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GRANTEES DetectLead
Lead glitter on a child's hand. 100 free Fluoro-Spec kits so you can more easily prevent this.

Are you a right fit?

We built the 100‑kit offer to accelerate prevention wherever it's already being funded. Tell us about your work and we'll confirm in a week.

  • HUD Lead Hazard Control (LHC) grantees § 24 CFR 35
  • HUD Lead Hazard Reduction Demonstration (LHRD) grantees LHRD
  • Public Housing Authorities running lead-safe programs PHA
  • Municipal + county health departments LPPP
  • CDC Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Programs CLPPP
  • EPA Brownfields + environmental justice grantees EJ
  • Tribal lead hazard programs Tribal
for HUD lead hazard control grantees

Blood‑lead surveillance waits until a child is already poisoned. Fluoro‑Spec lets the families, outreach workers, and contractors in your program find the hazard before the exposure , and re‑verify interim controls before the crew leaves the site.

Tell us about your program. If it qualifies, you get 100 kits, each with a 2¢ spray ring that takes a bottle from 170 tests to ~500. That's 50,000 tests for your constituents. No invoice, no strings.

Apply for 100 kits Why prevention works ↓

Fluoro-Spec helps in 4 ways.

If everyone could see lead, there wouldn't be a lead problem. Here's what your program can do the day the kits arrive.

Improve your contractors' first-time dust wipe pass rates.

This tool lets crews see the dust before the wipe test arrives. No more returning for "one more clean", they see the hazard, they clean it, they pass.

Ron got a Fluoro-Spec kit at the 2024 National Lead and Healthy Homes Conference. First job out, his crew passed 10 inspections in a row, first time using it. Then they ran out. Next dust wipe? Failed. Ron immediately ordered ~$300 of Fluoro-Spec the next day.

"Seeing individual particles of lead-based paint dust is exceedingly valuable, especially now that EPA dropped the dust hazard standard 87.5%.", Ron Pike

→ Read Ron's full case study

100 free kits means your contractors get the same effect at zero cost. The reason we can offer this: Fluoro-Spec Inc. is vertically integrated, we manufacture the reagent from scratch, produce it in-house, distribute direct to consumers. No middlemen, no licensing. Sole owner Eric Ritter cares deeply about lead poisoning prevention after a traumatic personal experience, read the origin story →

Bake prevention into your grant.

HUD Lead Hazard Control grants are scored almost entirely on surveillance and response. Few proposals can point to primary prevention at the unit level. But that's the actual mission:

HUD's mission is to "protect children from the dangers of lead-based paint." (hud.gov/program_offices/healthy_homes)

Per EPA and CDC, there is no safe level of lead exposure for children. Surveillance, a child's BLL lab result, is already too late. Primary prevention is finding the hazard before the child contacts it.

Fluoro-Spec puts primary-prevention instrumentation in every household your program touches, a measurable prevention output you can report on. It aligns with HUD's own mission, and it's defensible in audit.

Enrollment without exposure.

Make the most of your grant program by expanding the scope of who you can help this cycle. Enrollment doesn't have to come with a heavy cost to the individual, people can identify lead outside their children before they're exposed. That's what primary prevention actually means.

The per-child cost of prevention drops hyperbolically when kits are refilled and reused. Prenatal providers on Medicaid can hand every patient a Fluoro-Spec kit to take home, bring back, and refill, doctors obtain low-cost bulk refill liquid and re-pump the same bottles. Flashlight, bottle, instructions all reuse.

→ Read: Primary prevention through prenatal care providers

The child is the test.
That's the failure we're here to fix.

was: reactive

Wait for an elevated BLL

Most lead hazard interventions start the same way: a child's blood test comes back high. Then an investigation happens. Hazards get identified. Remediation, maybe, follows.

By the time the system moves, a family is already scared, a brain is already exposed, and the grant is paying to clean up after the fact.

  1. 01 · ExposureChild breathes or swallows dust.
  2. 02 · SymptomsSilent. Invisible. Permanent.
  3. 03 · Blood testConfirms the damage.
  4. 04 · InvestigationGrant program activates.
  5. 05 · RemediationMonths later.
now: proactive

See the hazard before the exposure

Put a Fluoro‑Spec kit in the hands of the people who live in, enter, or clean at‑risk housing. When the reagent hits lead paint dust, the surface glows green under UV. Invisible becomes obvious.

A parent who sees the dust light up on their child's windowsill doesn't need a pamphlet. That's prevention, not surveillance. That's what the grant is for.

