How old is your house, really?

Each answer adds a fixed number of points. The maximum is 100 and the bands are: Low 0–21, Moderate 22–44, High 45–69, Critical 70–100. The biggest single-question contributors are year built (up to 30 pts), plumbing age (up to 18 pts), and visible flaking paint (up to 16 pts). Same answers give you the same score every time. The priority list (P1 / P2 / P3) is rule-based: pre-1978 plus flaking paint always sends you to painted trim first, regardless of score.

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The 1978 ban applies to new sales of paint with more than 0.06% lead for residential, school, hospital, public building, toy and furniture use. It does not retroactively remove paint that was already on a wall in 1978. It did not ban industrial coatings, lead-based primers and metal-protective paints continued for years on bridges, water towers, and (importantly) the steel structures inside some homes such as basement support columns and exterior railings.

What you should assume in any pre-1978 home: the original paint layer almost certainly contains lead, often at 5,000–100,000 ppm (0.5–10% by weight), even if newer non-lead layers have been painted over it. As long as the underlying layer is intact and undisturbed, that is fine. The risk turns on when those layers are broken, chips, friction wear at windows and doors, sanding during renovation, weathering on exterior trim. The quiz weights flaking and renovation heavily for exactly this reason.

Lead paint at 5,000–100,000 ppm is dense and friable. A single sash window losing 1 mm of paint per opening, ten times a day, sheds milligram-scale lead dust on the sill below. Kids play on sills. Hands go to mouths. The CDC’s own pathway analysis, repeated since the 1990s, names pre-1978 paint dust on friction surfaces as the largest single contributor to elevated childhood blood-lead in the US population.

Soil at the foundation is the other half of the same story. Forty years of weathering on pre-1978 exterior paint deposits lead in the top inch of soil within a 15-foot envelope around the house. Kids dig in it. Pets track it inside. Garden vegetables, in some species, take it up to edible parts. The remediation answer for both is straightforward: cover and contain. You do not need to remove every contaminated cubic foot; you need to stop the kid from eating it.

Lead solder and lead-bearing brass do not put much lead in fast-flowing water. The mechanism is contact time at standing, lead leaches from the metal into the water that is sitting against it. The longer the standing time, the more lead. The pattern in US utility data is a sharp first-draw spike after 6–8 hours of standing (overnight, while you slept), then a steep falloff as fresh water from the main displaces the standing volume.

The practical kitchen rules:

• 30 seconds: the standard CDC guidance, run the cold tap for 30 seconds before drinking, cooking, or making formula, after any standing of 6+ hours. Works for most modern (post-2014) plumbing.
• 2 minutes: the harder rule for any pre-1986 plumbing whose lead content has not been tested. Two minutes flushes the riser to the main, not just the local service line.
• Never use the hot tap: for drinking, cooking or formula, ever, in any home. Hot water dissolves lead from solder ~2–5x faster than cold water. The hot-water plumbing also typically contains a sacrificial-anode water heater whose tank can accumulate metals.

Run-the-tap rules are a bridge, not a fix. The fix is a NSF-53 filter on the drinking-water tap. The bridge gets you through tonight while the filter ships.

NSF/ANSI is the standards body that certifies water-treatment products. The numbers refer to different test protocols:

• NSF/ANSI 42: taste, odor and chlorine reduction. Does not address lead. Many cheap pitcher filters carry NSF 42 only and the box implies broader protection. Read carefully.
• NSF/ANSI 53: health-effects reduction including lead. The protocol challenges the filter with 150 ppb lead and requires effluent under 10 ppb (most certified filters in practice perform well under 1 ppb). This is the certification that matters.
• NSF/ANSI 58: reverse osmosis. Reduces lead and a long list of other contaminants by physical filtration plus membrane rejection. Excellent but expensive and produces wastewater.
• NSF/ANSI 401: emerging contaminants (pharmaceuticals, pesticides). Adjunct, not lead-specific.

Filters that hold NSF/ANSI 53 lead certification at the time of writing include the ZeroWater pitcher line (also passes 401), Brita Elite Filter (formerly LongLast+), Pur Plus with lead-reducing filter cartridge, the Aquasana AQ-5300 series under-sink unit, and full whole-house systems from APEC, Springwell and equivalent. Replacement-filter cartridges expire on a flow-volume basis: a Brita Elite is rated to 120 gallons (about 6 months at family use). An expired filter can release accumulated lead back into the effluent, replace on schedule, not when convenient.

