S01E07 - Behind the Regulations: Understanding the Persistence of Asbestos and Lead

Transcript

Welcome to Moose Tales. I'm Jon with Two Moose Home Inspections. And there are some short home inspection topics I want to open up about. So, let's dive right in

At Two Moose Home Inspections. We don't test for lead, and we don't test for asbestos. Now, it's not that it's a difficult test to test for. I mean, the procedures are very clearly laid out by the EPA.

All of the test kits are very easily accessible, readily available. Anybody could do it. It's not that difficult. There are some concerns that letting asbestos once disturbed are then dangerous. And so, I don't want to do anything that would be dangerous to the people that are currently living in the home. And I also don't want my inspectors to be doing anything dangerous that could affect their health.

I mean, obviously, with proper PPE and proper procedures, everybody should be perfectly fine when testing for lead and asbestos. So that's kind of a moot point. So, then I can say, well, it's because we are home inspectors, and we don't want to do anything that would be destructive to the home because who's giving us permission to go to that home?

Well, really, we're getting permission kind of through a third party. You know, the person who's buying the house is the one that's giving us permission to go into the house because they were given permission by the people that are selling the house. And we're never really having a handshake or written agreement with the people selling the house. So ideally, I would love to just not destroy somebody's home or like scrape or damage or do anything like that.

However, the reality of the situation as to why it is that we do not test for lead and asbestos. This is because.

there's just no way that I, as a self-respecting individual, could say I'm giving your home a clean bill of health.

There is no lead in this home. There is no asbestos in this home. It's just impossible. And as we go a little bit deeper, you're going to understand that even today you probably have asbestos in your house today. And so, what's really concerning about that is I don't want to give people a false sense of security by saying, we do a lead test, and we didn't find any lead.

Well, maybe we just tested the wrong section. We do an asbestos test, but we didn't find any asbestos. well, again, maybe we tested the wrong section, and I don't want somebody to do a full remodel or to do something where they're going to be putting these substances into the air because that is going to be very unhealthy for them.

And it's much easier for me to say we just are not going to touch this because if your house is built before 1978, then you have lead and asbestos. And the reality is if your house is built before 1991, you probably have lead and asbestos. And you know what? Right now, today your house probably has asbestos in it.

And so, let's dive a little bit deeper into why this is such a slippery slope.

Back in 1976, the Toxic Substances Control Act basically said, hey, we understand as the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, that there are things that are toxic and there are things that are bad. And you know what? As the government, I think that we should probably try to protect our people. I think that would be a great thing.

And so, we start seeing that lead is on that list. Asbestos is on that list; radon is on that list and a whole bunch of other chemicals. And it's very much an ongoing, constantly updated type of law or regulation. And so, what we have is that people are under the false impression that asbestos is banned in the United States.

It's not banned in the United States. And there are lobbies that push for it to be banned. And then there are lobbies that push back to say that it cannot be banned or should not be banned. And so asbestos exists in the United States, and that's just the thing. So, let's talk about let everybody says, well, you know, from like 1978 and onwards.

Okay, great. Yeah. So, you have laws and then the laws end up having a date that the law goes into effect and then you have a date at which the law can be enforced. And enforcement then is determined state by state for a lot of these laws. And so, state by state, we have different states that are having to implement their enforcement protocol for how to enforce these laws.

How much has slipped through the cracks? You know, I don't even know. But what we're going to talk about is that, sure, we said lead. We don't want to have lead paint. You know, there's all this, this like lead paint chipping off of the walls. The kids are eating the paint chips. It's cognitively messing up the kids. And so that's just, you know, bad.

We don't want to have lead in our homes. Great. But it actually started schools and other things like that and then eventually went to the to the residential side of things. So, then the other part of that is we say everybody's like, okay, cool. Yeah, well, no lead paint. That's great.

However, did you know that houses all the way back until 1988?

So, everybody thinks, well, 1978, we're good. Well, it was 1988 whenever actually we said, well, the water coming to your house probably shouldn't have lead pipes supplying you with the water. And I mean, that's something that, you know, back in the day the Greeks figured out like a long time ago in the days of Aristotle or whomever.

And so why is it that we have lead pipes coming in? Well, because lead pipes are malleable. Lead pipes are easy to get the water into the people's houses. And so, then what the law actually said was that you can have a lead pipe that has up to 8% lead in it, that that was still acceptable in 1988.

