Renovating old houses - health risk?

[CantaffordPros]

I recently bought an apartment that is almost 80 years old and have been renovating it with the help of the fam and am now feeling anxious about a few things...

First is the paint - the ceiling and wall paints were cracked at some places and chipping away. To prepare for painting we chipped away at the cracked paint and found that it left a deep indent into the wall as there must have been 30 coasts of paint! So we then had to sanded it down a little, fill with plaster, leave it to dry, re-sand it and then painted over.

We did not wear protection (eg breathing mask) consistently in the course of doing this and am worried now as I read an article that old victorian building with chipping paint may have led and that this has led to poisoning in children...

The other thing we have been sanding away at is the bedroom floorboard which has a thick (maybe 40cm) border of some blackish tar like substance. Anyway did not think twice about it but came across one of the threads in this forum from a couple of years ago where someone said that the substance was a paint probably linseed oil and led based...

Given that we were chipping and sanding away at this paint for 2 - 3 days should I be worried - getting blood tests done for led levels etc? How big a risk / issue is this in Australia? Has anyone experienced anything similar?

 

[mattysupra]

as i understand, there could be a health risk in almost every building. For instance in the flooring trade we was still installing asbspestos (sorry cant spell) tiles upto about 5 years ago!


Personally i think we all get exposed to harmfull stuff day in and day out. I dont think i would worry about a couple of days sanding but if this was a day in and day out job i would be worried.

Seek professional advice before you do more work.

 

[ladylola]

It's always a good idea to wear a mask when sanding down but I don't think a couple of days will have done any real harm.
It's hard to be specific about Australia (nice place we have relatives in Victoria) but it's likely to be similiar to the UK.
One thing to watch is green paints. These were sometimes but not always made with arsnic salts. One theory about Napoleons death is arsnic poisioning from the wallpaper that was damp in the humid conditions.

 

[RedHerring2]

Just googled and found this site, maybe some help. Unfortunately it's a UK site but you should be able to find similar stuff in Oz.

http://www.coatings.org.uk/default.asp?edit_id=305&nav=293&branch=5