  1. 01 · ScreeningFamily, outreach worker, or crew sprays.
  2. 02 · IdentificationGreen glow = hazard, on the spot.
  3. 03 · Interim controlsClean, re‑verify, re‑clean.
  4. 04 · ClearanceLab wipe with confidence.
  5. 05 · No exposureNo elevated BLL to chase.

A 2-cent silicone ring.
4× the sprays per bottle.

Every kit ships with a small silicone O-ring. Pop it onto the spray bottle and the pump's trigger doesn't travel as far, less liquid per pull, same coverage per spray. Same chemistry, ~4× more total sprays per bottle. More surfaces. More children covered per grant dollar.

The 2-cent silicone O-ring that seats on the Fluoro-Spec spray bottle.
The component 2¢ silicone O-ring
WITHOUT RING
170
sprays / bottle
100 kits × 170 = 17,000 tests
WITH THE 2¢ RING
500
sprays / bottle
100 kits × 500 = 50,000 tests

How it works, physically.

  1. 01 · PrimePump the bottle ~3 times until liquid comes out the nozzle.
  2. 02 · LiftTwist and pull the spray top off the bottle.
  3. 03 · Seat the ringDrop the 2¢ ring onto the bottle, it sits in the circular slot.
  4. 04 · Re-capPush the spray top back on and twist to lock. Ready to spray.
  5. 05 · SprayThe trigger doesn't travel as far. Less liquid per pull. ~4× more total sprays.

The ring ships in every kit. No separate order, no retrofit. It's what turns a $75 kit into ~$0.16 per test.

Research I've conducted.

Ritter, E. (2025). Single‑Particle Detection of Lead‑Based Paint Dust via Field‑Deployable Methylammonium Bromide Fluorescence.
Independent bench work · Spirochaete Research Labs · East Setauket, NY.
Self‑directed, unpublished. Full write‑up + raw data → detectlead.com/duststudy
38LBP
Individual lead‑based paint particles, XRF‑confirmed, from a pre‑1978 home.
100%
Visible fluorescence, naked eye, for every LBP particle ≥ 40 µm.
9CTRL
Non‑lead paint controls. Zero false positives, any size, any condition.
40µm
Field‑visible threshold. Smaller particles still detect, but under magnification.

EPA's 2024 rule redefined the game: any detectable lead in dust is a hazard. The problem is no on‑site tool keeps up with that standard. Wipes go to a lab. RRP clearance is a subjective cleaning‑verification card. So I ran my own test, 38 LBP particles, 9 controls, XRF‑confirmed, under Fluoro‑Spec.

The result surprised me in one direction: single‑particle, field‑visible dust detection. The sensitivity was already established in Wang (2021); surface‑bound Pb²⁺ detection was shown in Yan (2019); the formula itself is Holtus (2018). Applying it to individual dust particles in a pre‑1978 home is elementary. The results are still spectacular.

From the notes: “All LBP particles ≥ 40 µm fluoresced visibly to the naked eye upon contact with MABr and 365 nm UV light, with no false positives observed in the non‑lead group.”

Research I built on.

The chemistry behind Fluoro‑Spec has been published, replicated, and refined across six peer‑reviewed papers since 2018, by two independent research groups on two continents. Creating a new way to see lead was the easy part. Getting it legal, manufactured, and into hands is the rest.

  1. 2018

    Holtus, Helmbrecht, Hendrikse, Baglai, Rasch, Gagliardi, Ehrler, Noorduin, Nature Chemistry 10, 740 →

    The foundational paper. Solid lead carbonate + MABr in IPA → MAPbBr₃ perovskite in seconds, with green PL under 365 nm UV.

    AMOLF, Noorduin group: the formula

  2. 2019

    Yan, Rao, Liu, Zhou, Zhu, Wu, Cai, Rao, Liu, Weng, Zheng, Scientific Reports 9, 15840 →

    Turned the reaction into a Pb²⁺ assay. Selective turn‑on fluorescence; no chelator, no dye. Solution‑phase proof MABr alone is a lead sensor.

    Xiamen: lead‑selective signal

  3. 2021

    Wang, Yan, Rao, Chen, Weng, Zheng, Sensors & Actuators B 326, 128975 →

    Onto a solid substrate. Thiol‑functionalized mesoporous Al₂O₃ pre‑concentrates Pb²⁺; LOD 5×10⁻³ µg/mL, five orders of magnitude better than solution phase.

