Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, December 18, 1994 TAG: 9412200058
SECTION: HOMES PAGE: D-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ALAN J. HEAVENS Knight-Ridder Newspapers
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
When your preschooler asks for a drink of water, and you do not turn on the tap and let it run for a couple of minutes, you could be filling the glass with a contaminant that could affect your child's capacity for learning.
The problem is lead. If you live in a house built before 1978, there's probably a 95 percent chance that there's lead in the paint, lead in the soldered pipe joints, and lead particles in the air and in the dust on the floor and furniture.
Lead, a substance once prized as a bonding agent for paint, can have long-term effects on your family's health and your child's IQ.
After Oct. 28, 1995, the lead in your house may affect your pocketbook, too. That's the day a federal law requires every home seller and landlord to disclose the presence of any known lead-based hazards in residences built before 1978, the year the federal government banned the use of lead as an additive to paint for residential use.
The new law likely will take lead from the back burner and put it in the forefront of housing issues for the 1990s. Because of the pervasiveness of the problem and the risks lead involves, the law promises to change the way people sell homes and how they live in them.
``Lead is a big concern to a lot of people,'' said Christopher Artur, president of the Philadelphia Board of Realtors, which has been educating its members about the new regulations. ``And, of course, it means more paperwork for us. But the work agents will have to do is much less of a problem than the penalties that agents and sellers will face if they don't.''
Lead also has become the No. 1 priority of the 300 members of the Apartment Association of Greater Philadelphia, said executive director Elizabeth Bee Weatherford.
Congress passed the law requiring ``lead warnings'' on homes and apartments back in 1992. It mandates that, beginning on Oct. 28, 1995, buyers of any home built before 1978 must be given a lead-hazard information pamphlet before the sales agreement is signed. They will have 10 days from the time they sign a sales agreement to have a lead inspection performed at their expense.
Prospective tenants also must be given the EPA pamphlet, although there is no provision for inspections of apartments by renters.
In either case, noncompliance by real estate agents, sellers and landlords comes with stiff penalties - a $10,000 civil fine for starters. In addition, buyers or tenants could sue for millions of dollars in damages if they are exposed to undisclosed hazards.
Although the law doesn't require a seller or landlord to rid the house or apartment of lead, such a disclosure might be enough to kill a sale or a rental deal, realty agents say. And that can cost money, too.
The cost of removing lead can range from $7,000 to $40,000, depending on the size of the home and the extent of contamination. Encapsulating the lead - covering all surfaces with a special paint to prevent lead from being released into the air - can cost as much as $4,000 for an average-size home.
Testing for lead is expensive as well. Prices range from $300 using new laser-based technology to about $4,000 if a lab tests paint chips from every surface of your home.
Right now, Phildelphia real estate agents are waiting for the EPA to complete a final version of its disclosure pamphlet and write the regulations needed to carry out the program.
Confusion abounds.
``We're trying to find someone in authority who can tell us how to proceed,'' said the apartment association's Weatherford.
``The government can't tell us what to do because they don't know yet themselves,'' she said. ``It's scary.''
Indeed, though the law is in place, the system to enforce it or even the means of enforcement is not yet in place.
The federal disclosure regulations are expected to turn lead inspection and abatement into a major growth industry.
The Pennsylvania House has yet to pass a bill to create a process for certifying the contractors who will clean up lead-based paint or accrediting the organizations that train them.
Both Pennsylvania and New Jersey will have to come up with their regulations. Federal law establishes only minimum requirements.
Only two states - Massachusetts and Rhode Island - have certification programs and regulations.
The federal law does mandate that real estate transactions that are federally assisted - those involving FHA and VA mortgages, and sales of pre-1978 houses owned by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Defense and the Resolution Trust Corp. - require lead disclosures, which must be read and signed by the prospective buyer.
Before an agreement of sale can be signed, the prospective buyer must be given a notice by the real estate agent that describes lead poisoning and its causes, and gives advice on remedial action. The notice is signed by the prospective buyer and attached to the sale.
Beginning on Jan. 1, 1995, the law requires all lead to be abated in all pre-1960 federal housing (including public housing).
HUD has been making efforts to rid public housing of lead for years. Philadelphia, where more than 95 percent of all occupied housing units were built before 1978, has operated a lead-abatement program for low-income, owner-occupied housing since 1985, cleaning up an average of 50 houses a year.
In the next 18 months, however, the city expects to clean 500 such homes, financed by a $6 million grant from HUD and $1.5 million in community block grant funds.
Philadelphia real estate agents already have begun holding seminars to discuss lead hazards. The Pennsylvania Association of Realtors has devised a lead-disclosure form for its members that will be given to buyers when the sales agreement is signed, which is akin to the health warning on a package of cigarettes.
The New Jersey Association of Realtors ``is getting the word out to its members'' through its publications and newsletters, said spokesman Peter Mosca. Once the EPA completes its work on the regulations, the association will put together an information package to help its members prepare for disclosure.
A bill was introduced in the New Jersey Legislature last week to provide $50 million in low-interest loans for lead abatement to qualified homeowners, Mosca said.
Lead's detrimental effects on health have been suspected for a century, but manufacturers continued adding it to paint until 1978.
A 1990 HUD study estimated that 52 percent of America's 80 million housing units contained hazardous levels of lead-based paint, which is the major source of lead contamination in the home.
``Lead is different'' from asbestos and radon, said Claude Limoges, president of American Lead Consultants, of Bala Cynwyd, Pa., a lead-inspection company. ``It's not only present in basements but in the living quarters, where kids play every day.
``That's why lead is much more costly to remove than asbestos,'' he said. ``In a typical house, it might cost about $2,000 to remove the asbestos. To remove all the lead paint in the same house might cost $20,000.''
The high cost is understandable, considering that lead can be present everywhere, on the inside and the outside of your house.
``Lead paint bonded to surfaces solidly,'' Limoges said. ``That's why your grandmother's house needed to be painted less frequently than yours does today.''
Lead-inspection firms are becoming a growth industry. For example, Limoges, who began his business in Massachusetts in the mid-1980s, opened his Bala Cynwyd office in May. Scitec Corp., which manufactures spectrum analyzers, a technology used to test the lead content in paint, and United States Lead Testing & Removal Services have signed an agreement to franchise lead-based paint-testing services nationwide.
Limoges and others in the inspection industry are in big demand now by realtors' groups wanting to know more about lead hazards.
``They're scared because they think they'll never do another deal again,'' Limoges said. ``They are frightened initially. But by the end of the seminar, they consider it just another disclosure and just look for ways to approach it.''
by CNB