lead paint removal vs encapsulation

[Alan T]

Does anyone here have much experience with lead paint removal vs encapsulation? I'm pretty close to buying a "new" home in the next month, and one of the beautiful realities of buying any home in New England is that most likely it will be a house older than 1978. Obviously 1978 being the year that homes wern't allowed to be built with lead paint any longer, so it is a pretty good possibility that any home you buy in New England has a good chance of containing lead paint.

Since I have 3 kids, this is a topic of discussion currently between my wife and myself. I think it is a pretty strong possibility that both of us grew up in homes with lead paint (as is likely the case with most of the people my age on this forum), and nothing really severe happened to either of us.. yet we don't really want to take that same chance with any of our kids.

Full lead removal is both time consuming and cost prohibitive, so we've looked into other possibilities and one that seems to be given a pretty strong recommendation is using an encapsulant to "trap" the lead paint underneath a 6 - 10 inch layer.

Based off of what we have learned, right now my game plan likely is something such as:

1) Have house tested for lead paint
2) If lead paint exists in the house, have the affected trims and window facings removed, and the rest of the affected areas of less risk encapsulated..

I'd like to get some thoughts from people who actually deal with lead paint removal or have been through a similar situation though..

[Draft Dodger]

don't know anything about that. I do know that our doctor had us test our kids for lead just because we didn't know what kind of paint was in the house. levels were normal, and we haven't worried about it since.

now, about that asbestos in our basement...