Are there truly earth friendly paints available?
There are many paints emerging on the market that are very low in VOC’s or contain alternative volatile organic compounds known not to cause cancer; but you need to be careful. Some manufacturers replace the nastier VOC’s with ammonia and acetone – also human and environmental poisons. The challenge for manufacturers is that it’s very difficult to remove all VOC’s in paint. A paint with volatile organic compounds in the range of 5 g/l or below can be labeled “Zero VOC”; but it still contains these chemicals. According to the research I’ve done, even milk based or citrus oil based paints need potentially toxic additives to be stable or prevent spoiling and the earth friendly ingredients themselves can react in conjunction with the other paint ingredients and the air to form toxic compounds. The problem is that we expect so much from paint. When I whack a coat of paint on the wall, I never want to have to do it again, well at least for a decade, and the paints which have the least impact
