In April of 2010 The Environmental Protection Agency issued new regulations that require any contractor that disrupts more than 6 square feet of surface on a home built before 1978 be licensed and trained to comply with the new lead paint regulations that minimize dust.
To learn more specifics about these regulations go to EPA.gov , but in general if your home was built before 1978, and you are replacing your windows, the company doing the work should be either testing each window for lead paint OR be following the EPA lead safe practices when they do the work.
This is really important for a number of reasons. First if you have young children or grandchildren visiting in your home, exposure to dust from lead paint can be very serious for them. Secondly, real estate disclosures are now asking for the EPA certification for any contractors that have worked on your home if it was built before 1978. So, if you sell your home, this will become important. Finally, we even have had customer’s neighbors’ call and check to be sure we are following EPA guidelines because they want to make certain they are not being exposed by dust from the exterior of the home.
Testing one window here and there in your home is not sufficient. Each painted surface on each window needs to be tested. Glass-Rite has an XRF lead paint tester that we use on all pre 1978 homes. The XRF tester is able to “see” through all of the old layers of paint and determine if there is lead in any of them. We furnish a written report to the homeowners before doing any work on the house. Glass-Rite includes the cost of testing and complying with the EPA regulations in our prices, so not only do you get the peace of mind that we won’t be creating toxic dust, you do not have to pay more if we discover lead paint around your windows.
In Albuquerque the older the home, the more likely the chance that we encounter lead paint. Although, we have seen homes built in the 70’s with lead paint, and homes that are over 100 years old with no lead paint. The important thing is to test!!