Lead Paint Removal Costs SA 2026 - Get Free Quotes

Lead Paint Removal Costs in South Australia

Managing lead paint in South Australia costs $20 to $50 for a DIY swab kit, $50 to $150 for a laboratory paint sample, $400 to $1,200 for a non destructive whole house survey, $25 to $60 per square metre to seal sound paint in place, $1,500 to $6,000 for controlled removal from one interior room, $400 to $1,500 per window or joinery unit, and $8,000 to $35,000 for a full exterior. That range covers two quite different approaches, and choosing between them is the decision that matters most. The single most useful fact about lead paint is that intact, well adhered, undisturbed paint is generally not a hazard. Lead becomes a problem when it is turned into dust or fume, which happens through sanding, scraping, grinding, burning, high pressure washing, or through paint deteriorating on its own and shedding flakes and powder.

That changes the usual renovation instinct. The cheapest option here is frequently also the safest, because sealing sound old paint under a new coating leaves the lead locked in place and costs a fraction of removing it. Removal earns its cost in specific situations. Where the coating is already flaking or chalking, where a surface is being replaced anyway, where a door or window has been painted so many times it no longer functions, or where a family with young children wants the material gone rather than managed.

South Australia carries a large exposure to this issue simply because of when its housing was built. Adelaide's inner and middle suburbs, the Mid North and Barossa towns, Port Adelaide, Semaphore and the older parts of every regional centre are full of pre-1970 housing, and a great deal of it has been repainted many times over layers that contain lead. This page covers when Australian paint contained lead, who is at risk, how testing works, the five management options, safe and unsafe methods, containment, soil, waste and heritage considerations. It is general information about building work rather than health advice. Anyone with a health concern about lead exposure should speak to their doctor or contact SA Health.

When Australian Paint Contained Lead

Lead compounds were used in paint for centuries because they perform well. White lead gave excellent opacity and durability, and lead driers sped up the curing of oil based paints. The permissible level in Australian domestic paint came down in stages through the twentieth century rather than all at once. Paint sold in the first half of the century could contain very high proportions of lead, in some products up to half the dried film by weight. The limit was reduced to one per cent in 1965, cut again to a quarter of a per cent in 1992, and reduced to the current level of one tenth of a per cent in 1997.

Those dates give you a practical rule of thumb for any South Australian house. Homes built or painted before 1950 should be treated as containing lead, potentially at high concentration, in their older layers. Homes from 1950 to 1970 very likely contain it. Homes from 1970 to 1990 may contain small amounts in some products, particularly enamels and primers. Homes painted after 1997 are effectively lead free unless specialty industrial coatings were used.

The layer matters as much as the age. A 1930s villa repainted five times since is likely to have modern paint on the surface and lead beneath it, which means the surface swab test that comes back clean is not answering the question you asked. Certain elements carry it more often than others. Window frames and sills, doors and door frames, skirtings, architraves, weatherboards, eaves, verandah posts, balustrades, cast iron and steelwork all took enamel and primer systems that were more likely to be lead based than wall paint was.

Why It Matters and Who Is at Risk

Lead is a cumulative toxin. The body absorbs it and stores it, and the effects build with exposure over time rather than appearing after a single event. Young children are the primary concern, particularly under the age of five. They absorb a higher proportion of ingested lead than adults, their nervous systems are still developing, and normal behaviour at that age involves hands in mouths and playing on floors and in soil where dust settles. Pregnant women are the other group specifically identified in health guidance.

The route into the body is usually ingestion of dust rather than anything dramatic. Fine lead dust settles on floors, window sills, toys and soil, transfers to hands, and goes from there. Renovation is the activity that turns a stable situation into an exposure. A weekend of sanding old window frames in an occupied house can distribute lead dust through the whole building, and it lands in exactly the places small children spend their time.

Australian health guidance includes a blood lead level above which further investigation is recommended, and blood testing through a doctor is the way to answer a personal question about exposure. This page cannot do that, and nothing here should be read as a substitute for medical advice. Health information for South Australia is published by SA Health. The reassuring counterpart is that this is a manageable hazard with well established controls. Millions of Australians live in houses containing lead paint without incident, because the paint is intact and nobody is disturbing it.

