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Keep Your Family Safe: Don’t Bring Lead Home from Your Job



Details

  • Corporate Authors:
    Wisconsin. Department of Health Services
  • Description:
    You can come in contact with lead through your job or your hobbies. Jobs and hobbies where you might come in contact with lead include: Painters/paint removers. Welders/torch cutters. Building renovators. Radiator repairers. Bridge workers. Shooting range workers. Soldering workers. Plumbers. Fishing sinker and bullet makers. Demolition workers. Auto body paint workers. Battery manufacturing workers. Used electronics recycling (e-scrap) workers. Metal scrap cutting and recycling workers. Pottery/ceramic workers. Lead dust is hard to see and can travel easily on your hair, skin, clothes, shoes, and tools. When you go home, lead dust can get on your floors, your furniture, or in your car where your family members can breathe or swallow it and become poisoned. If you work with lead at home, family members can come into the work area and become poisoned from lead dust. Lead is dangerous for everyone but especially for young children. Most children with lead poisoning do not look or act sick. Lead permanently hurts a child's growing brain and can also be harmful to pregnant women because it can affect the unborn baby. When children breathe or swallow lead, they absorb 4-5 times as much of it as an adult would since their bodies are so small. Children spend lots of time on the floor and tend to put things in their mouths, which makes them more likely to get lead poisoned. Three Ways to Protect Yourself and Your Family from Lead 1. Stay safe at work. Ask your employer if you work with lead. The law says your employer must tell you about anything at work that is dangerous, like lead. Get the Safety Data Sheet (SDS) for each product you use on the job. An SDS is a form that tells what is in a product. Your employer must give you the SDS if you ask for it. Keep children out of workplaces where lead is being used or removed. Use good safety practices to lower how much lead you come in contact with. Wear protective clothing at work so lead dust doesn't get on your clothes. Use cold, damp methods to remove paint. Use ventilation systems to remove lead dust. Never use compressed air to clean up. Instead, damp mop or wet clean using a vacuum cleaner with a high-efficiency particulate (HEPA) filter. To learn more, talk to your safety officer, or contact the Wisconsin Occupational Health Program or CDC-INFO. 2. Don't take lead home. The best way to keep lead dust out of your home is to keep it from leaving work. Shower before leaving work if possible. Otherwise, wash your hands before you leave. Don't bring your lunch box, toolbox, or other personal things into the work area. Don't take work items home. If you do, store the items in a heavy plastic bag away from children. Change your clothes and shoes before leaving work. Keep dirty work clothes and shoes separate from clean clothes. Leave work shoes at work. Bring work clothes or shoes home in a heavy plastic bag, and keep it away from children. Wash work clothes in a load by themselves, then run the empty washing machine to rinse out lead. If you can't change clothes or shower at work, lower the amount of lead dust that comes home. Take off your work shoes in your garage or right as you enter your home. Change out of your work clothes as soon as you get home. Wash your work clothes right away if you can. Wash your hands or shower as soon as you get home. If you work with lead in your home, keep the work area separate from living areas and keep family members out of the work area. If you think lead dust is in your home, talk to your local health department or call Wisconsin Lead Poisoning Prevention at 608-266-5817 to learn how to clean it up. Using a regular vacuum cleaner can make the problem worse. 3. Talk to your doctor if you work with lead. Ask for a blood lead test. Adults who are lead poisoned may have serious health problems without knowing it. Children and pregnant women in your house should be tested for lead. Your doctor, health clinic, or local health department can help get you tested. [Description provided by NIOSH]
  • Subjects:
  • Keywords:
  • Publisher:
    Wisconsin Department of Health Services
  • Document Type:
    Text
  • Funding:
    Cooperative Agreement
  • Genre:
    Lay Publication
  • Place as Subject:
  • CIO:
    National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
  • Topic:
    Workplace Safety & Health
  • Location:
    North America
  • Pages in Document:
    1-2
  • NIOSHTIC Number:
    nn:20066607
  • Citation:
    Madison, WI: Wisconsin Department of Health Services, P-01737, 2019 May; :1-2
  • Email:
    dhsocchealth@wisconsin.gov
  • CAS Registry Number:
    Lead (CAS RN 7439-92-1)
  • Federal Fiscal Year:
    2019
  • Performing Organization:
    Wisconsin Department of Health Services, Madison
  • Peer Reviewed:
    False
  • Start Date:
    20150701
  • Source Full Name:
    Keep your family safe: don't bring lead home from your job
  • End Date:
    20260630
  • Collection(s):
  • Main Document Checksum:
    urn:sha-512:2dffb90b0e87174b3f286890c1d6f479bf6a3f28f572786a8d52db085c7944bbb0a21262568ed01b95ed6db0374ae8901223dbf6214b2163d0267c41da1ed007
  • Download URL:
  • File Type:
    Filetype[PDF - 912.45 KB ]
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