Just to chime in on Scott’s comments. As usual, gents, Scott’s got a good handle on it.
LBP sampling requirements can change from state-to-state, area to area (CRAs), from lender to lender, and from owner to owner (such as HUD vs. privately owned house). Each entity will have either an established set of data quality objectives you must use, or require you to develope the data quality objective and submit them for their review... (there's those pesky sampling data quality objectives again).
Swabs are definitely not recommended since swabs only respond to the upper layer of paint, but the LBPs may be the 3rd, 7th and 12th layer in a 15 layer sequence. Additionally, swabs cannot tell you the amount of Pb in the paint, since the swabs are exclusively qualitative. Finally, the swabs can be prone to false positives. Swabs=trouble.
Properly collected paint chips are absolutely conclusive from an analytical perspective, but destructive. Analysis fee is about $25 a pop. Turn-around time can be as few as 3 days. However, for some protocols, you may be required to take, say, 300 samples per house – do the math – not to mention the time necessary to collect 300 punch samples, bag them, ship them, etc.
Enter Scott’s recommendation for an XRF. Several years ago, I purchased a couple of XRFs. We could take 600 samples per house in eight hours with a two man team. I had both a discriminating XRF and a non-discriminating XRF. The down side to the XRFs were several:
1) Very high initial costs,
2) high maintenance fees,
3) high regulatory compliance problems (Since I was already a radiation safety officer, compliance with the State and Federal radiation regs was easy for me.) Some states (such as Massachessttes) were absurdly ridiculous with their regs, and some areas (such a Indian Lands) may have no regs at all. In many states, you will have to build a special room or enclosure to house the instrument, and prove to the state on an on-going basis that the radiation levels are no more than background, etc.
I recommend that if you want to get into LBP testing, find a local consultant who will sub the work for you.
Cheers!
Caoimhín P. Connell
Forensic Industrial Hygienist
Forensic Industrial Hygiene
(The opinions expressed here are exclusively my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect my professional opinion, opinion of my employer, agency, peers, or professional affiliates. The above post is for information only and does not reflect professional advice and is not intended to supercede the professional advice of others.)
AMDG </SMALL>
I get to say no. 
