Public health programs, code enforcement officers, and housing inspectors run into the same pre-1978 lead paint problem every week. Fluoro-Spec is a spray-and-UV kit that confirms or rules out a lead hazard on the spot, during the same visit. This page is for the programs and agencies that want to put it to work.
This is the walk-through we made for code enforcement officers. Spray a little reagent, shine a 365 nm UV flashlight, and lead in paint, chips, or dust lights up green. The reagent is methylammonium bromide in isopropanol. When it touches lead it forms a tiny perovskite crystal that fluoresces green under UV. It is a chemistry reaction, not a light trick, and nothing else in a typical building makes that color in that pattern.
Lead shows up in housing, code enforcement, and public health work in four shapes. The kit reads all four.
Window casings, jambs, baseboards, porch railings, peeling exterior trim on pre-1978 housing. Spray the paint, shine the UV light, lead pigment lights up green.
Chips on a porch floor, chips in a play area, sanding debris around a renovation. Drop the chip into a puddle of reagent and read it in seconds.
Window sills, troughs, floors, and carpet. The reagent finds the lead pigment in the dust itself, not just the surface it sits on.
Vintage dishes, painted toys, antique jewelry, leaded crystal, old solder. Anything suspected of carrying lead can be sprayed and read.
The kit is a screening tool, the way a tape measure is not a survey but you still want one on the belt. A confirmed hazard still goes to a certified inspector for the formal work. What the kit does is tell a field team where to look, today.
DetectLead already builds resources for public-sector partners. Here is where the kit fits, and the work we have done so far.
Programs use the kit for home visits, community testing days, and to put a simple tool in a parent's hands. When a program needs to justify a kit purchase to its funder, we build a clear, sourced briefing it can forward internally. We are doing exactly that with a municipal public health department now.
Officers use the kit to confirm or rule out a hazard during a complaint visit, photograph the glow, and attach it to the write-up. We built a full page and field video for code enforcement officers, and we send training stock to agencies that ask.
Renovation crews, lead hazard control grantees, and contractors use the kit for pre-work spot checks and to double-check their own clearance areas before a child moves back in.
Parents use the kit to check their own home, the dishes they eat off, the bottles their baby drinks from. We built a hub of free tools a parent can start with without buying anything: a baby-bottle list, a baby-food lot scanner, a dish lookup, and a ZIP-code lead-risk screener.
We would rather a program try the kit and decide for itself than take our word for it. Three things, all free.
We send kits to your screening committee or field staff to test before any commitment. No cost, no obligation.
DetectLead publishes an open dataset of lead testing on everyday products. Programs and coalitions are welcome to use it.
We will brief your team, your coalition, or your committee on how the kit works and where it fits. In person or over a call.
The packaging is built around the program, not the Fluoro-Spec brand: where to look for lead-based-paint dust, how to test, and the program's own contact and referral line go right on the bag. The example below was produced for another program, with that program's staff contact printed on it. Your program's information and priorities go in that place. Examples can be sent for use in your bid or grant documentation.
Identifying lead with a kit is always better than finding it with a kid.
