AQMD Adopts Limits on Oil-Based Paints

Most varieties of oil-based house paint will be phased out in the Los Angeles region under an environmental mandate adopted Friday by the South Coast Air Quality Management District board.

The new regulation--which applies to Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties--means that the flat-finish paints used on most homes and businesses must, beginning in 2001, be 60% lower in solvents than is allowable today. In 2008, they must be virtually pollution-free or they will be illegal to sell or use.

With 35 million gallons used yearly in the region, paints produce large amounts of highly reactive fumes. They produce more smog than the area’s refineries, print shops and aerospace plants combined, and the new limits will eliminate about 10 tons of emissions per day, according to the AQMD.

The AQMD board rejected the arguments of paint manufacturers, including Sherwin-Williams and Benjamin Moore, in voting 8 to 1 to enact the rule.

Many painters and manufacturers have argued that low-solvent and solvent-free paints are inferior in durability and ease of application.

The board postponed its vote on a new air quality plan that would define all future smog rules for the region. After hearing several hours of public debate--including environmentalists who called the plan weak and ineffective and business leaders who lauded it as reasonable--the board rescheduled for Nov. 15 its vote on whether to adopt the plan.

Casting the lone dissenting vote on the new paint rule, board member Michael Antonovich, a Los Angeles County supervisor, said it demonstrates that the AQMD board is making “another sharp turn to the left” by mandating use of products before they are perfected.

He said it would “drive jobs out of the basin” by mandating formulas that some companies can’t make and will be unsatisfactory and costly for consumers.

Many users of the paints, however, laud them as high-quality, easy-to-use alternatives, especially for interior walls, to replace oil-laden paints that put out noxious fumes. Included are Disneyland, Universal Studios and many schools and hospitals, which are already switching to the lower-polluting paints.

Paint manufacturers and many contractors said solvent-free flat paints--manufactured by nine companies--work in some cases, but that they should not be mandated for everyone because they do not wear as well, especially on exterior walls.

The new limits will add about $4 to the price of a gallon of house paint, costing an extra $14.5 million annually for Southland consumers and businesses, according to an AQMD analysis.

Waterborne flat-finish paints have been sold for years, and initial AQMD limits on their oil content went into effect in Southern California in 1979. But the new rule will require products to contain more water or acetone and to have much lower content of oily solvents than currently allowed.

About 40% of all flat paints sold in California stores today meet the limit for 2001 and 12% meet the requirement for 2008.

Flat-finish paints made by small companies with fewer than 100 employees are exempt, as are semigloss paints.

In addition to paints, the solvent content of lacquers--which are clear coatings used on wood--would also be restricted in 1998 and cut in half in 2005.