When Was Lead Based Paint Banned

Lead was banned as an ingredient in pigment in 1978. Just because lxx pct of the state's electric current housing stock was built before then, many Pennsylvanians are living in homes containing atomic number 82 paint. Photograph: rumpleteaser via Flickr

If Atomic number 82 Pigment Was Banned forty Years Ago, Why Is Information technology Nevertheless a Trouble?

When David Rosner was a kid, he'd go into his granddad'southward garage and mix up cans of paint.

"I tin can still recall just sticking a stick in to mix information technology upwards and hit halfway down a solid mass of hard stuff," says Rosner. "That was lead."

Today, Rosner is a professor of public health at Columbia Academy and the co-writer of Pb Wars: The Politics of Science and the Fate of America's Children. He's well aware of the danger contained in that can of paint.

Exposure to lead, through dust and chipping paint, tin cause permanent developmental delays in children under the age of six.

"It became credible in the 1970s, children who had lead in their blood did substantially worse on various kinds of neurological tests, IQ tests, behavioral tests and also worse in school," says Rosner.

Based on that evidence, pb was banned as an ingredient in paint in 1978. Seventy percent of Pennsylvania's electric current housing stock was built before then, significant there are a lot of homes with pb paint on the walls.

If that pigment is covered over with not-lead paint and maintained diligently, you can safely live in a home with lead paint on the walls. The issue comes when in that location's chipping or peeling paint, or grit from renovation work. An adult can inhale some pb dust without consequences, but children under the age of six, and their developing brains, are at much higher chance.

"What we've created is this fourth dimension flop," says Rosner. "Anytime there is a leak, or the pigment starts to peel, or you hammer a nail into the wall and dust is created, you tin can poison a child."