Many people who threw away toys over fears they might be contaminated with lead paint might not realize they could be living in homes painted with similar materials, said an official with the state health department.

Sal Gray, director of the Alabama Department of Public Health’s lead division, said many homes built before 1960 were sued paint that contains large amount of lead. He said the paints were used around windows, doors and other trim work and sometimes on interior and exterior walls.

Up until 1978, some oil-based paints continued to use lead as a pigment and drying agent. Latex paints generally did not contain lead.

If lead-based paint in a home is allowed to deteriorate it can pose health risks, especially to children under the age of 6 and to pregnant women.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission reports that lead poisoning in children can cause irreversible brain damage and impair brain function. It can also harm fetuses. In adults, it can cause problems with reproduction and increase blood pressure.

Children typically develop lead poisoning by placing paint chips in their mouths or by ingesting dust from deteriorating paint, Gray said.

“Lead poisoning is almost always a result of hand-to-mouth action,” Gray said. “It’s not like mold, which produces spores or asbestos that can release particles and can make you sick just by breathing the air inside a home. Lead poisoning can sometimes occur by breathing dust from lead-based paints, but it’s not very common. The most common means of ingesting lead is through a hand-and-mouth action.”

Gray said when paint is sanded during renovations of homes built before 1978, the dust can contain lead. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that pregnant women not be present during renovations of homes built before 1978.

Because of the health risks associated with lead exposure, Gray recommends anyone living in a house built before 1980 where children live or visit, or where someone who is pregnant lives, should consider having it tested for lead paint.

Gray said most people who own buildings constructed before 1978 have not tested the paint to determine if it contains lead.

Steve Price, who is renovating a historic building in Sheffield that once housed a milk processing plant, has not tested for lead-based paint. “The building had been empty for 10 years when we moved in and was pretty filthy. We were just focused on trying to get it cleaned up. We didn’t find any chipped paint or anything to indicate there might be lead paint that needed to be removed anywhere in the building. We didn’t see any reason to test for lead paint.”

Price is like most building owners in Alabama. Gray said few Alabamians test their homes or commercial buildings for lead-based paint.

Carl Rudolph, who owns Home Inspections LLC, said he receives few requests to test for lead paint during inspections he conducts for home buyers except when they plan to use a government-backed loan, which requires such testing.

Rudolph said many of the older homes around the Shoals contain the paint, but unless it has been allowed to flake or oxidize it does not pose a serious health risk to adults. He said the homes he inspects have typically been well maintained and the paint has not been allowed to fall into disrepair.

Gray said the paint tests can provide peace of mind by allowing the owner to know if the structure is lead-free. In addition, a certificate showing that a building is free of lead-based paint can be used as a selling point when buildings are sold or rented.

Alabama law requires anyone selling or renting a home or apartment that might have been painted with lead-based paint to notify the buyer or renter of that possibility in writing.

A simple test for lead dust costs about $10. Extensive testing of painted surfaces throughout a home can cost more than $300. Gray also recommends that outside play areas around older homes where children live or visit be tested for lead as paint that falls from exterior walls and trim can contaminate the soil.

“The testing is not expensive,” he said. “It’s also not an expensive problem to remedy if the tests come back positive. Often, just painting over the old paint with new will be sufficient to prevent children from coming into contact with the lead paint.”

The Consumer Product Safety Commission considers painting over lead-based paint a short-term fix. It recommends paint removal by trained professionals as a long-term solution.

Mark Forsythe, a painting contractor in Florence, said he occasionally has jobs where he must remove lead-based paint before painting a home. “I see it occasionally, but not a whole lot. I’ve had a few jobs where I had to collect the scrapings from the old paint, package it up and send it to a landfill because it contained lead.”

When removing lead-based paint, painters and contractors must take precautions to avoid creating dust, Gray said. Often, simply wetting the paint with water before it is scraped away will prevent dust from being created.

The Alabama Department of Public Health maintains a listing of professional contractors trained in removing lead paint from homes.

If soil is contaminated, it can often be remedied by placing a layer of clean dirt on top, Gray said.

Debbie Smith, executive director of the Tuscumbia Housing Authority, said the agency was required to test all its housing units for lead-based paint in the 1990s.

Only a few posts on the porches of some homes were found to have been painted with lead-based paint, she said. The lead-based paint was removed and the posts repainted. “The Tuscumbia Housing Authority is lead free.”

While there are many homes in northwest Alabama that are painted with lead-based paint, Gray said lead poisoning is most common in larger cities around the state.

“Most of our cases of lead poisoning in children are in Birmingham. There’s a lot of pre-1940s and 1950s homes there and some of them have not been well maintained,” he said. “We have also had some problems in Mobile, Montgomery and Huntsville, where they have a lot of historic homes.”

Of 182 children in Colbert, Lauderdale and Franklin counties tested for lead poisoning in 2005, the latest year records are available, none had high levels of lead in their bodies, according to health department statistics. Of 2,236 children tested in Jefferson County, 23 had lead poisoning. Of 285 tested in Mobile, 18 had dangerous levels of lead in their bodies.

Forsythe said when homeowners keep their homes well-maintained, lead-based paint does not usually become a problem. He said the lead-based paints typically cause problems when homes are allowed to fall into disrepair and the paint begins to flake away.

Before sanding or scraping paint from older homes, Gray recommends it be tested to determine if it contains lead.

“People who renovate or remodel older homes can unknowingly contaminate their children with lead if they don’t follow the proper procedures when removing old paint,” he said.

Gray said paint that flakes off in sheets is probably latex and does not contain lead. Paint that could contain lead tends to flake away in small chips that resemble an alligator’s skin.

In addition to old paint, homes can become contaminated with lead from the dust from some window blinds that were painted with lead-based paints and by being brought in on the clothes or shoes of people who are exposed to the metal at work. “You have lead contamination in new homes, too. If anyone thinks they might have a lead problem, they need to have their home tested.”

Dennis Sherer can be reached at 740-5746 or dennis.sherer@timesdaily.com.