Lead Paint Paranoia
My boyfriend bought a beautiful vinatage steel cabinet a couple of weeks back — our new apartment is extremely limited in cabinet space, so we wanted the piece to store kitchen items (bowls, cutting boards, silverware, etc.). The outside is stripped, but the inside is painted…and chipping. Given the age of the piece (50+ years?),…
My boyfriend bought a beautiful vinatage steel cabinet a couple of weeks back — our new apartment is extremely limited in cabinet space, so we wanted the piece to store kitchen items (bowls, cutting boards, silverware, etc.).
The outside is stripped, but the inside is painted…and chipping. Given the age of the piece (50+ years?), I’m concerned that the chipping paint on the interior contains lead. To help assuage my fears, he painted over all unstripped surfaces with primer (one designed to seal porous surfaces).
Anyone have any experience with vintage furniture and lead paint? Will the primer be a safe seal, considering we’ll be keeping kitchen items inside?
I had a bunch of shudders and window bays stripped.
we used DeGamba Stripping, they were great.
718-499-5788
they can get rid of it for you. it’s better to be safe than sorry.
you sound obsessive. Focused on very very negligible risks instead of larger ones.
If the inside has been painted over it’s probably fine, but shelf paper wouldn’t hurt.
Prop 65
Law in Ca,
http://oehha.ca.gov/Prop65.html
you can buy a lead tester at any hardware store. cheap. perfect for this.
The problem with risk assessment nowadays is that measurement has progressed to the point that you could walk by a lead pipe and probably measurably raise your blood lead content ;). Some advocates would say that there is zero tolerance for lead (and for mercury, and for…), which is laughable; one is constantly exposed to trace elements of all kinds of toxic stuff.
This leads to farces like the CA law requiring the “this establishment has chemicals known to the state of CA to be toxic”…what? where? how much? Oh, it’s that can of Ajax under the sink.
FOr that matter, every glass of wine you drink kills a few hundred brain cells, or so I’ve been told by…hmm, can’t remember now.
I took bobjohn’s comment to also mean that small children are also most often exposed. Older children (and adults) are typically less likely to crawl around on their hands and knees, run their toys on the ground, put random things in their mouth, etc.
Encapsulation should be adequate treatment of the surfaces, as long as the remaining paint is secure and not chipping off. I was told that two coats of latex paint may can be considered adequate in NYC for lead/stable asbestos. I probably wouldn’t eat off of it, but it’s not going to transfer to your dishes or anything.
Vinca – on the smelting note, I worked on residential clean-up sites near smelting plants where the lead content in the soil was far, far higher than typical levels in paint. So it’s always prudent to check where you’re getting any soil from too.
Wrong, bobjohn. Ingesting lead has a deleterious effect no matter what your age. It’ll take a greater toll on the young, but its harmful effects are not limited to 7 and under (and I write that having worked in an industry where smelted lead was once common). However, one does not risk lead poisoning from encapsulated surfaces.
just wanted to add to the above post, that eating lead paint mostly affect under 7year olds.