How Testing Works

Testing before disturbance costs a fraction of dealing with contamination afterwards, and there are three approaches at different price points. DIY swab kits are sold at hardware stores for $20 to $50 and give an immediate colour change result. They are useful as a rough first check with two significant limitations. They test only the surface layer, so a repainted house can return a negative while carrying lead underneath, and they give a yes or no rather than a concentration.

Laboratory analysis of a paint chip is the accurate method and costs $50 to $150 per sample. You cut a small sample through all layers down to the substrate from a discreet location and send it for analysis, which returns a measured concentration. Six samples from different elements of a house is a reasonable survey and runs $350 to $800. XRF surveying uses a portable X-ray fluorescence analyser that reads through all paint layers without cutting into them, giving results on site across many locations. A whole house survey costs $400 to $1,200 and is the most efficient option where you need to know the status of many elements.

Dust wipe sampling and soil sampling are separate tests that answer separate questions, which are whether contamination has already occurred and whether the surrounding ground carries it. Sample the right things. Test each element type separately, since window frames, skirtings, walls, ceilings and exterior weatherboards were often painted with different products at different times, and a negative result on the walls says nothing about the joinery. Hazardous material testing providers frequently offer both lead and asbestos assessment in one visit, which is efficient on a pre-1990 house since both questions apply.

Five Ways to Deal With It

There are five recognised responses and removal is only one of them. Choosing well saves money and often reduces risk. Leave it alone. Where paint is intact, well adhered and in a location that does not take friction or impact, monitoring rather than intervening is a legitimate and frequently recommended approach. Check it periodically, repair any damage promptly, and keep surfaces clean.

Encapsulate. Sealing the existing paint under a new coating system locks the lead in place. This is the most common practical answer and runs $25 to $60 per square metre. It requires the existing paint to be sound, because a coating over flaking paint fails with it, and it needs a system suited to the substrate. Once sealed, the surface is repainted as ordinary interior or exterior work.

Enclose. Covering the painted surface with new material, such as cladding over old weatherboards or a new lining over an old wall, physically separates the lead from the living space. It suits situations where the surface is being upgraded anyway. Remove. Stripping the paint from the substrate eliminates the material rather than managing it. It is the most expensive and highest risk option during the work itself, and it is the right answer where paint is deteriorating, where a surface must be bare for its next use, or where an owner wants the problem gone permanently.

Replace the component. Frequently the cheapest good answer for windows, doors and small timber elements. Stripping a heavily painted sash window can cost more than replacing it, and where the joinery is decayed anyway the calculation is straightforward. Window repair and skirting and architrave specialists handle replacement work. A good contractor will walk you through which of these applies element by element rather than quoting a single approach for the whole house. Windows might be replaced, walls encapsulated, and a deteriorating eave removed, all on the same property.

Safe and Unsafe Methods

Where removal is the right answer, method choice is the difference between a controlled job and a contaminated house. The Australian Standard covering lead paint management for residential, public and commercial buildings sets out accepted practice, and it is the document a competent contractor works to. Australian Standards are published by Standards Australia, and workplace requirements are administered by SafeWork SA. Ask which method a contractor proposes before comparing any prices, since the cheap quote is usually the dangerous method.

Accepted methods share one characteristic, which is that they keep the material wet, contained, or captured rather than airborne. Chemical stripping with a poultice or gel that lifts the paint for scraping. Wet scraping, keeping the surface damp so dust is not generated. Wet sanding. Mechanical sanding only where the tool is shrouded and connected to a vacuum fitted with a high efficiency filter. Careful hand scraping onto sheeting with the debris collected as it falls.

The methods to avoid are the quick ones, and they are worth naming plainly. Dry power sanding without extraction produces enormous quantities of fine airborne dust and is the worst single thing you can do. Abrasive blasting is similar at larger scale. Burning off with an open flame or a high temperature heat gun vaporises lead into fume that is inhaled directly, and the temperature threshold for that is lower than people assume, which is why heat stripping is generally discouraged on lead paint. High pressure water washing spreads contaminated material across the site and into soil and stormwater without removing it from your property.

A domestic vacuum cleaner is also on the list of things not to use. Standard filters pass fine lead particles straight through the exhaust and distribute them around the room more effectively than a broom would. If a contractor proposes to sand your 1930s weatherboards dry, or to burn the paint off your window frames, they have told you they do not understand the material. High efficiency filtration exists for exactly this reason and is not interchangeable with a household machine.

