Improved Technology to Measure Lead in Lead-Based Paint

Lead poisoning is a serious health problem affecting millions of Americans, particularly children.The EPA and HUD consider lead paint to be a primary source of the poisoning. Lead is no longer aconstituent in commercially sold paint and government agencies have called for its removal in olderhomes. A central problem to find lead-paint surfaces is the lack of rapid, inexpensive, reliable methodsfor measuring levels of lead in concentrations as low as l mg per cm2. We will create a new type ofx-ray fluorescent detector that should result in a highly efficient, sensitive detector whose quantitativemeasurements of lead concentration are independent of the paint substratus or the detector energyresolution. The device will make use of newly available, inexpensive inorganic scintillator phosphorsviewed by recently developed small photomultiplier tubes or by PIN silicon diodes. Phase I will provethe principals of the method. In Phase II, we will build and test a prototype of the lead paint detector.