The real estate boom over the last several years has turned nearly everyone in to some type of property investor. When I’m out in the field looking at properties one thing I notice is how responsive people are to the ‘new’ home smell or the ‘freshly renovated’ home smell, most notably caused by fresh paint.What’s funny is that, that smell that we sort of love in a weird way, is actually a bad thing. That smell may be the smell of someone else’s DNA being painted over, giving us some sense of purification, but that smell is also the smell of our lungs being slowly poisoned.
The EPA says that indoor air quality is one of the top 5 leading healthy risks in the USA. Several of the leading causes for this poor indoor air quality are the paints, varnishes and solvents we use containing VOC’s. VOC stands for Volatile Organic Compounds and are key components in the composition of oil based and traditional latex based paints.
Exposure to VOC's in paint can trigger asthma attacks, eye irritation and respiratory problems, nausea and dizziness among other symptoms. Prolonged exposure has been linked to kidney and liver disease and even cancer. Oiveh!
