Moving into 1920s apartment with lead paint with my two cats
As the title says, me and my two cats (one of which has well managed asthma with her inhaler) might move into a vintage apartment. i have always wanted to live in one of these spacious and beautiful apartments instead of the cramped and ugly new builds I’ve been stuck in for years. However, all the places I’ve looked at gave me the lead paint disclaimer.
I always knew deep down this was a thing in any pre 1978 building but I had never considered it as something that would impact my pets until it became a real possibility now. I have been reading up on lead paint and pets/kids (I don’t have kids but cats are small and delicate like small children so a lot of my info is coming from reading about children and lead exposure/prevention), and it seems the major risks are the old windows and drawers and such that would create lead dust via friction when I open and close them. Apparently this lead dust is the main source of lead toxicity in kids (and presumably pets) and its unavoidable without proper lead paint removal.
i will be renting for the foreseeable future so me having any sort of removal done is out of the question. I’m basically at the mercy of landlords encapsulating the lead paint with fresh paint and hoping for the best.
my question is: am I really putting my cats at risk by moving into one of these places? And has anyone actually seen any real cases of pets being poisoned by lead paint from old homes/apartments?
it’s so hard to tell what is my gut telling me something is sketchy vs what is purely my anxiety about my animals…
Posted Aug 14, 2026, 5:50 AM UTC