Pennsylvania's Childhood Lead Testing Law Is About to Change: What HB 916 Means for Landlords

On June 8, 2026, the Pennsylvania House of Representatives passed House Bill 916 by a vote of 157–44. The bill would amend Act 150 of 2022 – the state's current lead-poisoning-prevention statute – to move Pennsylvania toward universal childhood blood-lead testing. Three days later, on June 11, 2026, it was referred to the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, where it now sits.

Source: Pennsylvania General Assembly, House Bill 916 (2025-26 session) history (2026)

By our reading of Pennsylvania's legislative history, no universal childhood-testing bill has ever advanced this far. That is worth a landlord's attention – but not for the reason it might first appear. HB 916 is a testing bill, not a certification bill. It does not require a lead-safe or lead-free certificate for any rental property, and it does not change your rental-license renewal. This guide explains why a bill that never mentions your rental license is still the clearest signal that demand for lead certification is rising, not falling.

What HB 916 would actually do

Pennsylvania's current lead law is Act 150 of 2022, which took effect January 2, 2023. It began life as Senate Bill 522, and in the version that finally passed, the universal-testing mandate was stripped out before the vote – leaving a statute that funds and coordinates lead-poisoning response without requiring that every child be tested.

Source: Pennsylvania General Assembly, Senate Bill 522 (2021-22 session), enacted as Act 150 of 2022 (2022)

HB 916 is the attempt to add back what Act 150 left out. Introduced March 17, 2025 by Rep. Jose Giral (D-180, Philadelphia), it was amended and reported from the House Health Committee on April 28, 2026, then passed the full House on June 8, 2026. Its purpose is to make childhood blood-lead testing universal rather than discretionary. We are describing the bill's direction, not its fine print: the exact screening-age and opt-out mechanics live in the bill text, and we do not paraphrase provisions we have not read line by line.

Source: Pennsylvania General Assembly, House Bill 916 (2025-26 session) history (2026)

Why a testing bill matters to a landlord

Start with what HB 916 is not. It is not a rental lead-certification mandate, and no statewide bill in this session creates one. Your certification obligation, if you have one today, comes entirely from your municipality's own ordinance – not from Harrisburg. That has not changed, and HB 916 would not change it.

The connection runs through the data, not the statute. A testing mandate does one thing above all others: it finds cases. In 2023, Pennsylvania confirmed 7,840 children under age six with an elevated blood lead level – and because only a share of the state's young children are screened at all, that confirmed count understates the true number of affected children.

Source: PA Dept. of Health, 2023 Childhood Lead Surveillance Annual Report (2023)

Universal testing would push that identified-case count higher, because it would screen children who are never tested under the current voluntary regime. More identified cases mean more named children, more affected neighborhoods, and more of the local political and public pressure that produces municipal lead ordinances. The mechanism is simple to state: testing mandates find the children; ordinances force the fixes. HB 916 is the first half of that sequence advancing further than it ever has.

The pattern that produced today's ordinances

Every lead ordinance Keystone Lead Certified works under exists because identified lead-poisoning cases created local pressure to act. That is not a forecast – it is the history of the five Pennsylvania jurisdictions we already serve: Philadelphia, Norristown, Chester, East Lansdowne, and Yeadon. Delaware County alone passed three of those in three years – East Lansdowne in 2022, Chester in 2023, and Yeadon in 2025 – and its health department has publicly urged every remaining municipality in the county to follow.

Source: PA Lead-Free Promise Project, Yeadon ordinance release (Delaware County Health Department narrative) (2025)

A statewide testing law would feed exactly that machine. It would not write a single municipal certification rule, but it would surface the case data that municipalities cite when they write their own. For a landlord, the takeaway is not that HB 916 imposes a new obligation – it does not – but that the ordinance-by-ordinance expansion already underway has a fresh tailwind behind it.

The other bills in the same lane

HB 916 is not moving alone. Three other measures in the 2025-26 session would also amend Act 150, and, like HB 916, none of them creates a rental-certification mandate:

• SB 850 (Sen. Lisa Baker, R-20, with bipartisan co-sponsors) – referred to Senate Health and Human Services on June 24, 2025, with no movement since.
• HB 1270 (Rep. Shelby Labs, R-143) – in the House Health Committee since April 21, 2025, stalled.
• HB 2041 (Rep. Labs) – referred to Children and Youth on November 17, 2025 with 36 bipartisan co-sponsors, stalled.

Source: Pennsylvania General Assembly bill histories: SB 850, HB 1270, HB 2041 (2025-26 session) (2026)

The list matters because it shows the direction of travel – several bipartisan attempts to widen childhood lead testing, in both chambers, in a single session. HB 916 is simply the only one that has cleared a chamber. See the individual histories for HB 1270 and HB 2041.

Source: Pennsylvania General Assembly, Senate Bill 514 (2023-24 session) history (2024)

What this means for you right now

Nothing about HB 916 changes what you owe today. Your obligations come from your town, not the state. If you own a pre-1978 rental in Philadelphia, Norristown, Chester, East Lansdowne, or Yeadon, you already need a current lead-safe or lead-free certificate at rental-license time, exactly as you did before June 8, 2026. If your property is not in a covered municipality, HB 916 does not add a certification requirement – it is a testing bill.

What HB 916 does tell you is which way the ground is moving. More testing surfaces more cases; more cases produce more local ordinances; more ordinances mean the demand for lead certification keeps widening rather than receding. This guide is the first entry in Keystone's PA Lead Law Watch, our running record of Pennsylvania lead-law developments that could reshape a landlord's obligations. We publish our own inspection pricing in full on our pricing page – no call for a quote.