Salt Lake County
Kids with lead poisoning can look healthy.
You saw the sign. Here is the part that fits on a web page and not on a billboard: the lead is still in our houses, the damage is invisible, and a simple blood test is how you find out. This page is everything a Salt Lake family needs, in one place.
1 in 5
About 72,600 homes across Salt Lake County are expected to still have lead paint somewhere inside, based on each home's construction year in county assessor records.
El plomo no se ve. Un análisis de sangre sí. Hable con el doctor de su hijo.
The sign is on 9th West, just south of South Temple
That corner sits in 84104, Glendale and Poplar Grove. If you live near there, this is your number:
3 out of 4
About 6,030 of the 8,283 homes in this ZIP code were built before 1980, when lead paint was still legal. The typical house here went up in 1960, and more than 2,600 of them date to before 1950, when the paint was at its most leaded. This is one of the oldest housing pockets in the whole valley.
Three things you can do this week
Ask for the blood test
Kids with lead poisoning usually look and act fine. The only way to know is a blood lead test. Ask your pediatrician at the next visit, or call the county's Lead Poisoning Prevention Program. It is free help, and they are good people.
Call 801-382-8877Look up your home
Type your address and see the year your house was built and what that means for lead. It works for nearly every home in the county, straight from assessor records.
Check my addressTake the 2-minute screener
Answer a few questions about your home and habits and get a straight answer about your child's risk. Available in 14 languages, including Spanish.
Start the screenerSalt Lake County Lead Poisoning Prevention Program. Free in-home help if your child's level comes back high, and they speak Spanish.
Is my neighborhood one of the old ones?
Lead paint was banned in 1978, so the risk lives in the housing built before then. That is not spread evenly across the valley. In some Salt Lake ZIP codes, nine out of ten homes were built in the lead era. Here are the parts of the county where the old housing concentrates.
| ZIP | Area | Median year built | Homes from the lead-paint era |
|---|---|---|---|
| 84105 | Sugar House / East Liberty | 1938 | 91% |
| 84109 | Millcreek east bench | 1961 | 82% |
| 84108 | Foothill / University | 1958 | 81% |
| 84103 | The Avenues / Capitol Hill | 1959 | 79% |
| 84102 | Central City | 1958 | 73% |
| 84104 THE SIGN | Glendale / Poplar Grove | 1960 | 73% |
| 84124 | Holladay | 1966 | 71% |
| 84106 | Sugar House south | 1963 | 67% |
| 84115 | South Salt Lake | 1972 | 61% |
| 84120 | West Valley City | 1977 | 60% |
Share of housing units built before 1980, from U.S. Census and county assessor records. Countywide, about 194,600 of 431,000 homes date to the lead-paint era. An older home does not automatically mean poisoned paint, and a newer one is not a guarantee, which is why the address lookup and the blood test exist.
Why a billboard, and who put it up
The sign you saw is a partnership between Kids Read, the Salt Lake nonprofit that puts books in kids' hands across the valley, and DetectLead, which built the housing data and testing tools on this page. October is Lead Poisoning Awareness Month. One month of billboard, one goal: more Salt Lake kids getting the blood test their doctor can order in five minutes.
Kids Read gives away books and lead-awareness materials at Title I schools and Head Start programs across Salt Lake County. If the billboard brought you here, that is Lynda's doing. Tell your pediatrician the sign sent you.
Want to test your own home?
The blood test tells you about your child. If you want to know which surface, dish, or windowsill is the problem, a swab test kit shows you on the spot. It is the same chemistry health departments use.
See the test kit