    Xiamen: sensitivity established

  4. 2023

    Zhang, Yan, Rao, Wu, Weng, Zheng, Biosensors 13(2), 213 →

    Consumer‑product application. Thiol‑Al(OH)₃ captures leached Pb²⁺ from children's crayons; LOD 40 mg/kg, below China's GB21027‑2020 limit of 90 mg/kg.

    Xiamen: regulatory‑relevant

  5. 2023

    Helmbrecht, Hendrikse, Baglai, Noorduin, Environ. Sci. & Technol. 57(49), 20494 →

    The breakthrough spray paper. MABr/IPA spray + UV flashlight = visible green on lead surfaces. ~1 ng/mm² naked eye, ~50 pg/mm² with a camera. 50+ surfaces, zero false positives.

    AMOLF: the spray method, commercial foundation

  6. 2024

    van Geen, Ellis, Anthony, Mailloux, Ferguson, Maas, Tan, Schlecht, Keyes, Murphy, Pavilonis, Bostick, Helmbrecht, Noorduin, Analytica Chimica Acta 1307, 342636 →

    Independent field validation against portable XRF on lead‑paint samples from Côte d'Ivoire. Strong agreement in regions where XRF isn't available. Closes the loop: lab → spray → field.

    Columbia, Lamont‑Doherty, CUNY, AMOLF: XRF parity

  7. 2025

    Ritter, Spirochaete Research Labs, East Setauket NY →

    Independent bench work. 38 LBP particles + 9 controls, XRF‑confirmed; 100% of particles ≥ 40 µm fluoresce visibly, zero false positives. Single‑particle LBP dust detection in the field.

    detectlead.com/duststudy →

You all follow the law. I do too.

So why isn't every lead program using this already? It's new, it's regulated, and people are trying to control who's allowed to make it.

The reagent (MABr) is a DEA List‑1 precursor on paper, because methylamine can be abused in other contexts. My process stabilizes it on the surface using non‑toxic organic acids (mandelic acid, the same alpha hydroxy found in skincare). That gets the finished test out of the regulated category: no buyer identification, no locked cabinet, no controlled‑substance logbook. Compliant under the CSA as an end‑user product.

It's a small number of boxes to check. I did all of them. That's what the 100‑kit grantee program actually is: the science above, legal, made, and in hands.

  • DEA List‑1Methylamine precursor handler, licensed + audited for the synthesis side.
  • TSCA LVE L‑25‑0206Low‑Volume Exemption on file for the finished reagent.
  • CSA compliant (end product)Mandelic‑acid stabilization moves the finished kit out of controlled‑substance status. No ID collection, no lock‑up.
  • Made in East Setauket, NYOne supplier in the country who's built the full paperwork stack required to ship this legally.

What the glow actually looks like.

Every photo below is a real Fluoro‑Spec reaction under 365 nm UV. Green signal = lead, full stop.

Toys, tools, ceramic cups and dishes under UV, lead positives
spray: toys and dishesPOSITIVE
Pipes and paint, lead positives under UV
spray: pipes and paintPOSITIVE
Soil testing vs XRF, paint chip in soil
field: soil vs XRFPOSITIVE
Take-home lead: door handles, skin, fixtures
swab: take‑home leadPOSITIVE
Lead paint under stairwell wall glowing green under UV
spray: stairwell wallPOSITIVE
Lead on painted trim corner glowing under UV
spray: trim edgePOSITIVE

Lead‑based paint dust ,
what glow actually looks like.

These are the pictures behind the 38‑particle result above. Each green point of light is an individual LBP dust fragment glowing under Fluoro‑Spec at 365 nm, documented on my own bench at Spirochaete Research Labs.

photo 1SINGLE‑PARTICLE FLUORESCENCE
Individual LBP dust particles on a 0.01 mm graticule, 365 nm UV after Fluoro‑Spec. Panels B + E show the bright‑green MAPbBr₃ emission on real paint dust at the 40 µm detection threshold. Panels C + F are the non‑lead controls at the same magnification: nothing.
photo 02THE BENCH
Spirochaete Research Labs, the rig. XRF‑confirmed LBP particles (A) loaded onto the slide stage (B) under 365 nm ring illumination (D). Fluoro‑Spec cartridge + UV reader (F) is the field counterpart of this bench.
photo 03SLIDE PREP · UV
Dust field on glass, before → after spray. A, C: graticule + slide under white light. D, G: same slide under 365 nm UV after Fluoro‑Spec, every bright pinpoint is an LBP particle. Autofluorescent debris stays dim blue.
photo 04STAIRWELL WALL
Bulk LBP in situ, pre‑1978 home. The paint layer these dust fragments come from.
photo 05TRIM EDGE
Impact / friction surface. Typical daily dust generator in occupied housing.
photo 06dishes and toys
Cups, plates, painted toys. Lead glaze and decorative paint light up on contact, same chemistry, different surface.

