Painting Without That Smell

New laws push paints to be eco-friendly and low on odor, but do they work as well?
June 21, 2008; Page W11

Recently I repainted a wall in my house. As always, I put down drop cloths and opened windows to vent the headache-inducing odors. But this time I encountered a first: There were no odors.

I was using a "zero-VOC" paint from Home Depot called Freshaire. It's one of the newest entrants in a fast-growing segment of the $21 billion paint and coatings market: paint containing few or no volatile organic compounds. VOCs are solvents that disperse into the air as paint dries. They've long been used to help paint spread evenly and adhere to surfaces, among other performance properties. But VOCs, which largely are responsible for that new-paint smell, can contribute to smog as well as kidney and liver damage, respiratory and memory problems and other illnesses, particularly in children.

Now, major manufacturers and smaller brands alike are loading shelves with water-based coatings that contain fewer or even no VOCs. A former Ace Hardware executive last fall introduced a zero-VOC paint called Mythic. In January, Benjamin Moore completed a national rollout of Aura, a low-VOC paint it says covers most surfaces in a single coat, and the company plans to introduce a zero-VOC formula early next year. Home Depot put Freshaire into nearly all its 2,000 stores this April. Home Depot's merchandise manager for paint, Carl Koebbe, says it's "not out of the realm of possibility" that all paints carried by the chain might one day be zero-VOC.
Business is strong. Yolo Colorhouse in Portland, Ore., which opened in 2005, reports that sales of its zero-VOC paints are up 200% so far this year over last year. Sales of industry pioneer Safecoat, introduced in the 1980s, are growing 30% to 40% annually.
Consumers' eco-appetite is just one driver. New regulations are also behind lower VOC counts. While the federal government caps VOC content in paint at 250 grams per liter (g/L) for flat finishes and 380 g/L for others, the Environmental Protection Agency says it will propose this summer cutting those limits by more than half for most finishes. Meantime, many regions already have stricter counts. Beginning next month, all house paints sold in Southern California must have a VOC content of 50 g/L or less. And manufacturers selling paint in the region will soon have to pay an "emissions fee" for products containing 5 grams or more of VOCs per liter of material, according to a rule passed this month by the South Coast Air Quality Management District.