Some recommendations
The Essentials
Artists use their body and mind when working with materials: best use approaches in the studio that respect the human eco system, avoid harm and promote well being, now and in the long term.
Nature, industry, and science provide an abundance of art making materials, but modern medicine and toxicology show that the majority of materials can damage your health leading to sickness.
- It often takes decades for materials to be proven as toxins. Better be safe than sorry and use all necessary precautions and limit the use of toxins if you can.
- Research and use safe substitutions and alternatives whenever possible, and make these ‘staples’ in your art practice and making.
- Use toxic materials or hazardous processes (as safely as possible) when no substitutions are known or available (examples: epoxy glue; lead glazes).
- Many materials are insufficiently tested.
- Often materials become reclassified from ‘nontoxic’ to ‘toxic’ once peer reviewed studies are available (example: ethyl alcohol, 2023).
- Within their profession, and as a result of medical research, toxicologists assume that most materials are up to three times as toxic as is commonly known. If proof of toxicity is not known today, it may be available say in ten years time.
Historically, Asian art took a safer path by relying mostly on water-based inks, paints, and materials
Chemistry is an incredibly complex field with many interactions that have uncertain — often harmful — results.
- Research the toxicity and compatibility of all materials (for instance pigments) before use. Consult multiple sources to cross-reference. If you use AI search results for toxicity, you need to cross-reference the information with a peer reviewed resource, (such as NIOSH); AI results are quick but often incorrect.
- Since the Pandemic, industry started removing safety information from data sheets and product labels, endangering users. Sometimes, product formulations (for instance in some acrylics) have been made more toxic to cut cost.
- Some of the most harmful substances include solvents, acids, and heavy metals — reduce their use if you can. These most reactive materials can cause immediate and long term harm (e.g.: headaches from turpentine, or brain cancer after years of Styrene solvent exposure).
- Engage in regular research and training related to your practices, and make it fun, interesting, scientific, and enjoyable. Safety is about being able to create, not about lack of freedom or feeling burdened.
- Seek the advice of an art safety consultant or resource who can help guide your practice.
- Invest in lab and safety equipment. Examples: Masks, respirators, goggles, filters, fume hoods, ventilation fans, fire extinguishers, signage, fire proof containers and storage, spill kit, first aid kit, neutralizing agents, and so on.
illustrations: https://pxhere.com/
Choose VOC vapor free and water based painting and art practices
- Due to low toxic emissions, many water based paint and ink systems (watercolors, acrylic, etc.) are much safer to use than solvent based methods such as spray paints or gloss paint, which always entail excessive, added, and harmful VOC fumes and vapors (‘Volatile Organic Compounds’).
- VOCs and solvents can immediately overwhelm the body’s protection through ‘vapor pressure’ leading to gradual erosion of internal organ tissues and the nervous system; users often experience this through headaches. Excessive VOCs in a small work space can kill. Also, solvents are numbing to the senses and can be addictive.
- Water based paint and ink systems produce lower levels of VOC emissions that may cause harm through inhalation. VOC emissions are intrinsic to painting, and are the result of basic curing, polymerization and dissolving processes; as molecules and polymers combine, dissolve, or are split apart VOCs are emitted; these should always need to be removed through ventilation and air flow.
Health conscious methods work with the lowest possible levels of VOC vapor emission.
- Acrylics, resins, polymers and plastics have become essential materials (‘plastic fantastic?’). When used correctly acrylics can be part of a safe practice, but industry’s claims of ‘nontoxic’ acrylics are incorrect.
- Quality matters: some cheap, low grade acrylics or latex wall paints may be almost as toxic as solvent based products, due to incomplete polymerization.
- Acrylics always emit some SVOCs (heavy fumes) that are toxic and that may pollute the air inches above the painting surface, but high quality products do this to a much lesser extent, due to full polymerization.
- Cold, dark, unventilated, and damp working conditions can lead to build up of excessive VOC fumes both in acrylic painting and in oil painting, due to incomplete polymerization that leaves volatile leftovers.
- Good polymerization takes place with minimal VOC emissions in well ventilated, dry and warm conditions.
- When unreacted, staple ingredients in polymers such as styrene, or formaldehyde (which are normally bound in emulsion ‘micelles’) can become airborne and may present a strong health risk
The book ‘Pick your Poison’ by Monona Rossol is an essential read that explains why solvents always pose risks, shows the obscure complexities of polymers and plastics, and cuts through many of the common misconceptions that prevent artists from having a more eco-savvy and health promoting practice.
Do ‘professional’ art materials need to be toxic?
- This is a myth! Many traditional art materials are ‘nontoxic’ while being respected as a ‘professional’ and time tested choice (e.g. earth pigments / gum arabic)
- At the same time many highly toxic art materials are not guaranteed to be permanent or ‘professional’ either. For example, Vincent Van Gogh used many kinds of new oil paint that had just been developed, in an experimental way. Some of the chromium colors he used did not last well and degraded quickly.
- Many ‘natural’ materials are toxic or poisonous, in the same way as many — but not all — synthetic chemicals are.
- ‘Natural’ does not equate to ‘safe’.
