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One point is that one should be proactive in testing things on your house and property because no one else is going to do it, which is obviously and unfortunately exclusionary due to socioeconomic factors, as the article points out. Although that only gives you power to test things you have control over.

The other point is basically what you've already made by your elaborations. The entire lead and radon disclosure and right to test is basically theater. The disclosures are toothless, and at least in the market I'm in, you will not get an offer accepted if you keep your right to test. So the whole thing is pointless and only exists to protect industries and governments from repercussions. As you've also pointed out, the current process just creates conflicts of interests.

For radon, testing is cheap and easy. I think short term testing or testing records should be required when selling/buying a house with long term testing recommended (and prior long term test logs provided). For lead, I agree that the situation on testing and remediation is more complicated. For one, it shows the major and long-running repercussions to using and allowing lead in the first place and for so long. I.e., there are consequences to our actions and they can create a mess. In my view, actual knowledge is better than the current situation, which is one of theater, covering ass, and conflicts of interests. The practicalities of enforcing that knowledge I think are tough, but it should be better attempted. I don't think it's reasonable to completely remove lead from houses. That can basically only be done by a gut renovation (to my knowledge). But I do think it's more reasonable to think about testing and logging when it comes to windows, door frames, and other high probability areas, including when these areas were last replaced or last painted.

> [the seller] and the state have washed their hands of the issue

I took this as judgement that the seller or the state should be doing something else. Which seems like you, as the new owner of the house, wanting someone else to have completely solved the problem for you without fully owning that stance and paying to get it done. It seemed like you were passing this judgement having only considered half the issue, which feels like the same perspective that got us this useless do-something disclosure legal dance in the first place.

Ignore that feel-good disclosure song and dance, here is the actual knowledge: if you're buying a house that was built before 1978, it behooves you to assume that every painted surface has been painted with lead paint, period. The "what if" scenario isn't the house having lead, it's the house not heaving lead - a newer-built addition could be a lead-free bonus. But barring any written representation by the seller or negative test, that's the condition of the house.

There are other comments in this thread talking about remediation companies being a racket (not surprising because any time anything gets regulated in such a way, it becomes a captive market). Making testing mandatory would further entrench that racket - eg "your house tested positive for lead when you bought it, and now it's testing negative. How could that have happened without hiring a certified ripoff remediation company?". In reality a P100 respirator, good worksite hygiene, and disposal in municipal trash will get the job done (at least last time I checked a decade ago, disposal regs may have changed).

(I'm sympathetic to the socioeconomic angle, but enforcement of current tenant law as written would actually solve that for lead paint, at least in the states I'm aware of. So unless you're thinking a government program that pays for proactive lead remediation, I don't know what else could be done)

Radon is comparatively cheap to mitigate. Burying your head in the sand about that is kinda dumb.

Completely removing lead is economically unfeasible. When we bought our house, which was built in '72, we replaced all the door jams and window sills. It wasn't as cheap as mitigating radon but it wasn't "tear out all the drywall" expensive, and should generally be good enough as long as you don't let the house completely deteriorate.

The problem is that there is an incentive to not check.

But the state could easily change that. The state could introduce a law where the seller must cover remediation costs if lead is discovered after the sale.

Then sellers would have an incentive to check for lead contamination ahead of the sale.

> what else do you think could happen here?

The seller could actually care about the health of the fellow human being they're doing business with.

> proper remediation costs a lot of money

So what? Not doing it means harming other people. That's criminal negligence.

Inert lead, like asbestos, is safe to be around. It only really becomes a problem if you start taking actions that could allow it to become airborne in some way. There's nothing especially negligent about allowing lead paint to remain somewhere, especially if it's been sealed under layers of non-lead paint as is going to be the case in most situations at this point.