A Study of the Influence of Common Area Lead Hazards and Common Area Lead Hazard Control on Dust Lead Loadings in Multifamily Buildings
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Owners of multiunit buildings built before 1978 that have interior common areas and receive certain forms of Federal assistance are generally required to address lead-based paint hazards in those common areas. This study examined the relationships between common area paint and dust lead levels and the floor dust lead loadings in associated dwelling units as well as the effects of lead hazard control treatments in common areas. The study used data from common areas in 145 low-income, mostly pre-1940, multiunit buildings with 342 associated dwellings in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Lead Hazard Control Grant Program at pre-intervention, clearance and one-year post-intervention.
Interior common areas in these multiunit buildings were not as well maintained as the dwellings in the buildings. At baseline (pre-intervention), a higher percent of the interior common areas had non-intact lead-based paint on windows, doors and trim, and other interior components than on those components in associated dwellings baseline (95% versus 85%; 78% versus 67%; and 85% versus 62%). Common areas had pre-intervention entry and interior (i.e., non-entry) floor dust lead loadings more than four times higher than in dwelling units (128 versus 30 μg/ft2; 130 versus 28 μg/ft2) while one-year post-intervention common area dust lead loadings are four to six times that of dwelling dust lead loadings (41 versus 11 μg/ft2; 44 versus 8 μg/ft2). Windowsill dust lead loadings in common areas were twice the loadings in dwelling units at pre-intervention and one-year post-intervention (756 versus 383 μg/ft2; 154 versus 68 μg/ft2).
Interior common area treatments reduced geometric mean common entry dust lead loadings 71% from pre-intervention to clearance, and maintained those reduced levels from clearance to one year post-intervention. Higher-level interventions were not more effective than low-level interventions in reducing pre-intervention levels to clearance or one year post-intervention. One year post-intervention common entry floor lead had a direct effect on dwelling unit entry floors and an indirect effect on dwelling interior floors, as mediated by the dwelling unit entry floor.
This study demonstrates that interior common areas in the multiunit buildings examined contain substantial amounts of deteriorated lead-based paint and dust. Dust lead from those sources migrates into the associated dwelling units. Furthermore, remediation of common areas effectively reduces those hazards. Comparisons of the effects of low- and moderate-level interventions did not identify a difference in effectiveness between the two levels, suggesting that at least in the short-run, lower cost interventions that primarily stabilize deteriorated paint are a satisfactory treatments.
An article (Dixon, et al., The influence of common area lead hazards and lead hazard control on dust lead loadings in multiunit buildings) presenting the full results was published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene in December 2005.
Funding for the study came from a 2002 grant from the HUD Office of Healthy Homes and Lead Hazard Control. For more information on this project, you may contact Jonathan Wilson at jwilson@centerforhealthyhousing.org
This page last updated 6/9/06
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