylammonium bromide in isopropanol. When it touches lead in paint, dust, or pigment, it forms a perovskite quantum dot on contact.

Shine a 365 nm UV flashlight at the spot and the new crystal fluoresces green. The green only appears while the UV light is on it. The dot does not store light, it converts the invisible UV into visible green light for as long as you keep the lamp pointed at it. Pull the flashlight away and the green is gone. Point it back, the green is back.

It is a chemistry test, not a light trick. Nothing else in a typical built environment makes that color in that pattern at that intensity.

1 to 30 sec
Reaction time on a positive sample, depending on how thick the pigment is
No license
Not an XRF. Not a regulatory determination, just a spot check.
Photo-friendly
The glow shows up on any phone camera in a dim hallway, attach it straight to the report
Lead-fast
Like colorfast for dye. The reagent only reacts with lead. Same answer, every check.

Why this fits code enforcement work

Code enforcement does not need lab-grade ppm numbers. You need a yes-or-no answer on whether a hazard exists, fast enough that you can act during the same visit.

FluoroSpec is built for that. A kit goes on the truck. When a tenant complaint points at peeling paint or dust on a sill, you confirm or rule out the hazard before you write up the report. If it is a yes, you have a photograph of the glow to attach. If it is a no, you stop chasing it.

It is a screening tool, the same way a tape measure is not a survey but you still want one on the belt. Confirmed hazards still get escalated to a certified inspector and HUD-protocol clearance work.

California regulatory context

The whole point Identifying lead with a kit is always better than finding it with a kid.

If Larry sent you

If you came to this page through Larry Brooks, he already has a stack of kits we sent him for his code enforcement trainings. Ask him for one in person. If you run a training program of your own and want stock plus a walk-through, use the agency button below.

Eric Ritter. founder, DetectLead. eric@detectlead.com · 631-461-1838.
kits ship from Long Island, New York.