Containment and Clean Up

Containment is what separates a lead job from ordinary painting, and it is where a real quote differs from a cheap one. For interior work, that means sheeting floors and sealing them at the edges, sealing off doorways and vents to isolate the work area from the rest of the house, removing or covering furniture and soft furnishings, and turning off ducted heating and cooling so the system does not distribute dust through the building. For exterior work it means ground sheeting extending well beyond the wall line, closing windows and doors, protecting garden beds and play equipment, and covering or wetting down soil in the drip line. Personal protection for the people doing the work includes disposable coveralls, gloves and suitable respiratory protection, along with washing facilities and a routine for removing contaminated clothing before leaving the area.

Occupants and pets should be out of the work zone entirely, and where young children or a pregnant woman live in the house, staying elsewhere during significant works is a reasonable precaution to discuss with the contractor. Clean up matters as much as the work. Sheeting is folded inward and disposed of not shaken out, surfaces are wet wiped rather than swept, and vacuuming is done with high efficiency filtration. On larger jobs, clearance testing with dust wipes confirms the area is clean before reoccupation, and asking whether that is included tells you a lot about a contractor.

Soil and Garden Contamination

This is the part most homeowners never consider and it is genuinely important on older South Australian properties. Decades of exterior paint weathering, flaking and being scraped during past repaints have deposited lead into the soil immediately around many older houses. It concentrates in the drip line, the strip of ground running along the base of external walls and beneath windows. Soil testing is inexpensive and tells you whether the caution is warranted on your property.

Three things make that matter. Children play in garden beds. Vegetables are often grown along the sunniest wall of the house, which is frequently also the most weathered. And bare soil generates dust that comes back inside on shoes and feet.

Soil testing is inexpensive relative to the question it answers, and it is worth doing on a pre-1970 property where children play in the yard or where you intend to grow food near the house. The practical responses are straightforward and mostly cheap. Grow vegetables in raised beds with clean imported soil rather than in ground near the walls, cover bare soil in the drip line with mulch, turf or paving, wash hands after gardening and before eating, and remove shoes at the door. None of that requires a contractor. Where contamination is significant, soil removal and replacement is the remedy and it is priced by volume. Contractors handling contaminated soil often deal with both lead and asbestos, since older properties frequently carry both, and disposal requirements are administered by the South Australian Environment Protection Authority.

Waste Disposal

Lead paint waste is controlled material rather than general rubbish, and disposal is a distinct line item in a proper quote. The waste stream includes paint chips and scrapings, used sheeting and masking, disposable coveralls and filters, vacuum contents, sanding residue, spent chemical stripper and the wash water from cleaning equipment and surfaces. Wash water deserves specific mention because it is the one most often mishandled. Rinsing brushes, equipment or surfaces so that the water runs into a gully, a driveway or a garden puts lead into the soil or the stormwater system, and stormwater in South Australia generally discharges without treatment.

Correct practice is to contain wash water, allow solids to settle, and dispose of both fractions properly rather than letting them go to ground. On a small job the volumes are modest and disposal might add $200 to $500. On a full exterior strip it is a genuine cost and should appear as its own item rather than being absorbed silently. Requirements are administered by the South Australian Environment Protection Authority. Ask any contractor where the waste goes. Someone who answers specifically has a disposal arrangement, and someone who is vague may be putting it in your bin.

Doing It Yourself

Homeowners do manage lead paint themselves and it can be done responsibly, but the honest position is that this is the category of home renovation where the consequences of getting it wrong are highest. The reason is that mistakes are invisible and delayed. A poorly executed tiling job announces itself. A poorly executed lead removal leaves dust in a carpet and soil in a garden, and the consequence arrives later, in a family member, and cannot be undone.

Where a household includes young children or someone who is pregnant, engaging a contractor is the strongly better option, and that is worth the cost even where the job looks small. Small, contained tasks are more reasonable to take on. Sealing a sound painted surface under a new coating is ordinary painting with attention to not sanding aggressively. Removing a single door and taking it off site for chemical stripping keeps the mess away from the house entirely.

What should not be attempted without proper equipment and understanding is dry sanding of any kind, heat stripping, any work in an occupied house without containment, and exterior preparation that generates dust across a garden. The middle path many people take is sensible. Do the testing yourself, get professional advice on which elements need what, engage a contractor for the disturbance work, and do the ordinary repainting afterwards. Preparation specialists and smaller painting contractors can take on the parts you would rather not.

