Stop With the Sander in Your Hand

Oct 21, 2026

Part 4 of 5 in our National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week series, October 25 to 31, 2026

Drop cloths are down, the sander is plugged in, and the old trim in the kids’ room is already half scuffed. You only meant to knock the gloss off before dinner. In an older home, you’re one pull of the trigger away from sanding lead paint and spreading its dust across the floor your children play on.

Pause for five minutes. It’s the most useful part of the job.

DIY is outside the rules, not outside the risk

Contractors paid to disturb paint in pre-1978 homes must be certified and follow lead-safe work practices. Homeowners working on their own homes generally are not covered by those rules. They do apply if you rent out part of your home, run a childcare setting there, or renovate homes to sell for profit.

Either way, sanding and scraping old paint creates fine lead dust. It settles on floors and sills, and young children pick it up on their hands. The paperwork doesn’t change the physics.

Before you start

List the surfaces you’ll sand, scrape or cut: trim, windowsills, doors, a section of wall.
If the home was built before 1978, test each of those surfaces.
Plan for dust: seal off the area, use wet sanding and scraping where you can, and clean up with a HEPA vacuum and damp cloths rather than a broom.
Keep children and pets out of the room until the cleanup is finished.
If the job is large or a test comes back positive, consider hiring a certified renovator.

How to test for lead paint with LeadCheck

LeadCheck swabs are made for exactly this moment. There’s nothing to send to a lab, and you’ll have a result in minutes.

Use a knife to make a small angled cut through the paint, so the older layers underneath are exposed.
Crush the swab at the two marked points and shake it.
Squeeze until the yellow liquid appears on the tip.
Rub the tip on the cut area for 30 seconds.
If the tip or the surface turns red or pink, lead is indicated.

Test every surface you plan to disturb. A result on the door frame tells you nothing about the windowsill.

What a LeadCheck swab can and can’t tell you

It screens the paint on one surface you choose: wood, ferrous metal, drywall or plaster.
A negative result is the reliable one. EPA recognition means the kit rarely misses regulated lead paint that is there.
A positive result means treat that surface as lead paint, or have a certified professional confirm it.
It is not a blood test, a dust test or a clearance for the whole home.

Positive or negative, what next

Positive: don’t dry sand or scrape that surface. Use lead-safe methods throughout, or bring in a certified renovator.
Negative: regulated lead paint isn’t present on that surface, so you can go ahead with sensible dust control.
If the job has grown beyond a weekend, or you’re worried about dust elsewhere in the home, call a certified professional.

And if you’re worried that a child has already been exposed, that’s a question for your pediatrician and a blood test, not a swab.

Put the sander down for five minutes

The job will still be there once you’ve checked. Dust, once it’s made, is much harder to deal with. Test first, plan for the dust, then decide whether this is still a weekend project.

Get LeadCheck swabs from an approved distributor. For step-by-step instructions, visit leadcheck.com or luxfermagtech.com, or call 800-503-4483.