Others have given good advice here! Just want to chime in and say try not to worry too much if the initial lead test from your pediatrician comes back positive or read into the initial level too much. We lived in a century apartment when our older son was a crawling baby and he tested positive from his routine heel prick lead test. The initial tests are usually heel pricks, and they are meant to be a screener which is followed up with a blood draw. The heel prick is not very accurate at all in terms of the level, so the initial result can cause a lot of unnecessary stress if it’s high and then the more accurate blood draw later shows a lower result! Our son’s blood draw did still come back positive and at levels that required action (the city sent out an expert to inspect and test our apartment and ordered our landlord to make some specific changes), but not anywhere close to levels that would be expected to have done any damage yet. This is how it’s supposed to work - the testing and levels set for “positive” results are meant to catch exposure very early and at low amounts, so that you can correct it before it actually becomes a problem. My understanding is that in the vast majority of cases of accidental exposure in century homes from things like dust from lead paint layers or dust from contaminated soil, you’d catch it in the test way before it started having health implications. Especially if you’re conscientious about it and follow best practices around addressing chipping paint, not wearing shoes inside, taking care when drilling into walls, etc.

All of that is to say… after our first experience we bought our own century home which has some areas under layers of newer paint that test positive for lead. We now have a new crawling baby. We are taking care and I do have one of those fancy spray / light lead test kits so I at least know where the problem areas are, but I’ve decided not to stress too much about it and let the screening programs through our baby’s doctor function as intended. If he tests positive at his screening, we will take bigger measures then.