Bought a 1920s home with lead a paint, had it professionally tested. Some rooms have high exposure 11-12 with XRF (obviously dangerous) while some areas have 0.2-0.5 positive levels but they say are safe even areas marked 0.9 +- 0.2. My wife thinks lead in the paint is still lead in the house and wants it all removed. Idk how to explain why the lower levels shouldn’t matter vs when the higher level are so toxic. While we don’t have kids now, she wants to get pregnant in about 6 months, so the lead exposure is weighing heavily on her thoughts and concerns right now.
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Danger or safety with poisons is a continuum, not a specific number. Poisons in small enough quantities are harmless, and sometimes necessary, while at high enough levels poisons are outright damaging and dangerous. In between is a spectrum going from “not dangerous at all”, “could cause enough damage to matter about one time in a million”, “could cause minor damage sometimes”, all the way to, “DANGER, WILL ROBINSON! DANGER!”.
To simplify this, governmental regulating agencies try to draw a line below which the danger is effectively non-existent. How well they do this is a matter of huge debate. In some cases, they set this number too high, in others, they set this number too low.
And then everybody argues as to which it is in the case of any particular poison.
In this case, here is what I can tell you:
If she has already decided, let your wife have this. Period. This isn’t about who is right or wrong. It is about respecting her concerns about your children. She may be wrong, or she may be right, but it doesn’t matter.
Respect her concerns. Let her have this.
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