Our family is moving towards being totally green and eco friendly. All natural, no chemicals, renewable, recycled, etc. The cost for most items that fit this is very high, so we're not in the position to use them as testers while we're still learning the craft.

As money allows, we'll pick up items to test out. One thing you might do is write to the non-POV paint companies and other greenery type companies and explain what you're testing out. They might be able to give you more details on their products, share testing they've done or provide you with samples.

We'd love to hear any results you have.

Kind regards,


See & family

I am going to assume that you are British, as I've heard  what we call latex or acrylic paints (waterbased) in the U.S. are called emulsion paints there.

All paints have three components: the pigment, the binder and the carrier.

Pigments consist of the prime pigments that provide whiteness and colors, which depend on the pigments used for toxicity.

The binders are commonly either oils/alkyds, or latex/acrylics. These last two are usually PVA (polyvinyl acetate polyner), which is generally consider nontoxic, but they advise not to drink it or use as an eyewash.

The carrier is what makes it liquid, and it will evaporate to make a solid surface. For the oil/alkyds, it's usually paint thinner. For the latex/acrylics, it's water. (For shellac-based primers and varnishes, it's denatured alcohol, sometimes called shellac thinner; for lacquers, it's lacquer thinner.)

Right off, you know that paint thinner and lacquer thinners aren't all that 'green'. The warnings are a clue. Lacquer thinner can contain various components, most of which are toxic, but the definition isn't stable.

Denatured alcohol is methyl alcohol that has been poisoned with acetone or methanol. It seems to be toxic when wet, and nontoxic when dry. Shellac is used to coat pills (okayed by the FDA in the U.S.).

One paint you might want to consider is Milk Paints, which are literally made from milk.  There is some info here http://www.milkpaint.com/ and googling 'milk paint' will net you much more info.  It is supposed to totally nontoxic, but I don't know exactly what kind of pigments are used.

When you want to know the toxicity (or not) of a substance or product, type in your search box the name or type of product and 'MSDS' which stands for Material Safety Data Sheets. There are hundreds of thousands of these out there, on nearly everything you can think of.

Sue

Great info, thank you!

For those looking for non-POV paints or similar you can try doing a search, there are a lot out there now days. Check these ones out for starters:

http://www.greenplanetpaints.com/

And the milk company Cat mentioned.

"

CatPerson wrote:

Denatured alcohol is methyl alcohol that has been poisoned with acetone or methanol. It seems to be toxic when wet, and nontoxic when dry. Shellac is used to coat pills (okayed by the FDA in the U.S.).

When you want to know the toxicity (or not) of a substance or product, type in your search box the name or type of product and 'MSDS' which stands for Material Safety Data Sheets. There are hundreds of thousands of these out there, on nearly everything you can think of.

"


Actually, denatured alcohol is ethyl alcohol that has been made non-potable, not methyl alcohol.

Any hoo, take the information on a typical MSDS with a grain of salt.  These sheets are intended for laboratories and manufacturers, etc. so the data and information listed on them is worst-case-senerio type stuff.  And they are all written in a way that reduces liability of the company that issues them.  They can sometimes make certain chemicals seem more dangerous than they really are. For instance, this MSDS for table sugar makes it sound deadly: http://www.jtbaker.com/msds/englishhtml/S7394.htm

I just found a book FULL of information on paints and finishes, past and modern, including naturual paints which is the theme of the book.

The Natural Paint Book by Lynn Edwards and Julia Lawless