all figures from Ritter (2025), Single‑Particle Detection of Lead‑Based Paint Dust. XRF‑confirmed particles, 365 nm UV only, no retouching. Full write‑up + raw data → detectlead.com/duststudy

Fluorescence spectroscopy,
in a bottle your grantees can hold.

The reagent, methylammonium bromide (MABr) in isopropyl alcohol, was first published in 2018 for solar‑cell research. In the field it turns out to be the only chemistry with no false positives from barium, zinc, copper, rust, or soap. Open‑source. Non‑toxic. Solution‑stable. No smell. Excitation at 365 nm, emission at ~530 nm. Lead becomes a green light.

Manufactured in East Setauket, New York by a DEA‑regulated List‑1 chemical handler. Produced under LVE L‑25‑0206 (TSCA § 5). Full chain of custody from synthesis through distribution. The only supplier that, apparently, comprehends the paperwork the rules require.

Reagent
CH₃NH₃Br in isopropyl alcohol
Reaction product
(CH₃NH₃)PbBr₃ microcrystals
Excitation
365 nm UV
Emission
~530 nm · bright green
Particle resolution
40, 50 µm naked eye
Chemical false+
None
Detects
paint dust, glaze, metallic, debris
Made in
East Setauket, NY
Tests per bottle
170 · 500 w/ spray ring
Per‑test cost
$0.26, 0.46 · grantees: $0

Before you apply.

What exactly do I get if we qualify?

100 Fluoro‑Spec kits. Each kit has a spray bottle (170 tests stock, ~500 with the 2¢ spray‑ring extender we include in every kit) and a 365 nm UV penlight. That's 50,000 tests minimum for your program, enough for a year of outreach, screening, verification, or hand‑out at events. The next section explains why the ring makes such a difference.

Is this a replacement for XRF or lab wipes?

No. XRF stays the gold standard for lead paint classification and lab dust wipes are still how legal clearance is documented. Fluoro‑Spec is the tool for the work between those, finding hazards quickly, showing them to non‑experts, and verifying interim cleaning before you spend $15, 40 per lab sample.

Can our grantees use this on their own homes?

Yes, that's one of the highest‑leverage uses. The reagent is non‑toxic, solution‑stable, no smell. A parent can spray their own windowsill and see the result. We also publish a quick‑start card and a full field manual (The Lead Framework) for people who want the context.

Is the chemistry EPA‑approved?

Fluoro‑Spec isn't on EPA's Recognized Test Kits list for paint, no chemical kit genuinely meets 40 CFR § 745.88(c), not even the ones on the list. The reagent is open‑source, published science with six peer‑reviewed papers behind it (see the research section above). Our supply is filed and audited under LVE L‑25‑0206 (TSCA § 5), manufactured by a DEA List‑1 handler in East Setauket, NY, with full chain of custody from synthesis through distribution.

Where's the research?

Two places on this page. The research section walks the six peer-reviewed papers behind the chemistry: Holtus 2018, Yan 2019, Wang 2021, Zhang 2023, Helmbrecht 2023, van Geen 2024. My own bench work at Spirochaete Research Labs, 2025: 38 LBP particles + 9 controls, XRF‑confirmed. 100% of LBP particles ≥ 40 µm fluoresced visibly. Zero false positives. Full write‑up + raw data at detectlead.com/duststudy.

How does the application work?

Email Eric with your program name, the grant or funding source, the size of your housing stock or outreach population, and what you'd use the kits for. Typical turnaround is one week for a qualification decision, two to three weeks to ship.

Can we re‑order at grant‑friendly pricing?

Yes, once a program is active, we invoice net‑30 with program pricing that's meaningfully below retail. Most grantees re‑order refills only, since the UV lights and bottles are reusable.

Let's find the lead
before it finds the kids.

Tell us about your program, the grant line, the housing stock, the communities you serve. If it qualifies, we'll ship 100 kits for free so your families, outreach workers, and contractors can start seeing what's been hiding this whole time.

Apply by email, 2 min See the free calculator →

eric@detectlead.com · detectlead.com · East Setauket, NY