Lead Paint RRP Rule

[Chad Fabry]

Lead Paint Rule Claims First Contractor

[kurt]

ouch......

General question for the brethren.......

Are the new rules "good" or "bad"?

[Tom Raymond]

The intent behind the rule is very good, and long over due, but the rule is ridiculous.

Honestly I've been waiting patiently for someone to get spanked, it's the only way my classes are going to populate. Too bad it wasn't closer to home.

[Chad Fabry]

Honestly I've been waiting patiently for someone to get spanked, it's the only way my classes are going to populate. Too bad it wasn't closer to home.

Cornell is running about 100 free classes this year. I think we're done teaching RRP rules.

The rule is ludicrous. Buy stock in polyethylene.

[Tom Raymond]

I checked Wisdom's site a few days ago. The only State that has anything scheduled is Alaska.

Let's hope the EPA jumps on clearance, I'm positioned to run with that.

Edit:

They ain't free. The University is $199 and Cooperative Extension is $195.

There's nothing this side of Albany County for months.

[allseason]

The CDC keeps records on lead levels in childrens blood with information from different states. If those levels don't drop then the regulations don't work. If they drop then it worked.

http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/data/national.htm

[ZipWall]

Thanks for the CDC link - it is very informative!

[David Meiland]

For those saying the rule is ludicrous, what would you recommend instead?

[Tom Raymond]

If I were king, the three or four companies that manufacture vacuums would have been required to install HEPA filters on every vac they make starting around 1980, shotly after lead paint was banned. Then the lead dust would be removed at every cleaning, in nearly every contaminated household. Those unfortunate enough as to live in aging housing and unable to afford new vacuums would not be remodeling and creating large volumes of leaded dust and debris, and the ones who were would be cared for under the then existing HUD program rules. Everyone would have a HEPA vac eventually through atrittion.

As it is now, a contractor is liable for all of the dust in the building even though the EPA protocols only require him to clean up what he disturbs. There is no way to differentiate between long standing environmental contamination and what gets disturbed in the course of a renovation, or whether a poisoning is the result of which exposure. Worse yet, the protocols are designed for the hokey cleaning verification procedure, they will almost certainly not produce an area clean enough to pass clearance.

To give you an idea of how rediculous the EPA lead rules are; the EPA began requiring the removal of phosphates from detergents at the same time as it banned lead paint yet it continued, until the most recent publication (30 years later), to advise the use of phosphated detergent as the most effective way to clean up lead contamination. Pretty smart, huh?

[kurt]

I've got a small list of the stupid side too.

There's a lot of contractors that deserve not just one penalty; they should be hit upside the head with the whole rule book.

I'm also aware of a couple small time guys that are really cool, really excellent, go out of their way to do it right, that have gotten slammed for the $37,000 fine for minute infractions that they weren't aware they were even making, and when I say minute, I mean miniscule.

They were made examples of by dickhead EPA guys.

I also have my own experience wherein completely reasonable, prudent precautions work just fine without all the hullaballoo of the EPA protocols. This stuff can be done remarkably cheap and simple, and it's been made ridiculously expensive and complicated in a lot of cases.

Most of the guys I know simply can't afford to strictly comply, and very few of my customers can afford to pay for strict compliance.

It's a conundrum.

[hausdok]

It's a conundrum.

Nah, it's simple. Just tent and demolish every structure in the country built before 1983 (We want a cushion there to get those where the paint was left in storage sheds for a year or two before it was used).

There will be a massive building boom, heavy equipment companies will need to gear up production to meet demand for their machines, landfills will become as commonplace as pigeons and their operators will be filthy rich and inspectors will have a ton of work to do, everyone will be safe from lead and all of those other environmental hazards those old buildings contain and we'll all be living in housing stock that's less than 30 year old.

I say start right now.

ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!!

Mike

P.S.

For those of you who don't know me, the above was written with tongue firmly planted in cheek.

[gtblum]

I'm also aware of a couple small time guys that are really cool, really excellent, go out of their way to do it right, that have gotten slammed for the $37,000 fine for minute infractions that they weren't aware they were even making, and when I say minute, I mean miniscule.