Lead in South Australia

South Australia has a longer institutional history with lead than most Australian jurisdictions, and it shapes how the issue is understood here. Port Pirie has hosted one of the world's largest lead smelting operations since the late nineteenth century, and the town has been the focus of sustained public health attention and monitoring over many decades. SA Health operates programs in the region including blood lead screening for young children and environmental management measures. Anyone living in or moving to the area should go directly to SA Health for current information instead of relying on a general page like this one.

The relevance for the rest of the state is that lead exposure is treated as a live public health matter here rather than a historical curiosity, and the advice and resources available reflect that. For most South Australian households the exposure route is entirely different and comes from their own house. Adelaide's inner ring through North Adelaide, Norwood, Unley, Prospect, Goodwood, Walkerville and Semaphore is dominated by pre-1950 housing. The middle suburbs carry post-war stock that still predates the 1965 reduction. Regional centres including Gawler, Kapunda, Burra, Strathalbyn, Mount Gambier, Moonta and Port Adelaide hold significant nineteenth and early twentieth century housing.

Adelaide's strong renovation culture in exactly those suburbs is what turns a dormant issue into an active one. The houses most likely to contain lead are also the houses most likely to be having their windows stripped and their verandahs restored. Rental properties add another dimension, since a tenant may have no knowledge of what is in the paint and no control over when maintenance disturbs it. Landlords commissioning work on older properties carry a responsibility to have it done properly, and property maintenance contractors managing older rental stock should be briefed on the age of the building before they start.

Heritage Joinery and the Case Against Stripping

On a heritage or character property there is a conservation argument that pushes against total removal, and it is worth understanding before you commit to stripping everything back. Layers of paint on original joinery are a physical record. A specialist can read them under magnification to establish the original colour scheme and every redecoration since, which is the basis of any accurate restoration. Stripping to bare timber destroys that record permanently.

Aggressive removal also takes original surface with it. Hand made mouldings, tool marks and the crispness of a profiled architrave are exactly what gives old joinery its value, and a mechanical strip rounds all of it off. Encapsulation is frequently both the safer and the better conservation choice on these properties, since it keeps the lead contained and the fabric intact. Where removal genuinely is needed, because the paint has failed or a window no longer functions, careful chemical stripping by hand is the method that preserves detail, and it is slow and correspondingly expensive. Listing status may also affect what you may do. Heritage painting covers the approval questions, and heritage window and sash repair specialists handle joinery where restoration rather than replacement is the aim.

Methods That Make Lead Paint Dangerous

Intact lead paint sitting undisturbed on a wall is not the hazard, and this is the single most useful thing an owner can understand before starting any work. The risk is created by turning that paint into dust or fume, and a handful of common methods do exactly that. Dry power sanding is the worst of them, because an orbital sander on a lead painted surface produces fine dust that spreads through a house and settles where it cannot easily be cleaned. It is also the method most likely to be reached for by someone preparing to repaint.

Heat stripping is the second, and it is worse in a different way. Heat guns and blowtorches above roughly 450 degrees vaporise lead, producing fume that is inhaled directly and is not caught by a dust mask. Anyone who has used a heat gun on old window joinery without knowing what was underneath has had an exposure they were unaware of at the time. Pressure washing exterior lead paint spreads the problem across the whole property rather than containing it. Chips and contaminated water end up in the garden, the driveway and the stormwater system, and the soil contamination it causes outlasts the job by decades. It is a particularly common shortcut before an exterior repaint, which is why it is worth ruling out explicitly when getting quotes.

Abrasive blasting is the industrial version of the same mistake and has no place on a domestic building with lead paint. Domestic vacuum cleaners belong on this list too, since a standard vacuum passes fine lead dust straight through the filter and blows it back into the room, and the high efficiency filtration used for this work exists precisely because ordinary vacuums do not manage it. What competent operators use instead is unglamorous and slower. Chemical stripping, wet scraping, and sanding with shrouded tools connected to high efficiency extraction all keep the material wet or captured rather than airborne. That principle drives the method, and it is why a proper lead paint quote costs more and takes longer than a standard preparation quote on the same surface.

