Most homeowners are at least
amateur DIY house painters because they do so much
of their own house painting. Hardly a year goes by
when the homeowner isn’t painting a wall or
repainting the trim in their home. Paint is
something we all have to live with, because it's on
ever wall in our home as well as on the outside. As
amateur painters we should know what paint is make
is of.
Paint is made of three basic
types of ingredients: binders, solvents, and
pigments. Pigments are the chemicals that give the
paint its color. Binders are chemical elements that
bind or hold the pigments to the surface, and
solvents are liquids that thin the binders so that
they, along with the pigments, can be applied to
the surface.
The paint dries and becomes a
permanent coating on the surface when the solvents
evaporate. In years gone by, the best type of
paints used oil or oil-compatible alkyd compounds
as a binder. This made the paint the most durable
and colorful paint that could be commercially
produced.
The problem with oil paint is,
and still is, that the solvents needed to mix with
the oil evaporate into the air so that the paint
will dry. This gives off very toxic fumes as they
evaporate. These oil based paint solvents in the
technical jargon belong to a class of materials
known as volatile organic compounds, or VOCs.
There are all kinds of other
chemicals in paint such as drying agents, pigment
suspension agents, gloss agents, and chemicals to
help the paint stay level and not form drips and
runs.
In recent years, it became
evident that a lot of the paint that people were
using was emitting poisonous fumes for as much as
several weeks after the paint was applied to the
home. Not long after it was discovered that lead in
paint was poisonous and leading to serious mental
disabilities in our children.
As a result, latex paint was
developed because it was a much cheaper (and
sometimes inferior) way to get pigment on the
painted surfaces. Latex paint such as latex/acrylic
and vinyl/acrylic blends and acrylic enamel paints
were formulated and eventually had all of the
qualities of the best oil based paints and are
water based; therefore they have little or no VOCs
evaporating out as they dried.
The paint industry set up its
own certification for low VOC paints, known as the
"Green Seal". Green Seal designated paints must
have VOC contents below 100g/L for gloss or
semi-gloss finish and 50 g/L for flat finish.
Because many municipalities
have outlawed high VOC paints most paint
manufacturers now produce a low VOC line of paints,
and some of the biggest companies have given up
manufacturing high VOC paints at all.
That’s what low VOC paint is.
It is safe to use anywhere in the home without
causing harmful health effects.
Related articles:
DIY
Home Improvement Plus