Is $37,000 the standard EPA fine for whatever? What did these guys get nailed for?

[kurt]

One of them flubbed something on the paperwork or some administrative task, and the other one had some detail of their containment that wasn't absolutely perfect. Instead of the guy just telling them to tighten up, they handed out a fine.

It was bogus. They guy's a small timer, not the brightest bulb, but he took the class, had his cert, was trying, and got pounded. It basically bankrupted the poor schmoe.

And now, no one's even paying attention. It's like the last time. A couple months of everyone getting cranked up, then realization that it's impossible, and everyone forgetting it and doing what they were always doing.

Are folks actually seeing enforcement out there? No one's doing much of anything here. There was even a story in the paper about how they scaled back enforcement due to so many homeowners complaining about the increased cost and hassle.

[Marc]

One of them flubbed something on the paperwork or some administrative task, and the other one had some detail of their containment that wasn't absolutely perfect. Instead of the guy just telling them to tighten up, they handed out a fine.

It was bogus. They guy's a small timer, not the brightest bulb, but he took the class, had his cert, was trying, and got pounded. It basically bankrupted the poor schmoe.

And now, no one's even paying attention. It's like the last time. A couple months of everyone getting cranked up, then realization that it's impossible, and everyone forgetting it and doing what they were always doing.

Are folks actually seeing enforcement out there? No one's doing much of anything here. There was even a story in the paper about how they scaled back enforcement due to so many homeowners complaining about the increased cost and hassle.

The way I read it, this contractor deliberately threw the rule book out the window for work on one of his own rentals, then got shabby about keeping it quiet.

No argument about the EPA's inconsistent enforcement. It's still the same way with refrigerant handling. Penalize the existence out of a few small time contractors.

Marc

[Chad Fabry]

Enforcement is in response to complaint- which means the other folks that bid on the job, but lost, can get some satisfaction by dialing up the EPA.

Last summer I re-sided a four square in a very tight urban neighborhood. I notified the 6 closest neighbors and baggied their homes, I rolled out 300 linear feet of 6 mil poly, I established a work zone, I contained my waste and I checked after we were done for any lead chips on the ground.

The process added 3 man days of labor costs and almost $500 in plastic cost to the job. Everything under the poly- the lawn, the azaleas, the myrtle, the arborvitae was dead from three days in an EZ bake oven, but the site was clean at completion; like the surface of the moon. By the way, the ladders and tools have to be washed at the end of work with disposable wipes and the plastic cannot be re-used. Don't even think about pressure washing.

I'm all for lead safe practices, but on this house we took off perfectly good poplar clapboard and old growth sugar pine trim to install fiber cement and Azek because it would have been too costly to scrape and paint. Luckily, the owners allowed us to preserve at least the look of the home, if not the original materials.

Anyways, for 90 years the house has been shedding lead chips into the soil so I took photos before I started. I snapped pics of the neighboring houses and yards as well. At the end of the job, one of the neighbors complained about lead chips in his dead lawn and on his driveway. If I hadn't taken "before" pictures we'd have spent a day vacuuming his lot as well.

Establishing a work perimeter with "Caution, Lead Paint Hazard" yellow ribbon and making the site look like you're dealing with radioactive waste puts a bullseye in the middle of your chest.

Another thing, if it's breezy enough to carry lead dust off site while you're working, you get the day off.

The RRP rules are for contractors only. Homeowners can grind the paint off their siding with their kid's binky, then put the kid in the car seat and drive to the mall while they talk on their phone and smoke Marlboros with the windows up.

[kurt]

That's about right.

The enforcement here wasn't by complaint; no one even knows about the rules.

The EPA guy was driving around looking for projects; random shot.

It'll all go away again, just like the first time. All the money wasted on bureaucratic could have gone into a thorough and ongoing campaign to keep the idea in front of peoples eyeballs, folks would be educated, and eventually, it'd come around.

It's just not anything that can be policed effectively.