A. Lead paint degrades over time, creating flakes and dust that are hazardous to children under age 6, who may ingest it if they put their fingers or toys into their mouths. The elevated blood lead levels that result are known to affect emotional and mental development.

Enesta Jones, a spokeswoman for the Environmental Protection Agency, said in a telephone interview that around 300,000 children in the United States have more than 10 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood, the federal standard definition of lead poisoning. The primary culprit is paint that was produced before 1978, the year a new law limited the acceptable level of lead in commercial paints in the United States to a barely perceptible 0.06 percent, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Some countries blocked the use of lead paint in residential applications much earlier — Australia in 1906; France, Belgium and Austria in 1909; and Germany in 1926.

Although lead is a heavy metal that settles into the bones and blood when ingested, it was long used as a drying agent by manufacturers of oil paint, Ms. Jones said, as well as a pigment and an additive that increased durability. It is still used as an additive in gasoline in many parts of the world, and more recently has shown up in children’s metal jewelry. More than 500,000 charm bracelets manufactured in China and offered as a purchase incentive by Reebok were voluntarily recalled last year after a 4-year-old child swallowed a heart-shaped charm and died of lead poisoning. (Information about lead poisoning and how to combat it is available from the National Lead Information Center at 800-424-5323 or epa.gov/lead.)

Last year, my partner and I bought a lead-testing kit (available from hardware or home-improvement stores and at amazon.com) and soon discovered that some of the early 20th-century pieces of farm furniture in our house tested positive for lead contamination. The furniture was charming, but as parents of a 5-year-old who still sucked her thumb, we suddenly felt an urgent need to test every painted chair, table and chest of drawers in the house. From pie safe to milking stool, any object with evidence of lead content was quickly painted with a few layers of oil-based enamel. Though I successfully matched the color of the new paint to that of the original surfaces, the resulting brand-new look wasn’t as pleasing as the crackles and chips that were painted over. The value of the pieces is pretty meager now, but the repainting allowed us to breathe a little easier.

I needn’t have taken such drastic action, according to Randy Florke, a Manhattan-based interior designer who knows his way around flaking paint of a certain age. Countrified furniture with attractively battered surfaces is a major component of the worn-but-chic farmhouse-style interiors in his book “Your House, Your Home: Randy Florke’s Decorating Essentials” (Hearst, 2005).

Mr. Florke’s advice is simple: Whether you are worried about the lead paint on a vintage table or a pressed-tin ceiling, isolate the problem and reduce the risks. “Remove as much of the loose paint as possible and then coat the furniture with a matte-finish polyurethane,” he said. “That way you can stop worrying about the lead content and still enjoy the aesthetic authenticity.” Don’t sand the surface before painting, though, because that will release lead-contaminated dust. Any future chipping or degrading of the new finish will expose the lead paint again.

Repainting or clear-coating will compromise the value of the furniture; an alternative is to put it in the attic until your child is older.

By : By MITCHELL OWENS www.nytimes.com