Does anyone know how you recognise if lead paint has been used on wood or metal? Does it smell?

Cheers

Yes it does smell if you burn it off,but my advise is to use a paint stripper.There are new products on the market now,better than nitromose which is extremely dangerous if you do not know how to use it.do not sand down either the lead particles can be dangerous.Kling Strip Paint Remover
Poultice-type alkali-based paint-remover which is an alternative to using Peel Away 1. Kling Strip removes thick layers of oil-based paints, distempers etc, old varnishes and stains, from timber, render, stone, marble, brick, fibrous plaster, cast-iron and many other substrates. Being a wet process, it also provides a safer means of removing paint containing lead. Kling Strip is a thixotropic paste which, when applied thickly to the surface, will gradually dissolve the paint to a water soluble residue which is then simply washed off. Kling Strip's poultice action draws out paint and stain from the pores of the surface or the grain of the wood, which are then left completely free of paint by the washing. As no scraping is necessary, it's possible to completely remove paint from ornate and intricate profiles without any damage.

Originally posted by designbunny
Does anyone know how you recognise if lead paint has been used on wood or metal? Does it smell?

Cheers

It's quite hard to tell, experts use x-ray fluorescence machine to determine the content of lead. You can sort of tell visually, but not 100% and it's very hard on walls. If it's on wood and metal, it will often come off in thicker splinters, and you can see that it the metalic elements have settled at the base because lead is one of the heaviest common metals next to gold, so you can see in the layer of paint that there is a shinny coat under the colour when broken off.

You can buy lead testing kits now as well, you use swabs on a chipped area. Be very careful with lead, lead is considered a hazardous substance. I really wouldn't recommend anyone except a trained, experienced professional to perform lead removal on a large area.

thanks, thats helped a lot. I will try to get the Kling Strip Paint Remover - do you think B&Q will have it?

It's for a cast iron fireplace, i scraped a very small area, just to see whats under it, and there's white paint on top, cream underneath that, then what looks like a brown goo - its stickier than paint, not sure what it is - maybe very old paint? Then its the iron underneath.

If you're really concerned, consider having it 'dipped' by a professional.

I'd at least get a price before you go to the time and trouble doing it yourself.