The EPA no longer publishes a number for how much lead dust is too much in an American home.
It removed the number. What sits in its place is a rule: any reportable level of lead dust, measured by a laboratory recognized under EPA’s National Lead Laboratory Accreditation Program, counts as a hazard. The agency published that change on November 12, 2024. It took effect January 13, 2025, and the compliance date landed on January 12, 2026 in jurisdictions EPA administers directly.
Nearly 45 percent of the housing in Dallas County was built before 1980. That collision is the story. The history of lead paint has been told plenty of times and it has not changed. What changed is the number a laboratory has to beat, and there is no longer a number to beat.
Seventy-Eight Years of Knowing Better
Sherwin-Williams published an internal statement in 1900 calling white lead a deadly cumulative poison. A California appellate court quoted it back to the company in 2017, alongside Henry Gardner of the Paint Manufacturers Association, who told a convention of master house painters in February 1914 that lead dust in a room’s air was “very dangerous to the health of the inmates.”
Europe acted first. France, Belgium, and Austria moved against white lead in interior painting starting in 1909. The International Labour Organisation adopted the White Lead (Painting) Convention on November 19, 1921. The United States never ratified it.
The American industry advertised instead. National Lead began selling paint under the Dutch Boy name in 1907, published The Dutch Boy’s Lead Party: A Paint Book for Girls and Boys in 1923, and followed it with The Dutch Boy’s Hobby in 1926.
Coloring books. For children. About lead.
The medical argument closed in 1943. Randolph K. Byers and Elizabeth E. Lord published “Late Effects of Lead Poisoning on Mental Development” in the American Journal of Diseases of Children, and it took down both assumptions pediatrics ran on: that survivors of acute lead poisoning recovered, and that only those who developed encephalopathy carried lasting damage.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission acted in September 1977, capping lead at 0.06 percent of the dried film for paint manufactured after February 27, 1978. Congress cut that to 0.009 percent in the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008, effective August 14, 2009.
Sherwin-Williams knew in 1900. The rule bit in 1978. Do the arithmetic on those seventy-eight years, then go look at your window sills.
What Is Actually Sitting in North Texas Walls
HUD’s American Healthy Homes Survey II, fielded March 2018 through June 2019, found lead-based paint somewhere in 34.6 million American homes, or 29.4 percent of the stock. Against the older dust standard, 22.3 million of those carry a lead-based paint hazard. Against the tighter 2020 standard, 29.0 million do. Either way, 2.6 million house a child under six.
Prevalence tracks construction year:
- Built before 1940: 85.4 percent
- Built 1940 to 1959: 61.0 percent
- Built 1960 to 1977: 23.6 percent
- Built 1978 or later: 6.5 percent
Now the local stock. Census figures from the 2020–2024 American Community Survey, share of units built in 1979 or earlier:
- Garland: 54.8 percent
- Dallas: 48.1 percent
- Richardson: 43.9 percent
- Fort Worth: 33.7 percent
- Arlington: 33.4 percent
- Plano: 18.4 percent
- McKinney: 7.8 percent
- Frisco: 1.5 percent
Garland against Frisco is roughly thirty-six to one. Richardson surprises people, landing within five points of Dallas proper. And Fort Worth carries more pre-1940 housing than Dallas, 5.6 percent against 5.1, which matters because pre-1940 is where five houses in six test positive.
Dallas County holds 477,895 units built in 1979 or earlier. Tarrant County holds 274,582. Apply the HUD rates to those and the number that comes back is not small.
The Rule That Changed in January
Under the 2021 standard, a floor cleared at 10 micrograms of lead per square foot, a window sill at 100, and a window trough at 400. The reconsidered rule splits the question in two. The dust-lead reportable level, which is what turns a floor or an interior window sill into a hazard, is now any reportable result. The dust-lead action levels that govern post-abatement clearance drop to 5 micrograms per square foot on floors, 40 on window sills, and 100 on window troughs.
EPA projected the change would reach 178,000 to 326,000 children under six every year, plus another 83,000 to 158,000 between six and fifteen.
Texas sits in an odd spot, and this trips up contractors constantly. EPA runs the Renovation, Repair and Painting (RRP) program in Texas directly, because Texas is not an authorized RRP state. Abatement, inspection, and risk assessment certification are a different matter: EPA authorized Texas to run that program on March 18, 1999, and the Department of State Health Services administers it under 25 TAC Chapter 295, Subchapter I. Two programs, two agencies, one state.
That split has a consequence I expect most coverage of this rule to miss. The January 12, 2026 compliance date applies where EPA administers the program. Texas administers its own, and the DSHS rules published on the state’s site still show the 2021 numbers. Before abatement work starts in North Texas, confirm which set of levels the risk assessor and the laboratory are working to. The federal disclosure duties and the EPA-run renovation rule are not in question. The clearance arithmetic is.
For renovation work the line is clearer. Anyone paid to disturb more than six square feet of interior painted surface in a room, or twenty square feet outside, in a pre-1978 home has to work for an EPA Lead-Safe Certified firm with a certified renovator on the job. EPA enforces that against big names. It lodged a proposed consent decree against Lowe’s on November 25, 2025 carrying a $12.5 million penalty across more than 250 jobs in 23 states. Home Depot paid $20.75 million in 2021. Region 6 ran six inspections at contractors and a property manager working the former RSR smelter area of northwest Dallas in fiscal 2024.
What a Seller Owes a Buyer, and What They Do Not
The 1996 federal Lead Disclosure Rule applies to every pre-1978 home sold or leased in Texas. The seller hands over the EPA pamphlet, discloses any known lead-based paint and hazards, produces every report in their possession, and includes a signed Lead Warning Statement in the contract. Signed records get kept three years. A buyer gets ten days to have the property assessed before being bound, waivable in writing. Violations expose a seller to treble damages.
Texas layers its own form on top. The Seller’s Disclosure Notice under Texas Property Code §5.008 lists “Lead Based Paint” among the conditions a seller must address.
Read that form closely and you find the gap. It asks whether the seller is aware of lead-based paint. Nobody is required to test. Not knowing is a complete answer.
Then comes the second gap, the one that catches buyers off guard at the worst possible moment. Under the Texas Real Estate Commission Standards of Practice at 22 TAC §535.227(d)(3)(B), a licensed home inspector is not required to determine the presence, absence, or risk of lead-based paint. The rule names it, alongside asbestos and mold, as outside the scope. Lead sits on the list of things a home inspection does not cover by regulation, not by oversight.
Where Most People Get This Wrong
Intact lead paint buried under four later coats is not what sends a child to a pediatrician. Friction is. Windows that slide in painted jambs. Doors that rub the stop. Stair treads. Porch floors. Anywhere two painted surfaces grind, they manufacture dust, and that dust is a hazard at any level a recognized laboratory reports.
The other source is a homeowner with a sander and a Saturday.
I have watched buyers burn an entire option period arguing over a $400 plumbing repair in a 1962 house in Richardson without once asking what is under six coats of paint on the window sashes. A plumbing repair has a price. Lead dust in a nursery has a consequence.
And the RRP rule, for all its teeth against contractors, reaches only work done for compensation. A parent in Garland can legally take an orbital sander to 1955 window trim with a toddler two rooms away. That exemption made political sense in 2008. It makes less sense now that the hazard standard has no floor under it.
What to Do Next
Buying a pre-1978 home: ask for the seller’s lead disclosure and every report attached to it. Run the ten-day federal window alongside your option period, not after it. Hire a DSHS-certified lead inspector or risk assessor, since that credential is separate from a TREC home inspector license.
Selling one: complete the federal disclosure addendum before the first showing. Pull every painting invoice and abatement record you have.
Renting one out: the disclosure duty attaches to each lease, and so does the recordkeeping. Maintenance crews disturbing paint need EPA certification.
Renovating one: confirm the firm’s EPA Lead-Safe certification number before the first sheet of plastic goes up, and keep the leftovers out of the household trash. There are right and wrong ways to dispose of old paint in DFW.
The paint in these houses is not going anywhere on its own. What moved is the line the government draws around it, and that line no longer has a number on it.
A 1968 house in Richardson or Garland or east Fort Worth is not something to fear. It is a house that deserves a question nobody is required to ask on your behalf. Ask it before you sign.