Introduction
When it comes to deciding on a paint, one common consideration is health. Part 1 introduced the concept of paint safety; Part 2 reviewed a paint product from Behr, and Part 3 reviewed a Glidden product in terms of health impacts. I found that both had potential carcinogens. In this blog post (part 4), I will now consider a commonly advertised “safe” paint from ECOS. This blog will compare all three paints in terms of health impacts and then I’ll make a final conclusion about paint purchases.
ECOS
ECOS advertises itself as “NON-TOXIC” on its website and provides this as one reason to use their products. This blog post will challenge the claim of “non-toxic” by reviewing an SDS for an ECOS product called ECOS Eggshell Paint [2]. It will look at seven areas related to health: Hazards identification, composition, handling and storage, exposure controls, physical and chemical properties, toxicological information, and regulatory information.
Hazards Identification
Immediately noticeable is the phrase “This chemical is considered hazardous by the 2012 OSHA Hazard Communication Standard (29 CFR 1910.1200).” It is considered a Category 2 carcinogen by those standards. A category 2 carcinogen means that there is “Limited evidence of carcinogenicity from studies in humans (corresponding to IARC 2A/GHS 1B)” [3]. Immediately, this violates the non-toxic claim on the website (opinion). Another note is that “67.5 % of the mixture consists of ingredient(s) of unknown toxicity.” That means that there is insufficient research to determine toxicity. Similar to the Glidden product [4], there’s not enough research to be able to determine, at this stage, how toxic the ingredients in this product are.
Composition
When it comes to composition, “titanium dioxide” forms “10-30%” of the product’s weight (similar to Behr’s product [5]). This ingredient was the one in Behr’s case that made the product a 2B carcinogen.
Handling and Storage
What’s notable with ECOS is that their handling and storage information is much shorter. Glidden has four lengthy paragraphs about storage and safety [4] whereas ECOS only has a few sentences [2]. Could the company be trying to avoid scaring people with safety considerations (opinion)?
Exposure Controls
In this section ECOS is also far less comprehensive in its safety information. Where Glidden has a lengthy section about hand protection (thus showing that, though they understand their product is toxic, they’re concerned about protecting people), ECOS doesn’t even mention it and simply writes “Wear protective gloves and protective clothing.” Relatively speaking, they're not putting in as much effort into educating consumers as Behr and Glidden are.
Physical and Chemical Properties
On their website, they claim “Zero VOC” and “Conforms to CDPH 01350 (VOC emissions test taken at 11, 12, & 14 days for classroom and office use)” [1]. However, on their SDS, they write, “VOC Content (%) No data available.” This is a contradiction. How can you claim zero VOCs and unknown VOC content at the same time? An explanation for this may be that the paint industry and SDSs as part of it, are regulated by Canadian safety standards whereas advertising standards are less strict, thus allowing claims like “zero-VOC” and “non-toxic” (speculation).
Toxicological Information
Notable moments are “Specific test data for the substance or mixture is not available” in terms of toxicological effects. “No information available” is also repeated multiple times in this section. This again shows that most paint ingredients may seem safe, only because we aren’t yet certain of how toxic they are.
Regulatory Information
Some notable moments here are “Chronic Health Hazard - Yes” under US regulations. Under Mexican regulations, Titanium dioxide is not listed as a carcinogen hazard, while under US regulations, it is. What this says is that the process of identifying which ingredients are toxic and which ones aren’t, may be a political process as much as a research one (my opinion, not supported by evidence).
Further comparisons between brands
Ironically, ECOS, which positions itself as a health-conscious brand, turns out to be less than honest in its marketing and its presentation of SDS materials (overall opinion). I would not recommend their products over Glidden or Behr. Of the three, I value Glidden’s forthcoming approach in their SDS sheets and their attempts to educate consumers through these data sheets.
Conclusions
Painting is an important, yet dangerous, task that homeowners must accomplish in order to revitalize their homes. Work should be performed by individuals that can protect themselves from health hazards while working. There are numerous safety precautions that can be taken while painting, and these will be the subjects of future blog posts. At this time, I can comfortably say that the best way to protect yourself while painting is to 1) strictly follow product recommendations with regard to matching primers and paints as well as with usage procedures and 2) use the maximum allowable protective measures whenever possible while at work. I do not believe that searching for a non-carcinogenic or non-harmful paint is a productive use of time because such paints may not be readily available and we simply don’t have enough information about toxicity to make decisions about paints that we might be able to make about our food, for example.
References