What we do not recommend: refrigerator door filters labeled ‘NSF 42 only,’ uncertified Amazon Marketplace pitcher filters with no testing data, and any ‘alkaline ionizer’ or ‘structured water’ product whose marketing is about minerals and pH rather than contaminant reduction. Alkaline waters introduce a matrix-interference issue in trace-element analysis (more on that in the bottled-water deep dive) but the clinical concern is the absence of lead-specific certification, not the alkalinity itself.

Modern (post-2014) brass plumbing fixtures are limited to 0.25% lead on wetted surfaces. Pre-2014 brass can be up to 8%. Imported ‘lead-free’ brass from sketchy Marketplace sellers is anything they want it to be until somebody tests it.

The FluoroSpec field test on a suspect faucet:

1. Detach the aerator from the faucet tip. The threads inside the faucet body are unfinished brass, the perfect bare-metal surface for spot testing.
2. Apply a single drop of FluoroSpec reagent (MABr in isopropanol) to the threaded joint. Do not flood, one drop covers the surface.
3. Hold a 365 nm UV flashlight to the threads. Wait 10–30 seconds.
4. Bright green fluorescence at ~530 nm indicates lead is present at the surface in detectable quantities. No glow means below the visual detection floor of the reagent (single-digit ppm and up).
5. Rinse with water; dispose of the test reagent down the drain. Reattach the aerator.

This is a screening test, not a quantitative measurement. We detect lead; we do not measure it. A positive screen on a fixture you bought after 2014 from a major US retailer is rare but does happen, and is the exact pattern we have been seeing in the Amazon Marketplace recalls. A positive screen on a pre-2014 fixture or any imported faucet of unclear provenance is unsurprising and is the signal to swap the fixture.

Tamara Rubin (LeadSafeMama) has built one of the largest publicly available consumer-product XRF databases in the country, tens of thousands of items tested with handheld XRF, with results posted publicly. Her facts to internalize, separated from the rhetoric:

• Decorated ceramic with painted decoration on the interior food-contact surface is a high-hit category. If the painted decoration is on the inside of a mug or dish where food touches it, treat it as suspect until tested.
• Vintage Pyrex exterior decoration tests positive on a substantial fraction of pre-1980 pieces. The risk is from worn or chipped exterior decoration shedding into the dishwasher water and onto food contact surfaces.
• Crystal glassware, lead crystal is, by definition, lead-bearing (24% PbO is the European cutoff). Lead does leach into wine and other acidic beverages over hours-to-weeks of storage. For occasional toast use, low concern; for everyday water glasses, swap.
• Christmas-tree ornaments and holiday decor imported in the pre-CPSIA era and recycled in family decoration boxes are a recurring positive category, especially metallic-painted glass and tin.

What we do not echo is the framing that every household contains hundreds of catastrophic exposures and that immediate replacement of all listed items is required. Most positive items contribute negligibly to actual ingested-lead dose under normal use. The high-impact items are the ones kids put in their mouths or that are used daily for hot acidic food. Test, prioritize, replace what matters, leave the rest.

Whole-house lead filtration (point-of-entry rather than point-of-use) is the right call only in three scenarios: (1) you have confirmed lead in a known well, (2) your home is on a confirmed lead service line that the utility will not replace soon, or (3) you have older children showering and bathing under conditions where dermal absorption from hard or contaminated water is a concern (rare but real for some specific source-water issues).

For typical municipal-water households, point-of-use at the kitchen tap dominates the dose, because the kitchen tap is where ingestion happens. Showering with low-ppb lead is a negligible exposure pathway under normal skin and bathing conditions.

Modern (post-2014) brass plumbing is limited to 0.25% lead by weight on wetted surfaces. That is the legal limit. It is not zero. Over years of contact with mildly aggressive water, the lead content of the brass slowly leaches into standing water. The first-draw spike on even a brand-new home with all post-2014 fixtures is typically 0.5–3 ppb, well under the 15 ppb action level, but well above the AAP 1 ppb pediatric target.

What this means: even for new homes with new plumbing, the kitchen-tap NSF-53 filter is still the right call. The cost is in the 30-cent-per-day range over a 5-year horizon; the dose reduction is meaningful for any household with kids under 6.

