COLUMN ONE : Cadmium Fight Just Won’t Fade : Artists want an exemption from solid-waste bill that includes a ban on the source for bright colors. Environmentalists oppose any special treatment.

When U.S. Sen. John Chafee introduced a wide-ranging solid-waste bill last fall, artists saw red.

And yellow and orange.

The legislation, aimed at stemming the flow of trash to the nation’s landfills, includes a ban on cadmium pigments to help prevent toxic substances from seeping into ground water supplies. Alarmed, artists quickly informed Chafee (R-R.I.) that cadmium is an irreplaceable source of their brightest and most fade-resistant red, yellow and orange colors.

“It is like asking a chef to cook without garlic, or a writer not to use e’s, m’s and t’s,” said Robert Cottingham, a prominent photo-realist painter in Newtown, Conn. “We are making a statement about this age, about our time. We need all the tools we can get. It would be chemical censorship.”

“You can’t tell me that you can find a substitute that will be the same color,” said Charles Thompson, a Cal State Long Beach professor of fine arts. “If you’re painting poppies in a field like Monet did, you’re not going to get that intense red without cadmium.”

Scores of artists have protested in letters to Congress, managing to get Chafee to promise them an exemption. But they won’t rest, they say, until the exemption is put in writing and finalized when Congress takes up the bill next year.

The debate pits freedom of expression against public health concerns at a time when many Americans--and consequently their politicians--are rallying around the cause of protecting the Earth. It marks a rare instance in which the largely liberal interests of artists and environmentalists, who normally stand together, are worlds apart.

Artists are adamant about their need for cadmium paints, and the environmentalists are equally strong in their determination to see ground-water contamination reduced.

Jan Beyea, a scientist with the National Audubon Society, said that, taking the artists’ position to an extreme, “You could argue that you should be able to tear people open and use their red blood for artworks.

“The question is, ‘Where does the line between freedom of expression and public health come?’ I’m sympathetic to the hardship of artists, but we all have to pay a price.”

Chafee’s measure would prohibit the use of cadmium-based pigments in the United States to help keep cadmium, a toxic heavy metal, from winding up in dumps--and leaching into drinking water supplies.

Cadmium pigments become a threat when products colored with them are incinerated. If the ash is not properly contained, experts say, the cadmium can seep into ground water. The pigments also can cause contamination in the recycling process, they say.

“The heavy metals do all kinds of nasty things, and cadmium is no exception,” said Environmental Protection Agency toxicologist Ken Bailey.

To hear artists tell it, without cadmium pigments, Claude Monet might have been at a loss to paint the gardens at Giverny, Frederic Church of the Hudson River School might have had trouble creating his luminist landscapes and the work of countless other painters, including abstract expressionist Mark Rothko, would have suffered.

Artists began using cadmium paints in the mid-1800s. Two key advantages of the paints were their opacity and the intensity of their yellow, orange and red colors.

“These pigments have a high refractive index,” said David Scott, head of the art conservation and research laboratory at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu. “They appear as bright and very definitive colors and have very good covering power.”

Cadmium pigments also are known for their light-fastness, or resistance to fading. According to Rene de la Rie, head of the science department at Washington’s National Gallery of Art, the paints have helped the cause of art conservation.

To illustrate the drawbacks of using less light-fast paints, de la Rie says green colors in many 17th-Century Dutch paintings have turned blue over time because yellow hues that were mixed with blue to produce greens have faded.

Among the first artists to paint with cadmium colors were impressionists, says Inge Fiedler, an Art Institute of Chicago microscopist who helped author a 1986 artists’ pigments handbook published by the National Gallery of Art.

“The impressionists were trying to strive for very pure colors that duplicated as much as they could the solar spectrum,” Fiedler says. “That was the time when a lot of pigments were coming out and cadmium was one.”

Contemporary artists say the intensity of the yellow, orange and red cadmium colors is still unrivaled. Though not all artists work with cadmium paint, which is available in oils, acrylics, water colors and other varieties, some say they could not do without it.

“I just happen to be in a period in my work where I don’t happen to be using (cadmium) colors. I’m using mostly black and white,” said well-known Venice painter Ed Ruscha. “But I still wouldn’t want to see the brilliance and power of the (cadmium) colors go if there is no substitute.”

For environmentalists, however, such arguments mark the beginning of a slippery slope for their efforts to control cadmium pigments.

“Probably every user of cadmium-based pigments could come up with reasons why they should have an exemption,” said Richard Denison, a scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund. “Pretty soon you don’t end up with any measure at all.”

