Our neighbors' house is being painted. They belong to a church group, which owns about 20 houses in the community. There never seems to be enough money for maintenance, and many of the houses are pretty needy. This paint work is being done by another group, that sends out nonprofessional volunteers, supposedly overseen by some kind of contractor.

Keep in mind that our houses were built around 1910, and lead paint wasn't banned until the late 1970's, so of course the bottom layers are bound to have lead. At first the volunteers were just scraping the house, but 2 days ago they began power sanding to get the paint off completely. Bad enough, paint flying everywhere. Yesterday late afternoon for cleanup they began using a power blower. I blew up. Lead paint dust clouds went all over their yard and my garden and porch. Unbelievable. I made them stop and gave them an EPA booklet on how to work with lead paint. Are you familiar with the safety guidelines?

http://www.epa.gov/lead/pubs/rrpamph.pdf They weren't doing ANY of this stuff, including protecting their own selves with respirators. Now everyone's at risk, including the neighbors' young children. If you ignore these guidelines your whole family can be poisoned and damaged neurologically. I do try to not interfere, but now the situation is dangerous. So I had a serious talk with the neighbors, and sent them a lot of information. They did get a testing kit and the paint came back positive. Big surprise!

Our back porch is coated with lead paint dust, as are all my vegetables as well as the soil.
AAARRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!

oh no oh no oh no!!!

What can you do????

Do you have a super strong vacuum that will suck it up???

go out with damp paper towels and lift it off that way???

do something before it rains!!!!!!

borrow their power blower and blow it back at them! ...nope, that would be bad.

I am truly panicked for you..that is just so awful!

please tell me what happens!

By the way, we're supposed to have more rain at the end of the week, so it might leach into the soil if it isn't blown/swept away.

I would sue the church, if nothing else, just for fun.

DH and I spent the day hosing everything down, including the sides of the house and the front walk. Of course we're never supposed to use a hose for that since there's a drought, but what can you do? It was a lot of work, taking everything off the back and front porches, etc. I don't know what, if anything, we can do about the soil. I really soaked the lettuce, and we did eat some tonight. And we were both exhausted. I had to throw away some row covers, and they were brand new.

I told the neighbors on the other side, whose 18 month old great grandson spends a lot of time at their house. They were displeased, to say the least.

And I asked for a meeting with the head of the LA operation. The neighbor is actually second in command, and asked if it would be ok to just meet with him and he would forward the info, but I put on my best kindergarten teacher/pack leader voice and said that I insisted on meeting with #1. That will take place next week. I'll let you know how the meeting goes.

Jennifer...so sorry to read about this!

It is frightening to think about how often this must happen when people renovate or remodel "older" houses and buildings...even sheds or other outbuildings.

But the worst thing is that this has happened to you and your family and your neighbors. What could you do but say something? Now you are stuck with trying to mitigate the problem that actually exists, as well as educating others and perhaps taking legal action against the organization and individuals who did the dirty deed.

I am sending good thoughts and lots of white light your way...wish there was something more I could do...keep us posted, please.

Peace

Gail

I don't want legal action. I'm very fond of the family next door. People keep moving in and out, and this family is one of the best. Their older son and my DGS are friends, we exchange fruit and vegies, the wife is a marvelous baker and sells us her organic whole wheat bread that she grinds the wheat for (Yum!!!! Not to be believed!!) and I walk their little Yorkie almost every day. Great neighbors.

This is an opportunity to educate the group about the fact that the housing stock they have chosen to buy is important too, not just the religion they are spreading. And if they damage the houses through neglect, deferred maintenance, and destruction of historic features, all of which they have done, they are damaging the community. And of course if they threaten people's health and the environment through ignorance and not being willing to seek professional advice, that harms the community too. Maybe I'll now have a chance to get these points across. It isn't all about religion!

They have a website, if you want to look:
http://www.worldimpact.org/ and the LA group has a separate website. This is not a fly by night organization. They have a large building nearby with a school, which I have visited, including sitting in on their kindergarten class.

Any suggestions as to what I should say in the meeting?

I think you should just state the facts at the meeting. Nobody tried to be a bad guy here, so noone should feel like a bad guy. Your all trying to help things.

That is excellent advice. Though much damage can be done even if it wasn't on purpose. I have to remember that this meeting won't be the time to talk about all the ripping out of historic features and architectural elements, or decades of neglect, etc.

The meeting is set for a week from Monday at my house. So the head honcho will see a properly restored house for what is probably the first time.