Studio safety and oil painting

Oil paint­ing is about as dan­ger­ous as clean­ing your bath­tub. Both involve using a few chem­i­cals that, with rea­son­able pre­cau­tions, any intel­li­gent adult can han­dle with­out haz­ard. Artists, how­ever, get a lit­tle excitable some­times and either way over­state the dan­gers involved or ignore them.

First, the oil in oil paint is nat­ural and non-toxic. I’ve seen peo­ple on inter­net forums say that they are switch­ing to acrylic because they’re con­cerned about the tox­i­c­ity of oils. That’s funny, because oil is less toxic than the acrylic poly­mer emul­sion used to bind acrylic paint. All of the dif­fer­ent kinds of oils (lin­seed, wal­nut, pop­py­seed, saf­flower) can be found in health food stores (lin­seed oil is also called flax seed oil). They are edi­ble and have a pleas­ant, mild odor.

Pig­ments are, with a few excep­tions, the same from one kind of paint to another. Some of them are mildly or mod­er­ately haz­ardous to ingest and some of them are, basi­cally, dirt. Cad­mium col­ors are used in most vari­eties of paint, includ­ing acrylic and watercolor—they’re very bad to eat. You can, if you choose, get a few pig­ments in oil that are par­tic­u­larly bad to ingest, but you have to seek those out. They include flake white, gen­uine ver­mil­ion, gen­uine Naples yel­low, and lead tin yel­low. How­ever, the same rea­son­able pre­cau­tions that you should use with other paints—which I’ll describe shortly—will also keep you safe if you choose to use these spe­cialty pig­ments. There are also some paint addi­tives, such as cobalt drier, black oil, Maroger’s medium, and lead napthen­ate, that con­tain sub­stances that are haz­ardous to consume.

I’d like to par­tic­u­larly men­tion lead, because some artists may be con­fused by what they see on the local TV news. The prob­lems that arise with leaded inte­rior house paint are not rel­e­vant to mak­ing art unless you plan to let chil­dren eat your paint­ings (I would strongly rec­om­mend against this). Lead is haz­ardous if it enters your blood­stream, but if you are care­ful, that’s very unlikely. It doesn’t pen­e­trate skin. It won’t hurt you unless you eat it, breathe lead pow­der, rub it in your eyes, or fail to duck if some­one tries to shoot you with lead bul­lets. Paint, medi­ums, and dri­ers con­tain­ing lead don’t give off toxic fumes. Although it may be wise to avoid dry lead pig­ment (as well as other haz­ardous pig­ments in pow­der form), pre­pared mate­ri­als con­tain­ing lead can be quite useful.

I do rec­om­mend that preg­nant and nurs­ing women have noth­ing to do with mate­ri­als con­tain­ing lead, cad­mium, or mer­cury. That doesn’t mean there is any rea­son to give up oil paint­ing, just that you should avoid cer­tain pigments.

The col­or­less pig­ments added to oil paint as exten­ders, such as alu­mina stearate or blanc fixe, are not some­thing I’d put on my break­fast cereal, but nei­ther are they par­tic­u­larly toxic. Nor are the resins or waxes a few com­pa­nies include in their paint formulations.

No mat­ter what pig­ments you work with, you need to make sure that you don’t ingest paint. That means that you must develop safe and con­sis­tent work habits. Never put brushes in your mouth. Never touch your face or hair while paint­ing. Don’t eat, drink, or smoke while paint­ing. Use dis­pos­able gloves if you have cuts on your hands. Make sure your work­space has good ven­ti­la­tion. Wash your hands (includ­ing under your fin­ger­nails) and all of your tools thor­oughly after paint­ing. Clean up your work area when you are done. And always make sure that paint­ing mate­ri­als are inac­ces­si­ble to chil­dren and pets.

Sol­vents such as spir­its of tur­pen­tine, min­eral spir­its, dena­tured alco­hol, and oil of spike should be used with some care. Because they are volatile and evap­o­rate quickly, use them in areas with good ven­ti­la­tion. They are poten­tially flam­ma­ble, so don’t allow open flames where sol­vents are being used. Some peo­ple are very sen­si­tive to the smell of spir­its of tur­pen­tine. Good qual­ity artist’s turps (I like the stuff from Winsor-Newton) are more expen­sive, but smell a lot bet­ter than the awful stuff you get in hard­ware stores. Keep any con­tainer with sol­vents cov­ered when not in use—don’t have jars of medium or brush wash­ing sol­vent just sit­ting open when you paint. Instead, keep the jar closed when you’re not using it and don’t leave brushes sit­ting in solvent—it’s not good for them any­way. Odor­less min­eral spir­its and some other thin­ners don’t have a notice­able smell, but don’t be care­less with those, either. They can cause headaches (which you might not ascribe to a sub­stance with­out a smell) and some peo­ple (includ­ing me) have skin sen­si­tiv­i­ties to them.

If you develop a sen­si­tiv­ity to sol­vent fumes, the first thing to do is make sure you have ade­quate ven­ti­la­tion and are exposed to only very small amounts at a time. If the prob­lem per­sists, you’ll need to stop using that sol­vent. If you find that you are sen­si­tive to all of the volatile sol­vents used in oil paint­ing, you may need to switch to a paint­ing process that avoids sol­vents alto­gether. If you are sen­si­tive to sol­vents, it is pos­si­ble to use oil paint with­out them (some oil paint brands are eas­ier to use unmod­i­fied than others—try Stu­dio Prod­ucts, Doak, or M. Gra­ham). You can buy a jug of cheap lin­seed oil and clean up with that. You can use it to wipe your brushes as well (wash with soap and water after­ward). You can avoid thin­ning your paint, or just add a touch of oil.

One rare but poten­tially severe haz­ard with oil paint­ing is spon­ta­neous com­bus­tion. Dry­ing oils, under rare cir­cum­stances, can gen­er­ate enough heat when dry­ing (oxi­diz­ing) to catch on fire. That’s not a con­cern on the sur­face of a paint­ing or in a closed con­tainer, but in a closed space that allows oxy­gen to enter, such as a trash bin, a pile of rags or paper tow­els soaked in oil or oil paint can com­bust. It is best to either have a fire retar­dant trash can, or throw rags into a con­tainer half full of water. I some­times allow paint­ing rags to col­lect in in the open on a counter. When it’s time to throw them away I put them into a plas­tic gro­cery bag, soak them in water, and put them into the trash for pickup the next day.

If you are one of those rare artists who makes their own paint by work­ing with pow­dered pig­ments, then always use a dust mask, even with pig­ments that are only pow­dered earths. You only ever get one set of lungs.

I think that’s it. Use rea­son­able and sen­si­ble pre­cau­tions, and don’t worry.

Related post

Oil paint­ing with­out solvents