Childhood Lead Prevention Program: Information for Parents

There are many things that parents can do to help prevent lead exposure in the home.

• Keep your home clean and free of dust. Wet mop floors, wet wipe window sills, and vacuum and wash all surfaces often.
• Don’t let your children chew on painted surfaces or eat paint chips.
• Wash your children’s hands often, especially before eating and sleeping.
• Wash your children’s toys often.
• Feed your child foods rich in calcium, iron, and vitamin C to help prevent lead from being absorbed.
• Wipe shoes or take them off before going inside your home.
• Keep furniture away from paint that is chipped or peeling.
• Plant bushes, grass, and other plants on areas where the soil is bare or cover the bare soil with bark, gravel, or concrete.
• Change out of work clothes and shoes and wash up or shower before coming home if you work with lead.
• Do not use imported, older, or handmade dishes or pots for food or drinking unless you know that they don’t contain lead.
• Never burn, sand, dry scrape, or sand blast paint unless you know that it does not contain lead. Assume that any home built before 1979 contains some lead-based paint. Cracking, peeling, or flaking paint can create lead dust and loose paint chips.
• Damaged paint should be repaired by someone qualified to work with lead-based paint so that the work is done safely. Find a painting professional who is certified by the State of California to work with lead paint and ask him or her how they will do they will do the following things:
1. Avoid creating dust
2. Enclose the work area to contain dust
3. Thoroughly clean up the work area after finishing the job, and
4. Properly dispose of any waste created by the job.
• Make sure that products you bring home do not have lead in them. Home remedies or traditional medicines, imported cosmetics, and some imported candies often contain lead.
• Avoid hobbies that use lead. Making stained glass or pottery can involve using lead. Also, bullets and fishing sinkers can contain lead.
• Ask your doctor to test your child for lead. From the time your children begin to crawl and explore, peeling paint and dust in the home can expose them to lead.
• Children who live in housing built before 1979 should be tested during regular checkups at 1 and again at 2 years old or at least once before 6 years old if they have never been tested before.

You have the right to have your child tested if he or she is at risk of lead poisoning. Your medical provider should give you information at regular checkups regarding the risks of lead poisoning and recommend testing your child if you live in a home built before 1979 or if your child spends significant time in a building built before 1979. The cost of lead testing should be covered by your insurance plan.

It is illegal for property owners to allow lead hazards to exist on their property. If you see badly damaged paint on the exterior or interior of a house, please call the San Francisco Childhood Lead Prevention Program (415) 252-3888. Property owners will be required to safely repair any hazards that have been identified.

It is illegal for landlords to harass or evict tenants because they report suspected lead hazards. San Francisco has strong tenant rights laws to protect tenants. Please contact the San Francisco Rent Board (415) 252-4600 if you are having problems with your landlord.

San Francisco law requires that work on lead-based paint be done safely. If you see work on the interior or exterior of a building that allows dust and paint chips to spread outside of a work area because it is not properly contained or not properly cleaned up, call the Department of Building Inspection (415) 558-6598.