The Agent Who Wants the Soil Result Moved to an Appendix
Two weeks after delivering a risk assessment report on a 1912 house under contract, you get a call from the buyer's agent. She says the drip-line soil result (2,100 ppm) and the deteriorated paint on the porch 'will kill the deal.' She asks you to issue a revised report with those items removed from the summary and the recommendation softened to 'monitor.' She mentions that her brokerage manages 40 rental units and could send you a great deal of work. While reviewing your file that afternoon, you notice the laboratory report lists a different property address than the one you sampled, and there is no chain-of-custody form for the four soil samples.
1. How do you handle the agent's request?
Read the worked answer
Decline, clearly and without drama, and put the refusal in writing.
What to say: the report is a record of what was found and how it was interpreted; you cannot remove findings that are inconvenient to a transaction, and you cannot soften a recommendation for a reason unrelated to the science. If the recommendation to monitor rather than control were technically supportable, you would say so to any client - but it is not supportable for 2,100 ppm soil at a drip line next to a porch where children play, and the report will say what it says.
What you can offer: to walk the agent and the buyer through the findings, explain what the numbers mean in context and what the range of response options is (interim controls, soil covering, landscaping, abatement), and clarify that a risk assessment identifies hazards and options - it does not assign blame or mandate a particular transaction outcome. That is service, not compromise.
What to do with the solicitation: decline any arrangement where future work depends on favorable findings, and document the conversation. A report that changes when a large client asks is worthless, and your certification and credibility are the assets at stake. Also consider that the report may be relied on by a buyer you have never met - the party with the least ability to detect an altered report.
2. What do you do about the address discrepancy and the missing chain-of-custody form?
Read the worked answer
Treat the four soil results as unverified data and do not report them as valid findings until the problem is resolved.
Immediate steps:
- Contact the laboratory. Ask whether the address on the report is a clerical error in their report header or whether the samples were logged under another property. Request a corrected report in writing, or the raw data and login records.
- Ask whether retained sample material exists and can be re-analyzed.
- Reconstruct the chain of custody if possible - your field notes, sampler's log, photographs of the sample locations, shipping records. If the documentation cannot be reconstructed, the custody link is broken.
- If the discrepancy cannot be resolved, recollect and re-analyze the soil samples before the report is relied on.
In the report: disclose the issue and its resolution. If you cannot resolve it, state that those results are not usable and that soil lead has not been determined - an honest gap is far better than a number with a broken paper trail. The absence of a chain-of-custody form for four samples is itself a QA/QC failure worth a corrective-action note in your own files; if your firm's procedures did not require one, fix the procedure.
3. Your firm also performs abatement. What should the report say about that, and what limitations belong in it?
Read the worked answer
Conflict of interest. Performing both risk assessment and abatement is not categorically prohibited, but the relationship must be disclosed up front and in the report - before the client reads a recommendation that your firm could profit from. Disclose it in writing, present the range of options rather than only the one your firm sells, and make clear the client is free to bid the work elsewhere. Where a job proceeds, the clearance must be conducted by a certified professional who is independent of the firm that did the abatement; you cannot assess, remediate, and certify your own work.
Limitations that belong in every report:
- The assessment describes conditions on the date of the site visit; lead hazards can be created afterward by renovation, friction, or water damage.
- Findings are limited to areas that were accessible and sampled; concealed or inaccessible areas were not evaluated.
- Sampling is by nature a partial characterization; a non-detect or a passing dust result is not a warranty that no lead is present.
- Laboratory results are only as good as the samples and the custody record.
- The report does not constitute medical advice; blood lead interpretation and case management belong to the health care provider and health department.
Stating these at delivery protects the client and protects you - but they cannot be used retroactively to excuse an altered finding.