Environmentally-Friendly Paints and Stains

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PHOTO: DIANE LOFTON
MOTHER's painter Gail Larroca applies tinted shellac to an alder wood cabinet door.

John Vivian discusses environmentally-friendly paints and stains and provides tips on using these products.

In the early 1970s a young couple I know purchased a new kind of tool for removing the layer-on-layer of paint covering the woodwork of the old farm home they were restoring for their growing family. The gadget was an electric heat gun–a kind of souped-up hair dryer that softened and loosened the old paint so a putty knife could scoop it off like butter. The gun didn’t set the paint alight or scorch the wood like a blowtorch, or create the sloppy mess of lye or the noxious odors of petrochemical strippers. And we all thought it was in perfect keeping with our newfound environmental consciousness.

But then their youngest son developed a persistent digestive upset that puzzled doctors till an old-time GP diagnosed it as “painters’ colic.” This is chronic, low-level lead poisoning once common among fine-art painters who shaped their brushes with lips and tongue, and unwittingly ingested toxic “red leads” and “white leads”–carbonates and oxides of lead that have been a major component in paints, putties, and topical ointments for centuries.

It took a while to isolate the source of the problem, but my friends finally (and broken-heartedly) had to conclude that they’d all been absorbing lead volatilized by the heat gun into a breathable aerosol that eventually settled on food, furniture, and playthings. Only the baby was small enough to present severe symptoms.

With medication and an end to heat-gun paint stripping, the boy recovered physically, but developed a mild learning disability that may or may not be a consequence of lead exposure. There is no way to know for sure.

  • Published on Apr 1, 1997
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