I want to focus on the danger of solvents used to clean up brushes, skin and work areas of oil paint. Turpentine, White spirits and even Odorless Solvents are very dangerous. Here is the scientific reasoning for this: "Anything that dries (most notably paint), or anything you use to "cut"
the paint does so by off-gassing some sort of solvent. For water
colours, this will mostly be water (harmless) but some of the paint will
also come off as a vapor. For oils, the reason they take so long to dry
is that the molecules are generally much larger. The general rule for
things you ingest into your body is that like compounds stay together.
So anything that is water soluble (water colours) will likely be flushed
from your system quite quickly. Oils on the other hand, will tend to go
into the fat stored in your body. It gets locked up there, but if
you were to lose weight, it can cause all of these toxins to become
released at once. The other problem with oil based products is that over
time you can build up more and more in your fat stores, eventually
getting to toxic levels. I have no idea about the metals that may be
present in both types of paints, but from what I have read they tend to
get locked up in fat stores as well.
Generally
everything that is in the air will eventually get stuck onto the
surface of something (wall, dust, etc). If it is some place like the
floor, then it can repeatedly get kicked up (and thus inhaled). As to
ventllation, this will help, but would need to be (1) very close to
where you are working (2) blowing material outside. If you simply have a
fan, you don't really get rid of anything, just mix it up better, and
in some cases it can make things worse."
Other ways to clean, are to use Turpenoid Natural, Baby Oil and Murphy's Oil Wood Cleaner. None of these products are toxic and a good alternative.
