This week is National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week — October 25 through 31, 2026 — and the year's theme is about as plain as it gets: "Keep Kids Safe from Lead." The CDC's three messages for the week are get the facts, get your child tested, and get your home tested. If you own or rent an older New Jersey house, that third one lands right on your front porch. Because lead paint in NJ homes isn't a history lesson. It's what's sitting under the last three coats on your trim.

We walk into these houses every week. A 1920s colonial in Montclair with wood siding that's been painted six times. A brownstone in Hoboken where the hallway trim has more layers than the building has floors. A cape in Bergen County where the window sashes stick every spring because paint has built up for decades. None of that means the house is dangerous as it stands. Intact paint, left alone, mostly stays put. The trouble starts when somebody scrapes, sands, or dry-scrapes it — and the dust gets everywhere before anyone thinks to ask what was in those layers.

Why Lead Paint in NJ Homes Still Matters

New Jersey has one of the oldest housing stocks in the country. The state legislature itself has put the number at about two million homes built in New Jersey before 1978, the year lead paint was banned for residential use. Two million. That's not a fringe case — that's whole neighborhoods in Newark, Trenton, Paterson, Jersey City, and Hoboken, plus street after street of colonials and capes in the suburbs.

How likely is lead actually in there? The EPA's long-standing estimates, cited when the federal renovation rule took effect, put it at 87% of homes built before 1940 and 24% of homes built between 1960 and 1978. The older the house, the worse the odds. A 1910 brownstone? Assume it's there until a test says otherwise. A 1975 split-level? Less likely, but not something to bet a kid's health on.

And the stakes are not abstract. Lead dust is invisible. Kids under six are the ones most at risk because their brains are still developing and, frankly, because they put their hands on everything — windowsills, floors, toys that sat in a dusty room during a renovation. A child with lead in their blood often looks and feels fine. That's why the testing message matters so much: you can't spot this one from the curb.

New Jersey's own numbers back that up. In state fiscal year 2022, among the state's large municipalities, Trenton had the highest share of tested children under six with elevated blood lead levels, at 6.1%, followed by Irvington at 5.4% and East Orange at 4.7%. Those are screening figures, not a verdict on any one house — but they tell you this isn't a problem that went away with the ban.

The Federal Rule: What the EPA Requires Before a Brush Moves

Here's the part most homeowners never hear until they're standing in a half-scraped hallway. The EPA's Renovation, Repair and Painting (RRP) Rule covers paid work that disturbs paint in homes and child-occupied facilities built before 1978. The EPA's own guidance for child-occupied facilities puts it plainly: renovations of pre-1978 child-occupied facilities must be carried out only by lead-safe certified firms, using certified renovators trained in lead-safe work practices — and if you're hiring, you should ask to see proof, because certified firms get a certificate and an identification number.

What counts as "disturbing" paint? The thresholds are specific: work that disturbs more than 6 square feet of painted surface per room inside, or more than 20 square feet outside. Window replacement and demolition of painted surfaces trigger the rule no matter the square footage. Think about a normal exterior repaint for a second — scraping soffits, fascia, window trim, a porch rail. You'll blow past 20 square feet before lunch on the first day. On a pre-1978 house, the rule applies to just about every real repaint, not just the big restoration jobs.

What does a certified crew actually do differently? Containment, for starters. Plastic sheeting sealing off the work area, ground cover outside catching chips before they hit the soil, no dry sanding or open-flame burning, HEPA-filtered vacuums for cleanup, and a cleaning verification at the end. It's slower. It costs more. It also keeps lead dust out of the room where your kid sleeps.

One thing the rule does not do: it doesn't cover a homeowner working on their own home. If you're scraping your own place, nobody's going to stop you — but the dust doesn't care who made it. If you're doing it yourself, test first, keep the kids out of the room, and don't dry-sand. Better yet, don't guess.

New Jersey's Own Law: Rentals, Lead-Safe Certificates, and Your Town

On top of the federal rule, New Jersey has its own rental law — P.L. 2021, c.182, adopted as N.J.A.C. 5:28A — that requires residential rental units built before 1978 to be inspected for lead paint hazards. Pompton Lakes' plain-English summary of the law lays out the two routes: a Lead-Safe certificate, which says no hazards were found at inspection time and gets renewed on the state's cycle and at tenant turnover, or a Lead-Free certificate, a deeper inspection that says no lead-based paint is present at all and doesn't expire. Inspections have to be done by a certified lead evaluation contractor or the municipal lead inspector.

The exemptions are narrow, and they're spelled out in the state regulation itself: homes built during or after 1978, units certified free of lead-based paint, short-term seasonal rentals under six months without consecutive renewals, certain long-registered multiple dwellings with no outstanding paint violations, and units holding a valid lead-safe certification. Owner-occupied homes aren't covered by this rental inspection requirement — but that doesn't mean an owner-occupied pre-1978 house is exempt from the federal RRP rule when you hire a crew. Different law, different trigger. Don't mix them up.

If hazards are found during a rental inspection, the owner has to remediate — through abatement or lead-based paint hazard control — and the state points landlords and tenants toward help. The Department of Community Affairs notes that owners or tenants in pre-1978 properties who notice peeling, chipping, or damaged paint may be eligible for free lead-safe repairs through the state's Lead Remediation and Abatement Program. That's worth knowing before anyone reaches for a scraper: there may be money on the table to fix it properly.

