If you're thinking about painting your house or apartment, you should be asking yourself this question: What am I doing to my world?
Sooner or later you're going to want to decorate or preserve something by applying a coating of some sort: paint, varnish, stain, urethane, what have you. It's a common urge, a very natural part of living. Just about everybody does it. Don't be ashamed.
If you're like a lot of people, the first thing you'll think of is, What color do I want this thing to be? Then you might say to yourself, Well, what sort of paint will stay on there the longest? Latex? Alkyd? Oil?
But if you're concerned about your environment, you will also be thinking in terms of the effects that paint will have on you and your world – and you'll want to know a little more about the paint you're using. Maybe you'll want to find some practical, environmentally responsible alternatives to standard finishes.
If you're trying to live on this planet in a sustainable manner, with a view to minimizing your ecological footprint, one of the things you'll probably have to do is preserve the shelter you're living in – so that it lasts longer, and so you don't have to go out at odd intervals and cut down trees to make clapboard to seal your home envelope.
You can, of course, live in a cave or a teepee, and thereby rid yourself of the need to paint or otherwise seal your home envelope. That's a great way to limit your ecological footprint. More power to you.
But if you feel that you must live in a house of some kind – even a yurt, sometimes even a tipi – you're going to have to take the aforementioned step of sealing your home envelope in order to better protect it from the elements.
What's out there
Most of the paint available these days comes with a fairly high environmental price tag: yeah, it'll stay put all right, if properly applied. But it might make your world a little harder to live in, by putting more smog in the air (due to the Volatile Organic Chemicals [VOCs] it contains), or it might even make you sick, or shorten your life – in other words, kill you.
That last statement is a little hard to believe, for some people. Kill yourself with paint? What kind of idiotic tree-huggery is this?
But in fact we do know that many paints and finishes in common use today contain solvents and chemicals that, once airborne or put in contact with your skin, promote cancer – are carcinogenic, in other words. The list of carcinogens and neurotoxins commonly found in paint include benzene, formaldehyde, kerosene, ammonia, toluene, and xylene.
And we also know that “causing cancer” is not a matter of a one-time exposure to a given chemical or any other biological miscue. Broadly speaking, cancer is caused by the accumulation of oncogenic information, i.e. little chemical “signals” that tell cells to multiply out of control. (Would that we could find the offcogens!)
What's in itIn every case, the question is, how much oncogenic information have you already been exposed to? Have you ever been exposed to carcinogenic airborne chemicals?
Ever smell paint? Of course. Then you have been exposed to those carcinogens. Now you need to ask, What kind? How often? How long? And how long before your own exposure exceeds that oncogenic limit, and you begin to get sick? Are you playing chemical roulette by putting more carcinogens in your environment?
Or perhaps you've been overexposed to various chemicals over the years, and now any whiff, any taint of that compound or chemical will make you nauseous, dizzy, and just plain sick. This is called “chemical sensitivity,” and it happens to a lot of people. If you're chemically sensitive, you're going to want to limit your exposure to airborne chemicals and solvents, to say the least.
Meanwhile, it's going to rain in your neighborhood someday. If you can't live in a cave or a teepee, you're probably either building or trying to maintain a good-old basic stick-built house – or a cob house, or a straw bale and plaster house, or a concrete house, or what have you. Ultimately you will need to put a coat of something on your home, so that it looks good, yes, but also to ensure that your home will be better preserved, from the exterior walls to the interior spaces.
And you're going to want to minimize or even eliminate the harm that may otherwise do to yourself and your world.
Do yourself a favor; find out what's in your paint. Your planet will thank you.
Which paints to choose? Read more about safe and environmentally friendly paint
