image: acrylic paint review
The potential health hazards of paints, binders, thinners, and pigments continue to be underestimated by users.
Largely unnoticed by the public, it is common for professional artists to contract various kinds of diseases, such as asthma, brain disease, or various kinds of cancer. Ill health is often linked to solvent exposures, for instance in graffity artists working with spray paints, or heavy metal poisoning from cadmium use in oil painters.
There are many health related aspects that are relevant to all three areas, Fine Art, Trade, and DIY Decorating, and these are discussed in pages such as Pigments, Solvent Toxicity and Safe Solvent Alternatives, Reproduction Risks, and Legal Aspects. Some of the information on solvent hazards and solvent safety is based on toxicological research and writings originally published by Art Hazard News and the Health in the Arts Program, University of Illinois at Chicago; additional advice on current research was given by Michael McCann.
The Fine Art Painting Section includes a comprehensive essay by Merle Spandorfer on all the painting media available to artists, including acrylic painting, oil painting, gouache, pigments, mediums, etc., which was first published in Making Art Safely by Van Nostrand Reinhold, NY.
Mark Rothko Seagram series, Tate Modern / Jackson Pollock’s Studio (Namuth) / Roberto Parada: Amy Winehouse / Francesco Clemente: Sun, 1980
This section of SaferPainting.com includes safety-conscious and innovative practice, research, and resources from the vast and complex subject area of Paints and Painting.
We are offering writings and resources especially about artist paints for fine art studio use, such as artist oils, acrylics, or the new water miscible paints, and their application.
There also is information on domestic and industrial paints, toxicity issues, and best practices. Many of the issues and topics in both fields –– artist paints and domestic paint (even nail varnish) –– are linked, and to some degree interchangeable.
www.Nontoxic-Print.com – art+science | Art Safety
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A R T I C L E S
Pick Your Poison – Art and Health
Solvents, Sickness, and Clean Air : the 21st Century
Safer Painting: House Painting, Interior Decorating, and Art
Safe Oil Painting – Goodbye to Turpentine
Robert Parada – staying well as an artist
Toxicity of Solvents – The Science
Hidden Exposures from Acrylics
Colorlab – The Color Biolab by María Boto
Colorlab Chicago – Online Gallery
Colorlab Bio Paints: Research Samples
Experimental Paint and Pigment Research
Water Mixable Oil Paint: A Revolution
Substitutions and Safe Alternatives
Adhesives, Hot Glue, and Spray Foam
Sickness from Spray Foam Exposure
Lead Hazards in Artist and Kids Crayons
Respirators, Gloves, and Eye Protection
Ventilation of Toxic Substances
Safe Substitutions and Alternatives – The Beginnings in 1990
Intriguingly, contemporary artists from Jackson Pollock to Damien Hirst made conscious use of household or ‘trade’ paints (wanting to make less ‘academic’ artworks).
As the paint industry makes chemical advances and changes these trickle down into the more refined, highly pigmented, and more lightfast artist paints, which share most of the base ingredients. Potential health issues from toxic pigments, VOCs, PAHs, thinners, and other ingredients are shared across both areas. Both ancient paint formulations, for instance the common lead paint, or high tech 21st century paint such as Anish Kapoor’s Vanta black may have significant health risks.
So called ‘nontoxic’ materials and paints are currently gaining a strong foothold in the market, and often are not as safe as claimed, but artists and users of paint need some specialist knowledge to make informed choices through their own research; we are hoping to aid this process. For example, recent studies confirm that many of the world’s great artists suffered from lead poisoning (Caravaggio, or Rembrandt, among them).
Regular users of paints, inks, pigments, and solvents are strongly advised to use all protective measures in all their work and look after their health; over thirty years of our research has shown that science and bodies such as the WHO often change advice to lay users on what’s toxic and what is not. (e.g. many materials advertised as ‘safe’ in the 1990s are now classed as ‘toxic’ due to medical findings). There are many instances where materials and processes were, or are seen, or are advertised as safe, benign, and of low toxicity, but are actually known to industry and scientists as being more harmful and dangerous to users than may be acknowledged in the public domain.
A nail salon in Havana, (Wikipedia). According to Mount Sinai Hospital, NY, nail varnish often includes poisonous ingredients such as:
Toluene / Butyl acetate / Ethyl acetate / Dibutyl phthalate // MMA / EMA / formaldehyde;
loss of the nail bed is a well documented disease that can result from acrylic nail varnish use (FDA).
For example waterbased and acrylic paint formulations for trade or artist paints were hailed in the 1990s as ‘the solution’ to the well documented –mainly neurological– dangers inherent in solvent paints and high VOC formulations. As a result many paint users neglected ventilation requirements and started working without respirators. And even the World Health Organization then endorsed the ‘nontoxic’ myth around waterbased paints. Fast forward to 2024. Today’s toxicological knowledge, detailed information about acrylic paint chemistry and the content of waterbased (WB) plastic paint formulations, and medical studies involving house painters and artists, have all contributed to a new understanding which strongly suggests that ‘nontoxic’ labeling should be revoked from many monomeric polymer emulsions and paints. In many cases ‘WB equals nontoxic’ is a dangerous myth, and users may develop sickness regardless. (some examples: asthma from acrylics, nail bed deterioration in users of acrylic nail varnish, fertility issues or miscarriage, or even brain cancer in long term users of styrene based WB or acrylic paints).
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/jun/16/caravaggio-italy-remains-ravenna-art