Old paint and repaints
The commonest case: coats laid before the ban, covered since, and brought back out by sanding.
LEAD DETECTION
Lead analyser by X-ray fluorescence
Lead cannot be seen. It is read — through the layers of paint, without scraping and without sampling. A portable instrument answers against the wall, where a sample calls for a laboratory and a wait.
No sampling
Measured directly on the wall
Through the layers
Including under later coats
In seconds
An immediate answer on site
What the measurement reads under the paint
Excited by X-rays, lead emits a radiation that belongs to it alone. The instrument looks for neither a colour nor a chemical reaction: it counts that radiation. A more recent coat does not mask it — it attenuates it, and the measurement accounts for that.
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On the wall itself, in its real condition, and not on a detached fragment
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Through the successive repaints, where a surface test sees only the last coat
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By area, in mg/cm², the unit in which building thresholds are read
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Point by point, each measurement located and recorded
A dedicated instrument, built for lead in buildings
Measuring lead in building fabric calls for a source matched to that element and a geometry that holds the instrument flat against the wall. That is what separates a lead analyser from a handheld alloy spectrometer — and what decides the choice.
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Calibrated in Switzerland
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Repaired in Switzerland
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Custom adjustments
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Local support
A building to survey?
Describe the building, its period and what you have to deliver. We will tell you what the measurement allows, and with which instrument.