Christopher99

It seems that what the new law does is shift the burden of proof to the contractor to prove that they are working safely, if that question comes up, instead of te situation that existed in the past where the government or a person impacted by the work would have to prove that they were not.


Given the cost of evaluating the situation capably, I think the new approach makes much more sense, if the goal is actually to prevent people's health and property being damaged by lead exposure. In that context, $35,000 doesn't seem like a lot of money at all.

Don't forget that lead damages people of all ages health.

The cost in medical bills alone, over a lifetime, of just one person's losing their health could easily be at least an order of magnitude higher.

When you add in the cost of losing one's job because of illness, and then perhaps the cost of defaulting on a home loan, etc, isn't it better to have the expense of clean remodeling - which is predictable, than the often huge costs of lead-driven illness, which often is never identified, which are shifted to who- employees, children, families who live nearby..

Contractors should be able to see that as its been shown that lead causes all cause mortality to rise substantially,(see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3155319/pdf/ijerph-08-02593.pdf )

-in the final analysis, THEY themselves will be among those who benefit the most.

Get my point?

It seems that what the new law does is shift the burden of proof to the contractor to prove that they are working safely, if that question comes up, instead of te situation that existed in the past where the government or a person impacted by the work would have to prove that they were not.


Given the cost of evaluating the situation capably, I think the new approach makes much more sense, if the goal is actually to prevent people's health and property being damaged by lead exposure. In that context, $35,000 doesn't seem like a lot of money at all.

Don't forget that lead damages people of all ages health.

The cost in medical bills alone, over a lifetime, of just one person's losing their health could easily be at least an order of magnitude higher.

When you add in the cost of losing one's job because of illness, and then perhaps the cost of defaulting on a home loan, etc, isn't it better to have the expense of clean remodeling - which is predictable, than the often huge costs of lead-driven illness, which often is never identified, which are shifted to who- employees, children, families who live nearby..

Contractors should be able to see that as its been shown that lead causes all cause mortality to rise substantially,(see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3155319/pdf/ijerph-08-02593.pdf )

-in the final analysis, THEY themselves will be among those who benefit the most.

Get my point?

I would say that if either adults or children spent any time in or near the garage, lead paint should be removed professionally.

To the person who claims that he has never seen lead damage somebody's IQ, I would like to point him to this paper..
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3155319/?tool=pubmed

You can download a free PDF of it here:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3155319/pdf/ijerph-08-02593.pdf


Read it, it gives a very good picture of the total health picture of what lead does to people of all ages.
Its not a pretty picture.

Lead and mercury, right there, are responsible for a great many of our health problems here in the US, especially in the poor.

There is a technique that shaves lead paint off of houses very quickly and sends it to a HEPA vacuum that exhausts far away from people. That is the way to go.

Then if it passes a survey by an inspector with an XRF unit a, formerly toxic lead-painted house is clean.

Tearing down a lead painted house is very dangerous to those nearby. It should *never* be done on even a moderately windy day, and always should be done wetted with water.

Yes, people who live nearby have a right to be concerned about something that could potentially destroy their health and ruin much of their property.

The poster who was describing his co-worker's zombie-like behavior in the earlier part of the day remided me that I should remind you, my friends here, of what I know about one important risk of your profession.

Although its rarely discussed, contracting carries a huge risk of exposure to lead paint dust (exposure is cumulative and not easy to measure) and mold (exposure is cumulative and not easy to measure)

Both can cause hundreds of cryptic, seemingly unrelated health issues. Many of those illnesses probably have many causes, so the direct causation is hard to pin down, except you simpy see the cluster of health problems in a lot of people.

But a number of illnesses are clearly almost always, directly related to mold and contractors (farmers because of grain dust, teachers/librarians, because of old books) get those illnesses disproportionately.

The only way to avoid getting sick is to keep this in mind when you are cracking into wall cavities and always bring with you and wear a HEPA N-100 respirator. Not an N-95 because the same fungal fragments that go deeply into your lungs also sail right through the open pores of the filter.

Change and wash your clothes after any possible exposure.

If you will be spending a length of time in any potentially water damaged buildings, even if that water damage was many years, even decades earlier, test it using the EPA's "ERMI" technique (which uses qualitative PCR) using negative air pressure to draw particles into the air.

Dont rely on spore testing because that is next to useless in this situation. The worst kind of mold almost never sporulates.. and the toxic dust that it creates lasts so long that declines in its toxicity within the time it was possible to measure it experimentally fell within the margin of error on the tests. In other words, it may remain toxic for many decades or more. High temperatures also do not neutralize it. Only extremely strong oxidizers + time + scrubbing will remove it. It isn't like a biological weapon, according to the Army, it is a biological weapon (satratoxin h). It can make people really sick, for the rest of their lives.

There are quite a few projects that use containers as building blocks (literally) for offices and apartments.

This is a site with more info:
http://www.containercity.com/

also:

Commercial |
Residential |
Educational |
Gallery

If I were a contractor, i would charge more to work on older buildings with lead paint. A lot more.

I would have to, as its far more time consuming. If people don't like that, that's their right, they can choose to sell the property or do the work themselves, safely.

What do they expect? People to ignore the law? If a contractor ignores the law they are taking a calculated risk, a gamble. If they don't get caught 50 times and that 51st time, somebody reports them, that fine might be large to reflect the fact that these things are rarely reported or investigated, but they make a lot of people sick, and those people rarely, if ever, get any clue as to what did it. If they are over 50, and not rich enough to buy a ticket out of the "managed care", our society just attributes it to "old age".


