Fluoro-Spec for public health.
A field screen that makes lead glow green, built around the programs you already run: blood lead follow-up, HUD lead hazard control, WIC and home visiting, housing and code inspection. This page is the front door for all of it: where the kit fits, what it takes off your plate, the data we cut for programs at no cost, and how to get a few kits to try.
Pick the job you do. We built a page for it.
Blood lead follow-up and case management
You get the elevated result, you owe the family a visit, and you have to find the source. The investigator sprays the suspect surfaces in front of the parent and the lead glows. The lab wipes then go exactly where the glow was, and the family leaves the visit having seen the problem instead of reading about it two weeks later.
How programs use it →A statewide example →HUD lead hazard control grantees
Every unit you produce goes through assessment, interim controls or abatement, and clearance. Crews that spray the work area before the wipes are pulled find the dust while there is still time to clean it. Kits can also count as in-kind match on your HUD grant, and we will write the letter.
The grantee page →Open lead grants →WIC, prenatal and home visiting
You already see the family before the child is old enough to test. A kit in the prenatal packet or handed over at a WIC visit lets the parent check the windows and the porch before the baby is crawling. If it glows, you know which house to follow up on before there is a blood test to react to. If nothing glows, that is not a clearance, but the parent has looked at the worst spots with their own eyes and knows what to keep an eye on.
What a program kit looks like →Environmental health, housing and code inspection
On a complaint visit or a daycare inspection, the officer sprays the peeling trim, shines the light, photographs the glow and attaches it to the write-up. It is a screening read that tells you where to look today, and a certified inspector still does the formal determination.
The inspector page →For abatement crews →Epidemiology, planning and grant writing
We keep a housing-age lead-risk model for every ZIP and census tract in the country, validated against measured childhood blood lead in eleven states, and parcel-level build years for tens of millions of properties. We cut target lists, need statements and maps for programs at no cost, and we have drafted HUD applications for jurisdictions that never had one.
The data tools →Federal housing lookup →Not sure which one you are
Email or call and describe the program. Eric answers the email himself. Most programs start with a handful of free kits and a 20-minute walkthrough for the field staff.
eric@fluorospect.com →631-461-1838Thirty seconds in the field.
This is the walkthrough we made for code enforcement officers. The reagent is methylammonium bromide in isopropyl alcohol. Where it touches lead it forms a tiny perovskite crystal that fluoresces green under a 365 nm UV light. It is a chemical reaction, and nothing else in a house makes that color in that pattern.
1
Spray the surface
Paint, settled dust in a window trough, a chip on the porch floor, a dish, a painted toy. The liquid is a clear, thin alcohol.
2
Shine the UV light
In low light, point the light at the sprayed spot while it is still wet.
3
Read the glow
Green glow means lead. Clean surfaces and white ceramic stay dark. A phone camera captures it for the case file.
One bottle runs a few hundred tests. No license or certification is needed to use it. It is a screening tool, and a certified inspector or risk assessor still makes the formal determination.
Where a program's money goes, and where a ten-cent look saves it.
A program kit costs about $50 and runs around 500 spray tests with the extender ring, so a look at a surface costs about a dime. Everything else in a lead program costs real money per look. The point of the kit is to spend the dime first so the expensive looks land where the lead is.
$875
A failed clearance, billed back
That is what one Iowa HUD grantee charges a contractor when a unit fails the dust-wipe clearance ($450 if it fails the visual), before relocation days and staff time. In HUD's own evaluation of its grant program, one in five units failed clearance on the first try, and HUD says the new dust standards make it harder. A crew that sprays the work area before the wipes are pulled sees the dust while there is still time to clean it.
$1,600
An elevated blood lead investigation
One certified firm's price for the HUD elevated blood lead investigation that follows a child's result (its standard risk assessment is $1,000). XRF inspections run $300 to $700 and risk assessments $300 to $1,500 depending on the market, inspector time is $75 to $150 an hour, and an XRF rents for $495 a day. A field screen at the door tells the investigator which surfaces to sample and which to skip, so the certified hours and the lab wipes go where the lead is.
