Ah Paint — beautiful, decorative, mood-setting color. These days we just can't live without our favorites to inspire us with the mood we want to elicit. But, unless you're aware of what lurks behind those colors, you could be in for some surprises you didn't bargain for.

Paint is made out of four ingredients:
* Pigments — the color and covering capabilities
* Solvents — the carrier to dissolve and blend all ingredients
* Resins —to adhere to surface and provide durability
* Additives —to enhance performance or extend their shelf life.

Pigments come from many sources. Artists have have used them for more than 30,000 years beginning with prehistoric painters who used the earth's natural resources, giving them muted reds, yellows, browns and black. Many old Masters' paintings are brown toned because they used these natural pigments. The Industrial Revolution brought use of minerals, like cobalt, cadmium, and manganese, which produced just about every color on the wheel. The Impressionists were able to enjoy a huge spectrum of oil colors first packaged up in tubes during their time. Innovation in color chemistry since then has given us more intensley tinted organic pigments and paints — so named 'organic' because they are made from chemical compounds with a central carbon atom. Unfortunately many of these organic compounds are volatile, known as Volatile Organic Compounds, or VOCs.

Solvents are the liquids in paint — and the majority of the ingredients. Solvents are what carry the pigment & resins for application, then evaporate to leave the pigment and resin on your surface. The type of solvent used classifies the paint:
* mineral spirit solvent for oil based alkyd paints
* water solvent for latex, or acrylic-based paints
The majority of VOCs come from the solvents. Mineral spirit based has considerably more VOCs than water based. Better quality paints have a lower percentage of solvents. The less solvents, the better the coverage and less evaporation from multiple coats. For a more environmentally greener paint, choose those labeled higher percentage (around 45%) pigment and resins per volume.

Resins in paint are the binding agents that binds the pigments to the surface being painted. Acrylic is the highest quality resin used in water based paint.

Additives are standard in paint to improve how the paint flows onto and sticks to the surface. Many paints also contain small amounts of chemical fungicides and mildewcides.

Recycled Paint: There are household hazardous waste collection programs dotted around the country for recycling and reselling left over paints — generally from post-consumer latex paint. Paint manufacturers are becoming involved in this recycling process and local governments are becoming both program generators and end users.

VOCs in Paint
There are no clear definitive standards for what Low-VOC really means — or even Zero-VOC for that matter. Although zero sounds like none, it generally refers to just the solvent. When pigment is added, its no longer zero. There are some guidelines however. For example, the EPA has set standards for Low-VOC at a maximum 250 g/L for latex paints or 380 g/L for oil based. Less tolerant is Green Seal's GS-11 standard, which defines the maximum as 50 g/L for interior flat paint or 150 g/L for other interior paint. (For exterior, its 100 g/L and 200 g/L respectively.) Green Seal Certification also includes limited chemical and heavy metal content, durability and performance. For inclusion in the GreenSage Directory, paints must meet the GS-11 standard and/or be of recycled content.

Why limit VOCs?
For the air you breath. The EPA has limited VOCs because they contribute to smog and deplete the ozone. Emissions from architectural paints and coatings exceed 11 billion pounds each year! In California the Air Resources Board claims that over half the VOC emissions come from paints and coatings contributing significantly to LA smog. They have set the strictest legal limits for VOCs in the country for paints, which eliminates most oil-based paints from use in the state.
Of great importance to you, exposure to VOC's in paint have been known to trigger asthma attacks, eye irritation and respiratory problems, nausea, dizziness and countless other symptoms. Prolonged exposure has been linked to multiple chemical sensitivity, kidney and liver disease and cancer.