- Many of the safest art making materials are ‘food grade’ or ‘cosmetics grade’ and edibility can be testament to a substance’s better compatibility with the human body. Some examples:
- egg
- drying oils such as walnut or linseed oil
- honey
- gum arabic
- Alum
- casein
- vine charcoal
- Each year more eco and health friendly products enter the market, but beware of ‘greenwashing’ and mislabeling.
Always work with Pure Water
- If possible, use filtered water for all paint and ink making methods, and in painting. Trace amounts of lead in tap water can spoil delicate paint mixtures and cause toxic emissions through catalytic action.
- Eco savvy artists and makers can base their practice on selected and well researched safe, natural, and sometimes food or cosmetics grade materials that have been tested for enhanced safety. Overall, this approach will greatly reduce health risks from daily working practices.
- Few artists will be able to avoid more hazardous and toxic materials altogether as many ‘natural’ substances or plants are toxic regardless. With these, precautions, masks, gloves, and other protections are essential.
‘Safe’ practices and ‘hazardous’ practices: What is the difference?
- Certain creative processes have a greater intrinsic risk for injury or sickness; examples include traditional lithography, solvent based oil painting and spray painting, glass making, welding and metal casting, fibre glass and plastics manufacture, or historical photography.
- Examples of hazardous chemicals in these fields include hydrofluoric acid, cadmium, mercury or bichromate, benzene, arensic, styrene, tar, Naphtha, epoxy, lithotene, and so on.
- In those fields it may harder to move to safer alternatives, and often industrial engineering equipment and PPE is needed to contain hazards.
- It is best to use double-fail safe measures and try to exceed recommended safety measures, especially at a time when government regulation and industry oversight may have weakened. OSHA or WHO documentation shows that makeshift, unprotected and unsafe practice in the more hazardous art and making processes will inevitably result in sickness, accidents, even death.
- Artists, studios and institutions that choose a methodology of safe substitutions and alternatives are likely to have greater success in promoting good health and wellness. But even with the the best practices in place incidents and sickness may occur, but may be less common, less severe, and easier to recover from.
Benefits to the environment and your budget – using ‘Cradle to Cradle’ Practices
A traditional approach to lab, craft, studio, industry, and workshop practice was often focused on getting fast results. Say in the 1960s left over materials, wastes, paints, solvents and chemicals were often thrown away, discarded in landfill, incinerated, or at dumped at sea, often polluting nature and the environment in the process.
- Ignoring the potential value of any leftovers, byproducts, cut-offs, and wastes also necessitated the constant and costly resupply of materials through extractive mining, drilling, smelting, forestry, and so on.
- This wasteful and expensive approach was called ‘from Cradle to Grave‘
- Eco savvy artists, factories, and makers try to use a ‘Cradle to Cradle’ regenerative approach where waste is minimized, and many materials or chemicals are recycled, reprocessed or refreshed, or used as a resource for new tasks.
- In Cradle-to-Cradle practices all left over materials, cut offs, and ‘wastes’ are being carefully assessed for their potential new value and usefulness.
- Cradle-to-cradle practices are not only good for the environment but often bring substantial cost savings.
- Choose recyclable and safer plastics such as Polyethylene or Bioplastics over ones that are toxic and hard to recycle, e.g. PVC.
- Many plastics, metals, wood, card and papers used in an art studio can be reused and recycled on-site.
- Discarded card board boxes, glass or plastics (items that don’t have a new use) should be placed in special recycling containers; if you’ don’t have your own recycling bins you can take most items to municipal containers free of charge. Many types of card can be cut up into paper squeegees for painting or printmaking.
- Sheets of newsprint, blotters, or paper towels used for drying purposes can be dried and reused, rather than discarded after a single use. (Zea Mays).
- Old textiles can be cut up and reused as shop rags.
- Tetra Pak milk cartons can be processed into intaglio printing plates (Tetra Pak Printing).
- Glass jam jars or gurkin jars with lids can be washed out and used as paint and ink containers
- Plastic milk, water or soft drink containers can be cut open to make paint dishes, containers, or funnel-like tools to use in the studio.
- Many types of left over materials or chemical leftovers can be ground up and reprocessed into home made pigments for painting. (caution is advised).
Paper Recycling through Paper Making
One of the most rewarding recycling processes in an art studio or printmaking lab involves collecting scraps of artist quality paper and thrown away sheets of printer paper (e.g. shredded documents), and work-in-progress artwork or proof prints. These scrap paper collections can be kept in a container, cut up or shredded into small pieces, mixed in a blender, and reprocessed into beautiful hand made paper.
Make Paper at Home:
How to treat remaining wastes
- Some remaining materials and chemical wastes need to be collected and recycled by specialist professional services available in your area, and should never go in the trash or down the drain (e.g. spent etching solutions).
- Etching solutions containing metal ions should not go down the drain, as free metal ions can kill fish.
- Spent acid solutions need to be neutralized, and should not go down the drain, unless ions and solids are removed.
- Many types of waste paint are toxic in waste water and may kill fish down stream; it is easy to dry out waste paint for dry disposal, or to use ‘flocculation’ with Alum to precipitate out.
- Solvents such as Mineral Spirits should never enter waste water as they are highly toxic to aquatic organisms. Even vegetable oils or linseed oil or oil soaked rags need to kept away from waste water for the same reason, and need to be stored in fire proof containers.
Cradle-to-Cradle Design
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cradle-to-cradle_design
© nontoxic-print — art+science, 2026