SECRETS OF PAINT AND STAIN CHEMISTRY

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Krylon has introduced Living Colors, the first latex paint that comes in a spray can. There is no smell, and it dries in 30 minutes.

The very latest coverings are not only benign from start to finish—and emit no fumes at all, but have replaced volatile solvents with heat-producing or atmospheric water-absorption processes.

And they all go on easier and smoother, dry faster, and provide better and longer-lasting coverage than the Lo-tech old-timers or intermediate tech lead-base finishes.

NOT PERFECT

But not all hazard has been eliminated. And, the ingredients in paints and stains are still not revealed on most containers.

We consumers often have a choice between environmentally-hostile and -friendly paints and stains—even if we have to work to ferret out their components. It's up to us, not industry or the government, to assure that our kids are safe and our air pure.

We shouldn't let small children play with those old tubes of oil colors that Mom dabbled with once, or have access to pressurized cans of auto touch-up paint out in Dad's shop. Old cans of putty and cylinders of caulk can contain lead, and newer formulations aren't something a child should be able to get to.

We can also do our share to encourage continued improvement in paint safety. Where you have a choice, buy paint products with a water base rather than a volatile petroleum-derived solvent. If you have the patience to put up with their quirky ways, use finishing products formulated from (often smelly, but harmless) vegetable oils: turpentine (distilled from pine sap), linseed (pressed from flax seed) or tung oil (from an Oriental nut). Choose natural stains and earth pigments over synthesized colors when you can. And, though their use may require a bit more time and elbow-grease, such old-fashioned but lo-tech coverings as lime-and-water whitewash and Colonial-era milk paints offer colors and textures that can't be found in modern coverings. As we'll see below, many of these old-time paints and stains can be cooked up in the kitchen sink from commonly available, inexpensive, and utterly harmless ingredients.

APPROPRIATE TECHNOLOGY

In paints, as in much else in recent decades, we've been too accepting of technologies that were brought to market before their total effect upon our fragile planet could be assessed. Consider my friends' heat-gun paint stripper and white lead-based house paints. Till they aged and began to chip, lead house paints hadn't caused widespread harm. Neither had traditional paint-removal techniques. But in combination, 200-year-old paint and a new electric stripping tool produced a potentially lethal vapor.

MOTHER has long advocated the use of appropriate technologies new or old: whatever works best and with least negative influence on the air, soil, and water. It seems that in paint products, we are safest using old-fashioned preindustrial products and the very latest 21st-century developments—selectively rejecting the overreaching, crude, and often unwittingly hazardous technologies developed during the late 19th through late-middle 20th centuries.

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