Renovation activities like sanding, cutting and demolition can create hazardous lead dust and chips which can be harmful to adults and children. To minimize this harm, the EPA has enacted a law that requires general and specialty contractors to be certified before renovating homes, child care facilities or schools built before 1978. The law took effect April 22, 2010 and you must comply. But how do you do that?

To start, if you are not certified, either get certified or don’t do any work on homes built prior to 1978. If you are certified, you will need to provide proof — your certificate — to owners if they ask. The certification training should have taken you through the various procedural steps you need to follow to test for lead-based paint and, if present, to work in a manner to prevent contamination. It would be advisable to review the requirements set forth in the EPA handout for contractors. (http://epa.gov/lead/pubs/sbcomplianceguide.pdf)

But beyond that, what do you do from a legal standpoint? The truth is that no one is really sure because it is all new. Lawyers typically do the best they can to interpret the rules, but for definitive answers we will need to wait for court cases or EPA rulings to come down in the years to come. With that said, I’m going to try to give you a little guidance for renovating pre-1978 homes. The rules may also be expanded in the future to apply to public and commercial buildings. Here are a few things you should do: