Product Liability – Lead-based Paint

Until the 1940s lead was used as a primary ingredient for many oil-based interior and exterior paints. Lead is a known carcinogen and in 1978, the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) banned lead-based paints from use in house paints. Lead paint is thus particularly common in houses built before 1978, but poses little health risk if maintained properly. However, allowing the lead-based paint to deteriorate poses health risks, especially for children and pregnant women. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), nevertheless, estimates that 83 per cent of all houses built in the US before 1980 contain some lead-based paint.

People can be exposed to lead in their homes, due to lead-based paints chipping, flaking or turning into dust. Lead can also be present in the workplace, in jobs such as lead refining, mining, smelting, sheet metal working, spray-painting or automobile finishing. Other high-risk jobs include workplaces that deal with: batteries, ceramics, brass, bronze, rubber and plastic. Some of the effects of lead poisoning are: learning disability, growth impairment, hearing and visual problems, and brain damage. High levels of lead poisoning can be fatal.

Lead-based paints have been the subject of numerous class action law suits, most of them against the manufacturer as defective products, some as wrongful death suits. However, there are also landlord or seller liability cases. If you buy or rent a house in the US that was built before 1978, then the seller or landlord has to comply with the Residential Lead-Based Paint Hazard Reduction Act of 1992, and failure to disclose lead-based paint in a house is a federal offence.