I learned of this new law a few months ago and am signed up to take the training for $195 and the $300 permit that lasts five years. I was not aware of this coming and am upset about the unexpected expense of the training and permit. I am an old house nut so I am also worried about the long-term consequences of making restorations even more expensive. Should only the super-rich be able to reststore old houses?

Some of the requirements are to seal off the work area and use booties or a tacky mat to keep from tracking lead dust around on your shoes. If you vacuume the dust you must use a HEPA filter. If you do not clean out the vacuume and trash the filter at the jobsite and transport the vacuume anywhere else you are transporting hazardous materials which requires a permit to be legal. I do not know how to dispose of the filter unless you already have a roll-off container on the job.

Pieces of wood covered with lead paint need to be wraped in plastic sheeting and sealed with tape. Then they can be put in a dumpster as normal demolition debris. However, I live in a town where we still have a land fill and our wood is ground up and spread in layers in the land-fill. This wood cannot have plastics like bituthane or polyethelene on it so I have asked the dump guy what to do. He did not know yet but, I may have to take the poly off of the wood at the dump!

The training is definitely a racket. I just took a hunter safety course with 12 hours of class time over four evenings and there were numerous handouts including two books. This class cost me $8. This is the difference between a subject that is grass-roots, volunteer-instructed and suppported by several organizations and governments, and the lead paint training which is top-down, big-business. If there are 25 people in class that is a gross income of $4,875 per class. I wonder if the instructor gets more than $350 of that?

I have heard there are only five inspectors in New England so enforcement will be more of a "drop a dime" program where the inspectors rely on people (competitors, disgruntled employees, etc. ) to identify jobs to inspect. The real issue would be if you poisoned a child with lead paint dust. The law would clearly be against you.

Clearly there are not enough certified contractors. There is only one other person in my town who has been certified so far.

How high can our standards go?
Jim

By the way, the Romans knew lead was poisonous and used it for water pipes!