The ban would affect more than artwork. In fact, more than 80% of the pigments are used to manufacture plastic products ranging from football helmets to automobile dashboards, said Leonard Ulicny of the Dry Colors Manufacturing Assn., an industry group that includes cadmium pigment producers.

The fact that artists account for a relatively small amount of the country’s cadmium pigment use--no more than 5%, according to Ulicny--does not justify an exemption, Denison and other environmentalists argue.

“Their freedom to use cadmium still imposes costs,” said Allen Hershkowitz, a solid waste expert with the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group based in New York. “Should they be free to impose health risks on the public?”

The view is shared by some in the art community.

Elisabeth Batchelor, chief conservator of the Cincinnati Art Museum, says a ban on cadmium pigments might prompt a search for environmentally sounder alternatives.

“I can understand why artists are upset. They’re beautiful colors,” Batchelor said. “But I believe someone could come up with a substitute. If (the pigments) do get banned, it might get people moving.”

Under normal conditions, cadmium paints do not pose a direct threat to artists because they cannot be absorbed through the skin, says Michael McCann, director of the Center for Safety in the Arts, a nonprofit clearinghouse for information on hazardous art materials.

But McCann says the paints can harm those who ingest them inadvertently. Some artists do so by licking the end of their brushes to create a finer point, he says, and some breathe in toxic particles while using air brushes or making paint from powdered cadmium pigment.

When humans consume cadmium it builds up in their kidneys and liver, according to the EPA. Elevated concentrations can cause problems ranging from kidney malfunction to death, the EPA says.

“With simple precautions, I don’t think normal brush painting (with cadmium paints) is a hazard,” McCann said.

Artists argue that very little of the cadmium pigments they use actually reach the solid waste stream. Works of art are rarely thrown out, they note, and with cadmium oil paints often costing $20 for a four-inch tube, artists virtually use all the paint they buy.

Said Zora Pinney, a Torrance art materials consultant: “If paint costs that much you’re going to squeeze as much out of the tube as you can get.”

And artists would willingly take special steps to ensure that discarded brushes, brush-cleaning solvents or spent tubes of paint are safely disposed, says Catherine Auth, director of the National Artists Equity Assn., a trade group representing 6,500 visual artists.

“It’s not an issue where artists just want an exemption and that’s it,” Auth said. “They want a solution. They’re concerned about the problem.”

They’re also concerned about holding on to cadmium. Artists say that so far, they know of no substitutes that can match the light-fastness, opacity and hues of cadmium-based paints.

“The substitutes are much worse than cadmium,” says Billy Al Bengston, another prominent Venice painter. “If they want to remove red and yellow from the artist’s palette, a good way to do it is to take the cadmium out.”

Said landscape painter Michael Scott of Cincinnati: “A ban would be devastating. The type of paintings I do are based on luminosity. Cadmium orange and cadmium yellow are the two most important colors on my palette.”

Hearings on Chafee’s bill are expected next month, but Senate analysts say that with federal clean air and oil spill legislation still pending, Congress is unlikely to act on the complex solid waste issue until next year.

However, the art community already has made its message clear to Chafee and other members of the Senate subcommittee on environmental affairs, the panel handling the bill.

Trade magazines have led the charge, drawing a bead on the legislation in articles with titles such as “Attention” and “Red Alert.” The National Artists Equity Assn. has weighed in, calling on Chafee to reconsider his measure. And dozens of individual artists have taken part in a letter-writing campaign.

On Wednesday, New York City art dealer Sherry French is scheduled to open an exhibit at her 57th Street gallery titled, “Waiting for Cadmium.” The show will feature the work of 30 contemporary artists who make wide use of cadmium paints.

And the pressure apparently has begun to pay off.

“After hearing from them, Sen. Chafee is committed to putting an exemption in the bill for artists,” said Richard Innes, a Chafee staff aide. “We should have thought of artists when we did it.”

Artists say they will not back off as long as Chafee’s cadmium pigment proposal, which today includes no exemptions, remains unchanged.

“I live in this town, and I know how things work,” said painter and art commentator William Dunlap of Washington, who is slated to have paintings hanging in French’s show. “Until an exemption is granted and put down on paper we’d be foolish to sit on our hands.”

Environmentalists, however, are determined to see artists’ paints included in the proposed cadmium ban.

“I have heard all the arguments,” said Lisa Collaton, a solid waste expert with the Environmental Action Foundation in Washington. “(But) if it is freedom of expression to use certain shades of paint, it is also freedom of expression to ensure that what we put in our landfills doesn’t revisit us in our ground water.”