A Charlie Brown Moment.

You try to do your best and yet, sometimes....things don't go as planned.

Early Saturday morning I headed to the paint store to pick up some paint for our redecorating project. I grabbed the expensive "no VOC" stuff and asked to have it tinted a vibrant poppy red. Little did I know, the pigment I added to the paint IS a VOC. In fact, the more rich the color the more VOC added to my "no VOC" paint. Hmph.

Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) are added to the paint for a couple of reasons. VOCs are, for the most part, found in the solvent part of the paint. The solvent keeps the pigment (colour) and the binder (sticks the color to the wall) in an easy-to-use liquid state. Then, as the paint dries, it evaporates into the air...polluting our indoor environment with carcinogens that hang around for months. Pigments (again, more so with the darker colors) also contribute to the VOC content of the paint.

The VOC content of my no-VOC paint was mostly likely increased from 5 gm/L to around 10gm/L, which is still quite low really. Even paint marketed as "low-VOC" can have VOC levels of up to 200gm/L. Oil based paints often have VOC levels over 400 gm/L.

Though it's difficult to quantify the health effects of paints with differing VOC levels, experts generally agree choosing paint with VOC levels less than 200gm/L is prudent.

In the end, I guess I didn't do too badly. As Charlie Brown has wisely noted: "In the book of life, the answers aren't in the back". You live you learn.....you screw up and you do better next time.

P.S. I did find a few companies that make no-VOC paints in dark rich colors. They're just a little bit trickier to find.