All Wet | Local painters cry foul over costly new lead paint regs
During the week between Christmas and News Years, 17 workers at Woodmeister Master Builders in Holden took an eight-hour class on the dangers of lead paint poisoning and how to safely handle the substance.
It cost the company $2,137, plus the full day of regular wages for the workers.
Christopher Lund, co-owner of Heritage Homes Carpentry in Shrewsbury, paid about $200 for his father, another co-owner, to take the same class, then shelled out $300 to register with the federal Environmental Protection Agency that the class had been completed.
It’s a similar story across the country as contractors are paying hundreds, and sometimes thousands of dollars to meet an April 22 deadline to comply with a new lead paint safety regulation from the EPA.
Safety Concerns
The new EPA rules mandate that any contractor, painter, electrician or plumber that does work on a property with lead paint be certified by the EPA.
Certification requires an all-day class costing between $175 and $215 on the dangers of lead paint and hands-on instruction of how to work with it. And, the company must pay a $300 registration fee with the EPA.
“It basically amounts to a tax,” Lund said.
The EPA adopted the rule in April 2008, mandating that by April 22, 2010 any contractor that is working on a site built before 1978 with more than 6 square feet of interior or 20 square feet of exterior lead paint get certified by the EPA.
A company’s foreman or supervisor can take the class and then instruct the individual workers on the proper handling, but each company must be certified with the EPA by the April 22 deadline.
Doreen Cantor Paster, an EPA official that specializes in lead paint safety issues, said since the 1990s the EPA has been regulating the handling of the substance, which was used commonly before 1978. Recent studies found that some contractors were still unaware of proper techniques in working with lead paint.
So, in 2008 the EPA created the rule requiring certification and a renewal after five years.
The dust that lead paint produces, if disturbed, is invisible and odorless and if ingested is harmful to humans, animals and especially small children.
“An area can appear clean but could still have toxic levels of lead,” Paster said.
Ingestion can cause a range of behavioral and neurobiological impacts, from hearing malfunctions to rising blood pressure.
Paster said anywhere between 200,000 to 300,000 individuals are found to have lead levels above 10 micrograms per deciliter of blood, which is considered as a “level of concern” by the Centers for Disease Control.
Common Sense
Lund, the Shrewsbury contractor, is all for safety in the workplace. But, he said he doesn’t understand why he has to pay $500 for his workers to take a class on information they already know.
“When it comes to lead paint, we already know not to put a sand belt to it and kick up all the dust particles,” Lund said. “It’s pretty much common sense.”
If a contractor is found to be working on a lead paint site without certification, penalties of up to $37,500 can be assessed by the EPA after the April 22 deadline.
Paster said the $300 registration fee, when averaged out over the five years it is valid for, is a small investment for a company. Plus, she said, if there is an accidental lead poisoning incident, it is extremely advantageous for the contractor to have proof that they were certified by the EPA to do work on the site.
Aside from the cost of the class and the certification, Guy Webb, executive director of the Builders Association of Central Massachusetts in Worcester, said many contractors have been unaware that the regulation existed.
He said normally when a new regulation is adopted by the EPA, he hears about it before it’s adopted, then once it is adopted there is an effort by the government to remind contractors to comply with the regulation.
“This one kind of came out of nowhere,” he said.
Now, he said with the April 22 deadline looming, some contractors are “scrambling” to get certified.
The state’s builders association is offering 15 classes in Wilmington before the April 22 deadline, but five of them are already full and closed. There are only a handful of organizations in the state that do the certification. Another is California Paints in Andover.
Paster, the EPA official, said part of the $300 fee is going to pay for a multi-million dollar marketing campaign that will begin in the coming weeks. The advertisements will target contractors to remind them to get certified and the general public to ensure that they use contractors that are certified.
She said the registration fees will be used only to cover the cost of administering the program and the EPA does not expect to make money off the program.
“It may be common sense for a lot of people who are conscientious contractors,” Pastor said. “But not all contractors are, and this will ensure that people know what they are doing when handling lead paint.”
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