House & Apartment

The following question was originally submitted to John Roska, a lawyer Someone who represents clients in courts or who gives legal advice and writer for the weekly column "The Law Q&A" in the Champaign News Gazette. The article has been updated to include changes in the law and additional information.

Question

Can I have the landlord An owner of property who rents it out to a tenant test for lead paint? If lead is found, what are my rights? Does the landlord have to remove it?

Answer

Landlords don’t have to test for lead paint. They can only be required to remove lead paint when a tenant A person who rents a space ’s blood tests show someone’s been exposed to lead.

Lead paint laws stress information over elimination. They presume that because lead paint was banned in 1978, only pre-1978 homes pose a lead paint risk. The laws therefore only apply to pre-1978 dwellings.

Both Federal and Illinois law require landlords to give tenants a general information pamphlet about the risks of lead exposure. They can use one from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), titled “Protect Your Family From Lead in Your Home.”

Federal law also requires landlords to disclose what they know about lead in your building, and give you copies of any records or reports about any lead testing done there. If they don’t know anything, they must say they don’t know. Even if tests have shown no lead hazard, you get copies of those records.

Those disclosures are supposed to be made in writing, before you move in. HUD has a form landlords can use. If any tests are done after you move in, the landlord must give you copies of those results, too.

Disclosure is all the Federal law requires. Neither Illinois nor Federal law require landlords to test for lead paint.

Nevertheless, there’s an undesirable back door to requiring testing for lead paint, and for lead paint abatement. That’s if you or your children show the warning signs of lead exposure.

Illinois regulations say the Department of Public Health can inspect for a lead hazard if a child’s blood level tests once at or above 20 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood, and 3 times at 15 to 19 micrograms, or if a child under 3 tests at or above 10 micrograms.

If the IDPH inspects and finds a lead hazard, they can order the landlord to deal with the problem. The landlord is also required to notify all tenants of the problem by posting a notice in common areas of the building. The landlord must address the issue and get a certificate of compliance from the department before entering a new lease. Before entering a new lease or selling the property, the landlord must tell potential tenants and buyers about any lead issues that have been investigated by the IDPH. 

A bad result from a test for lead in you or your family, then, is the only way you can get your apartment tested for lead risks. Otherwise, you can certainly ask the landlord to test voluntarily, but if they won’t, your only option is to pay for your own testing.

Facts about lead: A gallon of lead paint contained 12 pounds of lead, or more.

The Center for Disease Control now considers 5 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood in children to be elevated. In 1975, when the first federal regulations said 30 micrograms was safe, the average for American kids was 15 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood. Today the average is 3 micrograms. The decline in lead levels is primarily due to the phase out of leaded gas in 1986.