Environmentally Friendly Surface Coatings: Friend or foe?
Concerns about the environmental impacts of solvent based paints are leading many surface coating companies to replace solvent based products with “environmentally friendly” water based paints. Unwittingly, this change may result in one set of air quality emission issues being replaced with another, depending on the selected replacement product.
This paper explores the air quality issues associated with the growing trend toward use of water based paints. Monitoring data for selected industrial and commercial paints are presented in terms of chemical constituents and, for certain products, odour concentration. The potential implications in terms of local air quality impacts around spray painting operations are illustrated through dispersion modelling case studies.
The difficulties in applying the currently available air quality guidelines where water based paint emissions are involved, is explored. Surface coating constituents that are relevant to air quality risk, hence should be considered when selecting a suitable water-based replacement, are also highlighted.