If you take one thing from this page, make it this: do not sand, burn, blast or pressure wash paint on a house built before 1970 until you know what is in it. Testing is inexpensive and the alternative is an exposure you cannot undo. That applies to the owner doing it themselves as much as to a contractor. Testing costs less than a day of most trades and settles the question completely.

Lead in Soil Around Older Houses

The part of lead paint management that gets least attention is the ground rather than the building, and on older South Australian properties it deserves more thought than it usually receives. Decades of exterior paint weathering, flaking and being scraped during past repaints deposits lead into the soil immediately around the house, concentrated in a band along the drip line where water runs off the roof and walls. That band is frequently where vegetable beds get built and where children play, which is what makes it worth knowing about. The contamination is not visible and does not announce itself in any way.

Testing soil is straightforward and inexpensive relative to what it tells you. A laboratory soil analysis runs $80 to $200 a sample, and sampling the drip line separately from the middle of the yard gives you the comparison that matters. Where a property was built before 1970 and has been repainted several times, testing before establishing a vegetable garden against the house is a reasonable precaution rather than an anxious one. Where results come back elevated, the practical responses are simple and do not involve removing the soil. Raised beds with imported soil and a barrier at the base keep growing areas separate from the ground beneath, and moving vegetable growing away from the building line achieves much of the same thing. Ground cover, whether mulch, lawn or paving, stops bare contaminated soil being disturbed and tracked indoors.

Past renovation work is the usual multiplier. A house stripped to bare timber on the exterior at some point in its history will have had a great deal of paint removed, and unless that was done with containment, most of it went into the garden. Owners of properties in the older parts of Adelaide, Port Adelaide, Semaphore, Norwood and the inner north are the most likely to be dealing with this without knowing it. South Australia has a longer institutional history with lead than most states, and Port Pirie in particular has decades of monitoring and remediation programs behind it. That means local health guidance and testing pathways are better established here than elsewhere, and SA Health is the right starting point for anyone with a health concern rather than a building one. This page deals with the building side, and personal health questions belong with a doctor.

Choosing a Testing Method

Three testing routes exist and they suit quite different situations, so choosing the right one first avoids paying twice. The cheapest is a do-it-yourself swab kit at $20 to $50, which changes colour in the presence of lead and gives an indication rather than a measurement. Swabs are useful for a quick screen on a single suspect surface and are not reliable enough to base a removal decision on, since they can miss lead under later paint layers and can read positive on surfaces that are not a practical risk. Treat them as a prompt to test properly rather than as an answer.

Laboratory paint chip analysis is the accurate option at $50 to $150 a sample, and it tells you the concentration rather than just presence. A typical six sample survey covering the main painted elements of a house runs $350 to $800, which is the sensible starting point for anyone planning renovation work on an older property. The limitation is that each sample tells you about one spot, so sampling strategy matters and a technician who understands the building will choose better locations than an owner guessing. Non destructive XRF surveying is the thorough option at $400 to $1,200 for a whole house and it works differently. A handheld instrument reads through the paint layers in place without taking a sample, which means dozens or hundreds of readings across every element rather than six, and it leaves no damage behind. On a heritage property where cutting samples from original joinery is undesirable, it is clearly the right method.

Which one to choose follows from what you intend to do. A single question about one windowsill suits a laboratory sample, a planned repaint of a whole exterior suits a survey, and a heritage property or a purchase decision suits XRF. Spending $80 to answer a question that needed a $600 survey is the most common false economy here. Whatever route you take, keep the result with the property records. It matters at sale, it matters to any tradesperson who works on the house afterwards, and it saves testing the same surface twice in five years when somebody has forgotten the answer.

What Drives the Price

Method is the largest factor, and the gap between encapsulation and removal is severalfold on the same surface. Condition determines which methods are available, because encapsulation needs sound paint underneath and a deteriorating surface removes that option. Extent scales the containment requirement rather than just the labour. A single element is contained locally, while a whole house needs sheeting, exclusion zones, daily clean down and a decontamination routine.

Occupancy raises requirements considerably, and work in a house with young children needs isolation and verified clean up before reoccupation. Waste disposal is a real line item on any significant removal and should be itemised rather than absorbed. Substrate condition underneath decides whether removal is even worth doing. Stripping paint off sound timber restores something useful, while stripping it off decayed timber produces bare rotten timber that then needs replacing, and identifying that in advance saves the whole exercise.