$14,000
Per unit made lead-safe
HUD's own 2026 planning figure for a unit under its lead hazard reduction grants, up from $12,000 two years earlier, with the increase attributed to stricter end-of-project cleaning and clearance. Interim controls alone run $500 to $5,000. After the work, the family keeps the kit and re-checks the treated surfaces themselves, which is the part no grant pays for.
Sources: HUD FY2026 and FY2024 Congressional Justifications, Lead Hazard Reduction (per-unit planning figures); NCHH and University of Cincinnati, Evaluation of the HUD Lead-Based Paint Hazard Control Grant Program, 2004 (20 to 24 percent first-clearance failure, 1.13 recleanings per failed unit); HUD Guidelines 2012, chapters 14 and 15; City of Marshalltown, Iowa, Lead Hazard Reduction Program instructions to bidders, April 2024 ($450 and $875 charge-backs); A Veterans Environmental Technology Services, Washington DC, fee list (elevated blood lead risk assessment $1,600); HomeAdvisor, InspectandTest and Peerless Environmental 2026 cost guides (inspection and risk assessment ranges); Poughkeepsie Environmental (inspector hourly rates); KWIPPED Viken Pb200i rental listings; Lead Safe Cleveland (interim controls and clearance exam ranges). Prices are published figures from those sources on September 24, 2026 and will differ by market.
Why finding it early is the cheapest thing a program does
$17 to $221
Returned per dollar
Gould's 2009 analysis in Environmental Health Perspectives, restated by CDC: every dollar spent on lead paint hazard control returns $17 to $221 in health, IQ, earnings and tax benefits. New York City's lead case management program recently reported a social return of $26 per dollar.
500,000
US children at or above 3.5 µg/dL
CDC's current estimate of children above the blood lead reference value. CDC has identified no safe level, and its recommended actions at a confirmed 3.5 include arranging an environmental investigation of the home, as required in the jurisdiction.
34.6 million
US homes with lead-based paint
HUD's American Healthy Homes Survey II (2021 report): 29.4% of all homes still contain lead-based paint, 29 million have a significant hazard under the 2020 dust standard, and about 3.3 million of those have a child under 6 living in them.
Sources: Gould E., Environmental Health Perspectives 117:1162 (2009) and CDC MMWR 66(5), February 2017; CDC, About Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention (2025) and Recommended Actions Based on Blood Lead Level; CDC success story, New York City (2026); HUD, American Healthy Homes Survey II Lead Findings (October 2021) and the May 2021 presentation to the Lead Exposure and Prevention Advisory Committee.
Where the lead is, where you work.
Type any ZIP in the country and get its score on housing age and poverty, the share of housing from the lead-paint era, and the median build year. Then see the pages we have built for specific programs, each with local data down to the parcel where the state publishes it.
Check a ZIP
Nebraska DHHS, statewideAll 93 counties, every parcel with a build year, DHHS surveillance and HUD grantees.
Dayton and Montgomery County, OHZIP-level risk for the lead hazard reduction program.
Columbus Public Health, OHThe 1,000-kit program: family kit page and printable handouts.
North Central District, NENine rural counties, county housing age, parcel map, kit portal.
Lead-Free New JerseyStatewide coalition page, county choropleth down to parcels.
Every program page and the national mapsPlus landing pages waiting for 98 HUD lead grantees.
What we do for programs at no cost.
The kits are the small part. Most of what we do is research on where lead is, and it is yours to use.
Address-level target lists
Every parcel built before 1950, or before 1978, for any county, town or ZIP where the state or county publishes build years, as a spreadsheet. Cross-referenced with WIC clinics, prenatal providers and your caseload if you want.
Ask for a cut →A kit-tracking portal
Families log what glowed, and the program sees it on a parcel map and routes the follow-up. We built it for a Nebraska district health department and can adapt it to yours.
See the demo →Grant help
Free need statements from the housing-age model, HUD application drafts for jurisdictions that have never been funded, and in-kind match letters for donated kits on an active HUD grant.
