Title: The Health Risks of Painting with Oils, Acrylics, and Watercolors - Artsy
Headings: Your Paints May Contain Toxic Chemicals. Here’s How to Avoid Harming Yourself and the Environment
Creativity
Your Paints May Contain Toxic Chemicals. Here’s How to Avoid Harming Yourself and the Environment
Photo by Jenna S.
Know what your paints are made of
Paint swatches.
Be aware of toxic pigments
Paint and materials.
Make your studio safe
Follow best practices for disposing of paint and materials

Content: acrylic paints are composed of pigments, plus a vehicle and a binder. Vehicles are the liquid part of the paint that holds the pigments in suspension, and binders act like cement, allowing the pigments to stick together and form a paint film. In oil paints, the vehicle and binder are one and the same: highly refined vegetable oils such as flax (which the paint world calls “linseed”), safflower, poppy, and walnut. These oils dry slowly through oxidation, creating a hard film of paint when they come in contact with air. A skin forms over the paint surface, while the paint underneath continues to harden over time. Used alone, oil paints don’t release any chemicals into the air as they dry. But, if you’ve added solvents or mediums containing petroleum distillate to them during the painting process, their harmful contents will evaporate into your studio space. Acrylic paints contain the same pigments as oils, but their vehicle is acrylic polymer emulsion, and their binder is acrylic polymer. When they dry, the components of the vehicle evaporate—meaning that water, propylene glycol, and ammonia are released into the air.