Lead Paint Costs Across Adelaide

Adelaide pricing follows the age of the housing more than the suburb, and the inner ring carries the highest concentration of affected properties. Anything painted before 1970 should be assumed to contain lead until testing says otherwise. That single date does more to predict cost than the postcode does. Ask for that in writing before work begins.

The last row is worth reading as a decision point rather than a price. At that level, replacing the affected components frequently costs less than stripping them and delivers a better long term result. Encapsulation at a fraction of the removal cost is the right answer far more often than owners expect. Testing settles the question inexpensively.

Regional South Australia

Country work carries the usual travel component, with one addition specific to this field, which is that specialist testing and hazardous waste disposal are concentrated in the metropolitan area. Bundling testing across several buildings on the same property is the practical way to absorb it. A specialist will raise it without being asked. That distinction decides the whole method.

Testing is the practical constraint in the country. Laboratory paint sampling works anywhere because you post the sample, which makes it the sensible first step regionally even though XRF surveying would be quicker. Waste transport is the other regional factor, since controlled material generally has to come back toward a metropolitan facility and that distance appears in the price. Grouping work matters here as it does in every trade. A property with windows, a verandah and interior joinery to address should be quoted as one engagement, because the containment setup and the waste run happen once.

The Mid North towns deserve a note of their own. Burra, Kapunda, Clare and the surrounding districts hold a high proportion of nineteenth century housing that has been painted continuously for well over a century, so layer counts are deep and lead is close to certain in the lower layers. Heritage listing and lead paint frequently coincide in those towns, which shapes both the method and the approvals. Establish both positions before planning any work.

What to Look Out For

Test before you disturb anything, and test the right layers. A surface swab on a repainted house answers a different question from the one you are asking, and a laboratory sample cut through to the substrate answers the real one. Be sceptical of any contractor who proposes dry sanding, abrasive blasting, burning off or pressure washing on a pre-1970 house. Those methods are the reason lead paint becomes a health problem rather than a building material.

Ask specifically about containment, decontamination and where the waste goes. These are the items that separate a proper quote from a cheap one, and they should be described rather than implied. Push back on removal as an automatic recommendation. Encapsulation is cheaper, lower risk during the work, and suitable in a great many situations, and a contractor who explains why removal is necessary in your specific case is more credible than one who treats it as the default.

Check that clearance is included on significant interior work. Dust wipe testing after the job confirms the space is clean before your family moves back in, and its absence on a large job is a gap. Confirm insurance and licensing. Lead paint removal is not separately licensed in the way asbestos removal is, so the checks that matter are the building work contractor licence, public liability cover and demonstrated experience with this specific work. Licensing is administered by Consumer and Business Services and consumer guarantees by the ACCC.

Finally, ask about asbestos at the same time. Any house old enough to have lead paint is old enough to have asbestos cement somewhere, and testing for both in one visit is efficient. Residential asbestos removal is a separately licensed trade and should never be bundled into a painting scope. The two hazards occupy the same era of construction and the same preparation stage, so testing for both at once is efficient.

What to Look for in a Quote in SA

A lead paint quote should read like a controlled process rather than a painting job, and if it does not, that is the finding. It should state which elements are affected and on what evidence, the management approach proposed for each, the removal method where removal is proposed, the containment arrangements, the personal protection and decontamination routine, the clean up procedure and whether clearance testing is included, the waste disposal arrangement and destination, the expected duration and whether the property can be occupied throughout, and what reinstatement or repainting is included afterwards. When you enquire, give the age of the house, which elements concern you, whether you have any test results, whether the paint is intact or flaking, who lives in the property including whether there are young children or anyone pregnant, and whether the property is heritage listed. Photographs of any deteriorating paint are useful.

Get three quotes and expect them to differ on approach rather than only on price. Where one recommends encapsulation and another removal on the same element, ask both to explain their reasoning, because that conversation is where the useful information is. Keep the test results and the scope of works with your property records. The next owner, and any future tradesperson, needs to know what is in the building, and a documented history is the difference between an informed decision and another round of testing. Broader background on painting older homes sits in the SA exterior painting guide and the SA painters guide.

This page covers building work rather than health. If you are worried about lead exposure for yourself or someone in your household, that is a conversation for your doctor, and general health information for the state is published by SA Health. SA Health is the right starting point for anything health related, and a doctor for anything personal. Ask what the figure assumes about the surface.