How harmful is it to burn wood that's been painted?

My boyfriend and his dad were using chainsawed pieces of old fence that was painted brick red on one side, for fire wood. I said wait, there's paint on it! But both of them were like, eh. It's fine. It's not like it was new paint or anything, it was very old, but I still thought that was bad...





What do you think?How harmful is it to burn wood that's been painted?
It is quite possible that the paint was made with pigments that contained lead. That was very common until about 30 years ago.





But, if there was any lead in the paint, and if any of it was released into the air in a form that might be harmful, I suspect that most of it went up the chimney and was not really a danger - but - that is only a guess on my part.





There are little test kits that are sold in many hardware stores that are specifically doing a test for lead in paint. It is a little swab that you wet with some of the liquid in the kit, then rub on the paint. You only get a result that indicates: none, a little, a lot, so it is only a general indication.





If you can find one of those (I'd ask at a customer service counter for lead paint test kit - not very expensive, as I recall), and if any of that wood is still around, you could test it.





If it shows a lot of lead, then you could say, ';See, I told you it was a bad idea!'; - if nothing shows up, you could just toss the kit and say nothing :-) .How harmful is it to burn wood that's been painted?
It can't be very good for you, I'd say if they start feeling sick or get some weird side affects then tell them to get to a doctor as soon as possible.
possibly a fire hazard