When Americans travel, they are often flabbergasted by the difference in healthcare between other countries and here.

Unless they face the fact that right now we are pouring literally half of each healthcare dollar into a black hole- they just can't figure out what the hell is going on.

"I tried to pay them, but they wouldn't take my money!"

The government can make people buy health insurance, but it can't make the health insurers provide decent healthcare, after all, Liz Fowler wrote the bill.

What's happening in the real world is gag clauses. Doctors are paid a fixed amount that goes up the "healthier" their patients are. See no evil.

Insurers now also apply the "innocent until proven guilty" logic to investigating and paying for illnesses, and of course ERISA section 514 gives them carte blanche to do so, using the excuse that rates would rise if we made them accountable when somebody dies or simply is way too far gonne to be saved when they finally admit theyre sick.. (often people have to self pay to get the tests or scans, etc. Or, leave the country to get the tests and care..)

What this all means is that people with any kind of cryptic or non-obvious illness keep getting referred from one doctor to another with no actual health forthcoming, using up their money until they can no loger pay for insurance and then they still often have to wait until they have absolutely nothing to be eligible for Medicaid (if they are a parent of school age children) Which is not a grant, its a loan..

It may have changed, but as far as I know, thats the way it works.

Eventually they get the picture of whats going on but by then they often are dead or close to it.

That's perhaps the whole point.

In 2008 we had a choice to perhaps speak out to get something that might marginally work but we didn't pick that candidate, we picked the one who looks cool in sunglasses.

11am 11am writes:

"Will one lead paint sherriff, please show me some actual statisics that indicate that an enormously unbalanced amount of the WEALTHEST people in the country's children are brain damaged from lead poisoning."

The younger you are, and the richer you are, the less likely you've been exposed to the huge amounts of lead that are released by something like paint removal without containment.

But it happens. It happens a lot.

"After complete restorations of turn of the century mansions in the northeast, for 45 years, with total burnoffs of the interiors, etc."

"while inhabited by families with small children, who all grew up, went to the best colleges, and became extremely successful stock brokers"

Ever read "The Black Swan"?
http://www.amazon.com/Black-Swan-Impact-Highly-Improbable/dp/1400063515

"and professionals, I think something is wrong with this equation. Why do you think that is? Luck?"
See the book linked above.

"Here's some logic: WEALTHY PEOPLE
, not poor people are the ones with the highest likelyhood of exposure, because they can afford theses massive renovations."

But wealthy people also leave during them, don't they? They go elsewhere.

"Logic dictates that hundreds of thousands of the WEALTHEST children, over the last 100 years, should have brain damage, from airborn contamination, and I for one would like to see some proof that that is true, otherwise it's fabricated nonsense, by eco alarmists, who's only purpose is to put already struggling people out of work."

Its the exact opposite. Lead poisoning puts people out of work. Health keeps people working. Health is wealth.

And of course, poor people get exposed to far more lead and other toxicants than the rich, for some inexplicable reason.

This 2007 article has a great many references in it.

http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1289%2Fehp.10871

or

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2022649/


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16982939/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15613953/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15583371/

Not many builders realize this but the health effects of a bad water leak decades ago, which might have been painted over, etc, or lead dust, can persist for a very long time.


24% of us need to be especially careful.. Thats the percentage of us who can't eliminate mold toxins from our systems fast enough to avoid illness when we get exposed to a lot of it. So in very serious flooding events like some towns in Hurricane Katrina's aftermath, the number of the people who were there who got ill was consistently 24%. ...

It only takes one exposure like that to make you hypersensitive to mold for the whole rest of your life. Then you get sick at the drop of a hat. Your body remembers the threat.

You only get one immune system.

Once a wall has been wet at over 99% RH and stayed that way for more than 3 or 4 days, its gotten moldy, even if it dries out, if there was visible mold, it's very likely still potentially dangerous and has to be cleaned out.


No magic formulas, not even most recipes that use heavily diluted bleach
can deactivate them with a wipe or two.. The toxic stachybotrys toxins are even stable at a 500 degree temperature. Hotter than most ovens. Ask the military!


Sodium hydroxide in water, if its very strong and left on a long time (>15 minutes) scrubbing with wire brushes is necessary too. can remove mold effectively from semiporous materials like solid wood. But moldy sheetrock is not really cleanable. It should be removed and replaced.

With all porous materials, really there isn't any safe choice rather than throwing them out. That includes clothes, books, open cell foam..

Be careful.

The best thing someone working in a site with mold can do is wear a HEPA particulate filter mask and gloves all the time..The low molecular weight mycotoxins that mold manufactures to kill other molds, are capable of absorbing through your skin, just like water. And they do, they go right into the bloodstream, bypassing the portal circulation and the liver.

You don't want to end up like those homeless people you mentioned, sick, not knowing why, unable to do simple math or even (Ive seen this happen) respond normally to your own name.

Has anybody here seen Blender? (Blender.org)

As they say "Blender is the free open source 3D content creation suite, available for all major operating systems under the GNU General Public License."

In that respect its similar to Open Office.org

Its geared more towards pro artists and animators, but the architectural stuff that I have seen done with it has been quite good looking.