And if you're buying? Federal law requires sellers of pre-1978 homes to disclose known lead-based paint hazards, hand over any inspection reports they have, give buyers the EPA pamphlet, and allow at least 10 days for the buyer to conduct their own lead inspection unless both sides agree otherwise. Read that disclosure like you mean it. "Unknown" is an honest answer sometimes — but it's also a reason to test, not a reason to relax.

What to Ask Before You Hire a Painter for a Pre-1978 House

This is the section to keep on your phone when estimates come in. We are not going to claim a certification here that we haven't shown you — and you shouldn't take any painter's word on this, ours included. Ask for paper.

• Are you an EPA lead-safe certified firm, and can I see the certificate? Not "we follow the rules." The certificate, with the firm's identification number.
• Who is the certified renovator on my job, and will they be on site? The rule requires a trained, certified renovator running the work — not just a company name on a truck.
• How will you contain the work? You want to hear plastic sheeting, sealed doorways, ground cover outside, and HEPA cleanup — in the written scope, not as a verbal promise.
• What happens to the waste? Chips and dust go in sealed bags, not the regular trash pile by the curb.
• Will you give me the "Renovate Right" pamphlet before work starts? Certified firms are supposed to. If a painter has never heard of it, that's your answer.
• What's your NJ home improvement contractor registration? Any NJ contractor doing this work should be registered, and you can look it up through the Division of Consumer Affairs in a couple of minutes. Registration isn't the same as lead certification — you want both, and you check both separately.

A quote that's thousands under everyone else on a pre-1978 house deserves a second look, not a celebration. Lead-safe containment, HEPA equipment, and proper cleanup cost real money. A crew that skips them isn't cheaper. They're just billing you less and leaving the dust behind.

Get Your Child Tested. Get Your Home Tested. In That Order, This Week.

The CDC's week runs through Saturday, October 31, and its two testing messages are aimed at different people in the same house. For kids: talk to your pediatrician about a blood lead test. New Jersey is lowering its blood lead reference value for children from 5 to 3.5 micrograms per deciliter, in line with the CDC — which means more kids get follow-up sooner. The state also notes that insurance companies in New Jersey are required to cover blood lead testing for children under 17, and free testing is available from local health departments for children who are uninsured or underinsured. If cost is what's stopping you, call your local health department first. That's what it's there for.

For the house: a certified lead evaluation contractor can test painted surfaces and run dust-wipe sampling — the wipe test is what tells you whether lead dust is actually sitting on floors and sills, not just locked in a layer of paint. An EPA-recognized test kit can tell a certified renovator whether lead is present on a surface being disturbed, but a kit result is not a full home inspection. If you're buying, selling, renting out, or about to renovate a pre-1978 place, get the real inspection. It's the difference between knowing and hoping.

One note on timing, because we don't want to send you anywhere on bad information: local testing events and pop-up clinics shift dates and locations, sometimes at the last minute. If you're near Trenton or Asbury Park, check your city health department's current listings before heading out rather than trusting a forwarded flyer. The week itself — October 25 through 31 — is fixed. The event details are not, and we'd rather point you to the source than to an address we haven't confirmed this week.

The Painter's-Eye View: What We Actually See on These Jobs

A quick walk through the houses where this comes up most, because the pattern repeats.

In Hoboken and Jersey City, it's the brownstone hallway: five coats of trim paint, a stair rail that's been painted since before the building went condo, and a front door that sticks because nobody ever stripped it back. The work is interior, tight, and dusty if it's done wrong — which is why containment in a shared building matters double. Neighbors share hallways, and dust doesn't respect unit lines. If that's your building, our crews at Hoboken Painter and Jersey Painter deal with Hudson County brownstones and pre-war apartments every week — but whoever you hire, ask the six questions above first.

In the suburbs, it's the exterior: a colonial in Montclair or a cape in Morris County where the south-facing siding is peeling and the north side is holding fine. The temptation is to scrape just the bad side fast and move on. On a pre-1978 house, "fast" is exactly how dust gets into the soil by the foundation and the kids' play area. Ground cover, containment, and a real cleanup aren't extras. They're the job.

And everywhere, it's the windows. Old double-hungs with painted-shut sashes, friction surfaces that grind paint into dust every time they open. If your windows are the worst part of the house, say so at the estimate. That's where a lead conversation should start, not end.

If you're pricing the whole repaint, by the way, our NJ house painting cost guide and our interior painting cost guide break down what a complete job costs — lead-safe prep included in the scope, not tacked on as a surprise.

A Short Checklist Before Any Pre-1978 Repaint

Don't start with color. Start with this.

1. Find out the year your house was built — tax records, your deed, or your town's property card will say.
2. If it's pre-1978, test before you scrape. Surface tests, dust wipes, or a full inspection depending on what you're doing.
3. If you're hiring, get the lead-safe certificate and the certified renovator's name in writing.
4. If you're renting, ask your landlord for the lead-safe certificate for your unit — it's part of your lease paperwork in New Jersey.
5. Get the kids tested, even if the paint looks fine. Especially if the paint looks fine.
6. Keep the scope in writing: containment, cleanup, waste disposal, and what happens if a test comes back positive mid-job.

That's it. No drama, no scare tactics. Old houses are worth keeping — half the reason New Jersey looks like New Jersey is that these houses are still standing, still lived in, still getting repainted. The point of this week isn't to make you afraid of your walls. It's to make sure the next coat goes on without putting dust in your kid's bloodstream. Test first, hire carefully, and paint it right.