And so now, of course, we see that everything is PEX piping and unfortunately with PEX piping, you know, you still have micro-plastics, you still have all these other like ongoing issues. I mean, no matter what happens, it is, well, plastics were here and then there was, you know, a whole issue with BPAs. And so now it's BPA free.

Then we have all these different plastic products and now there's microplastics and then, you know, I mean, realistically, if you go outside and you touch poison ivy, it's going to be harmful to you. There is no such thing as something in this world that is completely benign. If you have too much of any one thing, even if you drink too much water, it will kill you.

There are things in this world that are going to hurt us and there are things that we can try to avoid. But check this out. If in 1988, all these houses said, now we have to limit the amount of lead that is inside of these houses? Well, the problem is, is a lot of these rules said, well, if you are a seller of these products, you can continue using what you have in your inventory.

You just can't buy any new stuff like this. So, if you are already at this supply company giving plumbing pipes to whomever you know, Bob the builder can go ahead and grab this stuff. Now he has a whole inventory of pipes that might last for the next year, the next two years, the next three years, who knows? Nobody else.

So, another part would be is you might be inside of a house, in that house that you're inside of. The pipes might look like they are packs or might look like they're copper. But actually, connecting to the main waterline could still be lead. And when we say that, well, if your house is built before 1978, you have lead, and if it wasn't, then you're fine.

That's not actually accurate. Your house probably just has lead in it. And in fact, if you're going to buy a spigot for the outside, a faucet for your hose, then that hose bib faucet, whatever spigot you want to call it, probably has lead in it. And that's why if you're going to drink from one of those, you really want to let it run for a little bit before you drink from it.

So that way to let isn't right there on you. Now granted, obviously radon decay products will put lead inside your house. Obviously, radon mitigation, but lead is in your house. We're just going to accept that. But as of 1988, there are significantly lower amounts of lead. And as of 1976, you know, ten years prior, we started getting rid of lead paint.

So now let's talk about asbestos. So asbestos, they basically said, okay, cool, we don't want to have asbestos. And then going all the way back to that 1976, you know, act that was put into place about toxic substances, they were saying, okay, cool, asbestos, we don't want to have this business is well,

We then banned some other things back in 1989 and that gets repealed back in 1991. And

So right now, there are some asbestos products that are banned outright. And of course, new asbestos products have to be approved by the EPA. But asbestos still exists.

And so, if we say that all the way back to 1991 is whenever things got overturned, but really 89 that time period, we're telling people 1976, which then really translates to enforceability of 1978. That's whenever you should stop seeing asbestos in the home. But again, they were given the opportunity that if you have asbestos products, you're allowed to put that into people's homes for a period of time to get rid of the inventory that you have.

I mean, it's just it's crazy. And so, if you bought a house prior to 1990, it probably has let in asbestos.

So, then you have Johnson and Johnson, who has had over 38,000 lawsuits put against them because their talcum powder, which is made of talc, had asbestos in it. And why is that? Well, because whenever you look geologically, you know, talc is right next to asbestos. It all kind of forms in the exact same vein?

Pretty much. And there's a very likely chance that there's going to be cross-contamination. So now they're powder is made of corn, corn starch, I think. And so, whenever we talk about asbestos, we have putting on babies, putting on adults, we are putting powders on to these people. Up until just a year or two ago that had asbestos in it, let alone other products that are out there that have asbestos.

So, your home could potentially still have airborne asbestos in it because of the baby powder, the talcum powder, all that kind of stuff. And so, I don't know I don't know what to say about this, that I, I don't want to do lead tests that I don't want to do asbestos test, because really, there's no way for me to say that your house is safe and free of these things.

And even if it was, there are so many ways to contaminate a house. There are so many things that can hurt you in a house. And I mean, realistically, this is just one of hundreds of things inside of your home. Whenever we talk about air quality, whenever we talk about materials that are used, whenever we talk about radon and radioactive things, there's just so much going on inside the home, even things like electricity or carbon monoxide or just about anything, your home can hurt you.

And so, I just don't ever want to give somebody the false sense of security that whenever they say, hey, I am buying this house and I want to make sure it doesn't have lead and doesn't have asbestos, I just can't make that promise to you. And that is why Two Moose Home Inspections does not do those tests.

That's a pod.