Open lead grants →Program-branded packaging
The bag prints where to look, how to test, and your program's own referral line. The family sees their health department on the front and the kit is the thing inside.
Columbus example →A walkthrough for field staff
Twenty minutes on a call or in person, covering how to use the kit in an investigation, what the glow does and does not mean, and how to talk families through it.
Book one →The open dataset
Thousands of tested dishes, foods, bottles and household items, free to cite in your own outreach.
Dish lookup → Food calculator →Handouts to print and hand out
Programs that have bought it or been sent it.
Columbus Public Health, Ohio1,000 program-branded kits for families, picked up at 240 Parsons Ave.
Salt Lake County Health Department, Utah100 kits accepted as an in-kind donation by the county in November 2024, for testing items in clients' homes.
New Hampshire DHHS Healthy Homes100 kits for a FY2026 pilot, with Amoskeag Health in Manchester.
Weber-Morgan Health Department, UtahKits through WIC and environmental health.
Athens-Clarke County, Georgia30 kits to the HUD lead hazard program, June 2026.
Also in the fieldSouth Bend and Elkhart, Indiana; Weld County, Colorado; Utah County, Utah; North Central District Health Department, Nebraska; the 2024 National Lead and Healthy Housing Conference tech talks.
The bag carries the program's name.
This one was printed for the City of Atlanta's lead program. It shows where lead-based paint dust collects, how to run the test, and the program's own contact on the front, so a family that gets it at a WIC visit sees their own city first. Columbus Public Health's version is on the Columbus page.
The compliance picture in plain terms.
What it is. A presumptive field screen for lead in paint, dust, chips and household items. It reads in seconds and it photographs. It is not an XRF, it does not replace a certified risk assessment, and a lab dust wipe still does the clearance where the rule calls for one.
What it is not. Fluoro-Spec is not an EPA-recognized lead test kit under the Renovation, Repair and Painting rule, so it cannot be used by a renovator to determine that lead-based paint is absent. Nothing on this site should be read as an EPA approval of any kind.
Where it fits in HUD's rule. Under the Lead Safe Housing Rule (24 CFR part 35), paint testing, risk assessments, reevaluations and clearance after abatement belong to certified inspectors and risk assessors, and a visual assessment alone is not an evaluation. The kit lives in the work the rule leaves to program staff, owners and crews: visual assessments, interim controls, ongoing maintenance, and the cleaning that happens before the clearance examiner arrives.
Regulatory status. The active ingredient, methylammonium bromide (MABr), is manufactured by Fluoro-Spec Inc. under a U.S. EPA-authorized Low Volume Exemption (LVE) granted under TSCA Section 5 (40 CFR 723.50). That exemption covers the manufacture of MABr for this use, and it is what allows a lead test kit containing MABr to be sold lawfully in the United States. It is specific to Fluoro-Spec Inc. and non-transferable, so a MABr kit from anyone else needs its own Section 5 basis. The full posture, the Safety Data Sheet and the DEA List I chemical handling are on the safety page and the SDS page, and the short version of how to check any seller is at know what you're buying.
Purchasing. Sole-source justification letters, W-9, vendor registration forms and quotes are routine for us. Government programs have bought on PO, on p-card through a tax-exempt invoice, and through a HUD grant. Program pricing runs by volume. Sample kits are free.
Start with a few kits.
Tell me what the program does and roughly how many families it reaches. I will send kits for your field staff to try, at no cost, and get on a call with whoever will be using them.
Eric Ritter, Fluoro-Spec Inc.
Founder. Author of the housing-age lead-risk model behind the maps on this site.
Fluoro-Spec is a fast field screen that makes lead visible. It is not an EPA-recognized test kit and does not replace XRF or lab dust-wipe clearance where those are legally required. The active ingredient is manufactured under an EPA-authorized Low Volume Exemption under TSCA Section 5 (40 CFR 723.50). · detectlead.com
Part of the DetectLead lead-risk network. Every program page and the national lead-risk map →