How to Make Your Home and Yard Lead-safe

Great news! “Lead Safe Blitz VIDEO: a step-by-step guide to protecting your family from lead” by Hunter New England Health, NSW Health Department, made in 2006, has been uploaded (at my suggestion) to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1zkvJGH1uA and it includes interviews with parents, a TAFE painting and decorating teacher, Hunter Health lead expert Dr Craig Dalton, and Argenton Primary School students singing their rap song with the catchy chorus:

“We’ve gotta wash our hands,

We’ve gotta mop our floors,

We’ve gotta stop that lead dust

From getting indoors

We’ve gotta wash, mop,

And stop that lead dust!”

The first step in making your home & yard lead safe is to watch that video (and maybe teach your children to sing the song!), and the second step is to buy a LEAD Group DIY–sampling Laboratory Lead Analysis kit. You can order a kit online here or phone 02 9716 0014 with your credit card details.

The kit instructions advise you on how to collect various sample types and post them to the lab for lead analysis, and The LEAD Group then provides you with recommendations on making your yard and home lead safe, dependent on your specific results.

For example, if you have peeling or chalking paint, and the result is greater than 0.1% lead, we will advise you to follow the lead safe paint management techniques here, and to check out the “Lead Paint and Human Health” video made by the National Painting and Decorating Institute here.

If you have a high biohazard level of lead in your ceiling dust, you should take a look here to see if there is a member of the Australian Dust Removalists Association (ADRA) in your area, who can vacuum your ceiling void for a fabulous whole-home detox.

If you have or plan to have children, we recommend you definitely test “dust wipe” and soil samples and we can then advise you on how to make your home lead safe (see e.g. Lead Aware Housekeeping fact sheet here) and your yard lead-safe for children (see e.g. “Is Your Yard Lead Safe” here).

If you have a rainwater tank, or other non-mains water, that you use for drinking (by humans or animals) or garden-watering, or even for swimming, we advise on how to be sure the water is lead-safe (E.g. see this link which lists EVO Building Products’ lead-free flashing called “Wakaflex” which we recommend you use in place of leaded flashing on your rainwater collection roof; and there are more solutions to the common problem of lead in rainwater here, and here).

If you have or plan to have a vegetable garden or chook-run, we tell you how to make them lead-safe (in the recommendations which are part of the kit, but also here).

All the best with making your home and yard lead-safe!

You will also find additional information in the form of links to NSW Reference Centre and NSW Government Publications here.

You can buy a lead test kit at:

Do It Yourself Lead Safe Test Kits Ad.html

If you can gain any media attention for our service, new website and for our art competition, and to ensure that GLASS is government-funded in FY2015, please do so!!!

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