The CDC reference level of 3.5 µg/dL is a population-statistics threshold, it identifies the upper 2.5% of US children. It is not a safe threshold. There is no biological floor below which lead is harmless; the dose-response curve continues into the very low single digits. If the BLL is <3.5, you have time to remediate methodically rather than urgently. You still want to remediate.

FluoroSpec and our other surface-testing products screen the environment. They are not a substitute for blood-lead testing of children, which is the standard pediatric assessment of actual exposure. Talk to your pediatrician about BLL testing at age 1 and age 2 (it is recommended for any child living in a pre-1978 home; many pediatricians screen all children regardless).

Title X of the 1992 Residential Lead-Based Paint Hazard Reduction Act requires landlords to disclose known lead hazards. It does not require them to test or to remediate unknown hazards. Most landlords do not know whether their pre-1978 unit has lead paint dust on the windowsills, because nobody has tested it. You testing as a tenant produces evidence that triggers their obligations under state and local lead-safe-housing law (these vary by state but most have stronger protections than federal).

The pragmatic order: test the unit, document the results, give written notice to the landlord. In most jurisdictions a documented hazard the landlord refuses to address is grounds for breaking the lease without penalty.

FluoroSpec detects whether lead is present at the surface in detectable quantity. It does not return a ppm number. The visual detection floor for the perovskite chemistry on a typical painted surface is in the low single-digit ppm range, which is well below the 90 ppm CPSIA limit and the 5,000 ppm pre-1978 paint floor. A positive FluoroSpec result on a painted surface in a pre-1978 home almost always corresponds to a paint that exceeds the modern hazard threshold by orders of magnitude.

For quantitative measurement, a number, in ppm or ppb, the right tool is XRF (for solid surfaces), ICP-MS (for water), or a certified lab. Detection is what you do at home; measurement is what the lab does.

You are in the gray zone. The 1978 ban applies to manufacture, sale and distribution; it does not stop a contractor from using up old stock paint on a 1985 home. A 1985 build will most likely have post-1978 paint, but post-1978 paint is not necessarily zero-lead; the limit was 0.06% (600 ppm) until 2008, when it dropped to 0.009% (90 ppm). Plumbing in a 1985 home pre-dates the 1986 lead-solder ban and is the bigger concern.

Practical answer: treat 1978–1985 as a moderate-risk band. Test painted surfaces if there is renovation history or visible flaking. Filter the drinking-water tap regardless. Quiz weights this band at moderate.

The 15 ppb (now 10 ppb under LCRI) action level is a regulatory trigger for the utility. Above the action level, the utility has compliance obligations. Below the action level does not mean safe for a one-year-old. The American Academy of Pediatrics’ recommendation for children’s drinking water is under 1 ppb. Your municipal water system can comply fully with EPA rules and still deliver water that is 5× the AAP target into your kid’s sippy cup. The filter closes that gap. The utility cannot.

No. Sanding is one of the worst things you can do to lead paint. Sanding aerosolizes lead-containing particles in the 1–100 micron range, which deposits on every horizontal surface in the house and stays in dust for months. The EPA Renovation, Repair and Painting (RRP) rule exists specifically because of how badly DIY-sanding-before-repainting goes in pre-1978 homes.

What works for lead paint, in roughly increasing order of cost: encapsulation (a special elastomeric coating that locks the lead paint in place, the cheapest valid fix), enclosure (drywall over the painted surface), component replacement (replace the windowsill or door, throw away the painted one), or professional removal by an EPA-certified RRP contractor with HEPA-vacuum containment. Never sanding. Never scraping dry. Never heat-gunning above 1100°F (the lead vaporizes).

The data says yes, on average, but with caveats. The pattern in CPSC recall data for pediatric lead is dominated by imports of unclear provenance. Dollar-store stock turns over fast, comes from many small importers, and carries lower margins for compliance testing. Major-chain private-label brands (Target Pillowfort, Walmart Mainstays Kids, Costco Kirkland) have tightly negotiated CPSIA testing requirements with their suppliers and recall less often per SKU.

That said: any imported toy can carry the risk, and CPSIA-compliant US-made toys can fail individual lots. Spot-test the painted ones, regardless of where they came from.

Out of scope for this Around-the-House page. Short answer: imported kohl, surma and kajal eyeliners can contain lead at percent-by-weight levels (the FDA has a long-running import alert). Some traditional pediatric remedies (greta, azarcón, ba-baw-san) are lead-based by traditional formulation. If anyone in the household uses these, treat them as the highest-priority intervention, higher than the paint or the water.