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, that are 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 –– are linked, and to some degree interchangeable.
A R T I C L E S
Pick Your Poison – Art and Health
Solvents, Sickness, and Clean Air : the 21st Century
Paints for Art and DIY Decorating
Safe Oil Painting – Goodbye to Turpentine
Robert Parada – staying well as an artist
Toxicity of Solvents – The Science
Hidden Exposures from Acrylics
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 it seems, but artists and users of paint need some specialist knowledge to make informed choices; 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).
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/jun/16/caravaggio-italy-remains-ravenna-art