The lead dust test that belongs in the aisle
FluoroSpec is a spray. On contact with lead-based paint, lead dust, or lead residue, it fluoresces bright green under a UV flashlight in about 30 seconds. The glow sits exactly where the lead is, down to individual particles of paint dust on a floor or a windowsill.
No lab, no mail-in, no reading a color strip. You see the hazard itself, and so does the customer standing next to you.
Prepared for The Home Depot merchandising team · Fluoro-Spec Inc., East Setauket, NY
Real lead-based paint dust glowing under 365nm UV in the FluoroSpec check card's sample window. Each speck is an individual particle.
The 2024 rule changed what clean means
EPA finalized the strictest dust-lead standards ever in late 2024 (89 FR 89416, effective January 13, 2025): any reportable amount of lead in dust is now a hazard. There is no longer a safe number. Post-abatement clearance levels dropped to 5 µg/ft² on floors, 40 on sills, 100 on troughs. A handful of glowing particles in a square foot is already failing territory.
The compliance tool most crews still use is the EPA cleaning verification card: wipe the floor with a wet cloth, hold the cloth against a printed photo, and eyeball whether your cloth looks cleaner than the picture. That card was designed against the old limits. FluoroSpec shows the actual particles the cloth missed.
5µg/ft² · floors
40µg/ft² · sills
100µg/ft² · troughs
Enforcement in this category is real money. Home Depot paid $20.75 million under the RRP rule in December 2020, the largest TSCA penalty ever at the time. Lowe's paid $500,000 in 2014 and another $12.5 million in November 2025 for violations at more than 250 renovation jobs. Both companies have been through it. Only one gets to be the first to walk out clean, with the tool on its shelf that shows every job actually got done right.
The lead-test shelf is empty right now
As of August 2026, homedepot.com lists the LeadCheck instant swabs as discontinued, with no lead test kit in their place. There is a hole in the aisle exactly where this product goes, at exactly the moment the rules got strict.
Two ways this sells at The Home Depot
One SKU, two customers. The Pro desk and the paint aisle both have a reason to carry it.
1 · The Pro: RRP jobs, done visibly right
Every RRP renovator working pre-1978 housing has the same two blind spots: where the lead is before containment goes up, and whether the cleanup actually worked before the job closes out.
- Before containment: spray suspect surfaces, mark every spot that flares green. The crew knows where the lead is before anyone disturbs it.
- After cleanup, before clearance: screen the floors and sills again. Still glowing means not done. Clean and re-check until it stops, then send for lab wipes.
- Fewer failed clearances: crews find leftover dust before the dust-wipe test does. A failed clearance means a re-clean and a re-test on the contractor's dime.
Home Depot already runs the largest contractor network in the country. The story writes itself: our pros go beyond the card.
2 · The homeowner: find it before you sand it
Roughly 30 million American homes still contain lead paint. Most people renovating a 1950s kitchen have no idea whether the dust they are about to make is hazardous.
- Test first: a homeowner sprays the windowsill, the door jamb, the floor near old trim. 30 seconds later they know.
- If it glows, renovate smart: the finding routes them straight to a Home Depot RRP-certified renovator instead of a DIY demo that contaminates the house.
- The safe-reno basket: every positive result sells sheeting, tape, HEPA filtration, cleaning supplies, and installed services.
This is the kit that creates the certified-renovation job, not just the one that closes it out.
FluoroSpec is a fast qualitative screen for the presence of lead. It does not measure µg/ft² and does not replace certified laboratory dust-wipe clearance testing or an EPA-recognized paint test kit where the RRP rule requires one. It is the screen you use between those steps, so the certified tests pass the first time.
Why this can be exclusive
The active chemistry, methylammonium bromide, is manufactured and imported under a U.S. EPA-authorized Low Volume Exemption granted to Fluoro-Spec Inc. under Section 5 of the Toxic Substances Control Act (40 CFR 723.50). An LVE is non-transferable and specific to the holder. A competitor cannot legally source this chemistry without going through EPA themselves, and today nobody else has. One glow-based competitor kit ships from Europe without any of this paperwork; that gap is currently the subject of a federal TSCA citizen suit we filed.
In plain terms: this is a category of one, and the regulatory moat is already built. Carrying FluoroSpec flips that history into leadership: the store where doing it right is the default. It can be a Home Depot exclusive, the way the orange aisle already owns brands the competition cannot stock.
There is also a patent disclosure on trace detection published at detectlead.com/trace-detection-patent, and the single-particle dust detection work was submitted for peer review in August 2026.
What the merchant needs to know
The product
- Full kit: spray bottle + precision drip bottle (60 ml reagent total), 365nm UV flashlight, fluorescent reference card. $75 retail today direct.
- Up to ~3,600 tests per drip bottle, ~500 sprays per spray bottle. Pennies per test.
- Works on paint, dust, ceramic glaze, solder, soil residue. Result in about 30 seconds.
- Reagent is isopropanol-based, ingredient-disclosed down to CAS numbers, full SDS published. Nothing hidden.
The commercial terms
- Margin: structured to be generous. We manufacture and control the whole stack, so there is room.
- Volume: current production scales; we can support a regional pilot immediately and national from there.
- Merchandising: we will produce the display stand, planogram-ready packaging, and aisle education material at our cost.
- Exclusivity: on the table for The Home Depot, nationally.
40,000kits sold across all channels
4.5★180+ verified reviews
30 secto a visible result
67,000+lead data points published free at detectlead.com
See it work
The fastest way to understand this product is to watch lead light up. The glow gallery is real customer finds; the compare page is an honest side-by-side against swabs and XRF, including where each method wins.
The glow gallery Swabs vs XRF vs FluoroSpec The chemistryEric Ritter, founder, Fluoro-Spec Inc.
9 Technology Drive, East Setauket, NY 11733
eric@fluorospect.com · 631-461-1838 · detectlead.com
I answer my own phone and email. If the team wants samples, a live demo on real lead-positive items, or the research file, say the word and it ships the same week.