Lisa
Hello,
We recently bought a rustic house that is finished with beautiful barn siding on the walls. They have quite a bit of remnant red paint. They are from an old barn in Iowa, and I have no idea how old they are. In much of the area, the red color seems to have seeped into the wood. I. Other parts, you can peel some of the paint off.
My concern is this: We have small children and are concerned about any possible toxic metals in the red paint.
We have tested it for lead with a home 3M kit and it came back negative. I have read that all paint before 1978 was lead-based. Should we test again with another product? What is your experience with old red barn paint? Also, any other toxic metals we should be concerned about with the red paint? I wish I knew how old it is. It is definitely more grayish/brown than red. All the info I can find about barn paint is about the 1700’s and 1800’s time period.
Thank you very much,
Lisa
Hi Lisa, Thank you for your question. The short answer is yes, I would test it again, and in the mean time, I would keep that area of your home off limits to the little ones. There is really no way of knowing what the paint might contain. Not all paint before 1978 contained lead, many farm paints were home made, from oils like linseed oil, turpentine, and some sort of pigment, often iron oxide. But that kind of paint soaks in to the wood, it doesn’t peel off. It’s more of a stain than a paint. So any original paint is probably not an issue, but many barns were re painted over the years with commercially available paints, and those often contained lead. The fact that you have pealing paint tells me it was likely repainted, if the paint doesn’t contain lead then it’s probably a more modern paint, but I would re-test it none the less just to be sure.
It might be a good idea to send a sample in to a lab to be tested, here is a link to labs that specialize in that from the EPA. https://www.epa.gov/lead/national-lead-laboratory-accreditation-program-list