A Painter Who Became Allergic to Paint?

This article was  originally published in Pyragraph, April 2017, “A Painter Who Became Allergic to Paint.” An interview with Friedhard Kiekeben of Nontoxic Print followed. I am happy to report that my health situation has improved vastly and I’m back in the studio using safer studio practices. I’ve expanded on this  article in order to serve as a resource to help other artists who find themselves in a similar situation. 

I could no longer enter my painting classroom or my painting studio

February 2016, I taught a painting class on color theory and oil glaze techniques at Santa Fe University. Early in the semester I went home with a headache and nausea. I hadn’t exposed myself to anything unusual that day. The next morning, I woke up with what felt like a hangover, and from that day on I could no longer set foot in my painting classroom without feeling sick the rest of the day. I also could no longer enter my own studio! I had become sensitized to the solvents and cleaning agents used in my painting practice. Is it possible ? A painter who became allergic to paint?

My life turned upside-down, as I learned to cope with the sudden onset of these new physical ailments related to my work. Aside from the emotions of fearing I may never paint again, I became physically sick when I walked down the detergent isle at a grocery store, entered a mechanic shop, or inadvertently set foot in a room where someone was painting their nails. On the worst day, I simply walked past the janitor cleaning cart at my daughter’s school and subsequently felt sick for hours afterwards. As well as nausea and headache, I had the new experience of my reptilian brain’s fight or flight response, along with “brain fog,” which felt like early onset dementia.
You can imagine it was quite a ride.

Enter Monona Rossol – Industrial Hygienist

Thankfully I had guidance from chemist, artist, and one of our nation’s leading experts in industrial hygiene, Monona Rossol. I met Monona when she was consulting SFUAD, and then by chance sat next to her on the red-eye to New York. She is a national treasure and worth looking up.

I revamped the painting studios at the school — switched students to a solvent-free painting medium and canola oil for washing brushes. However, couldn’t get the results I wanted with glaze layers , so I continued to teach a traditional technique that required small amounts of mineral spirits to build “lean to fat” glaze layers of oil. To avoid nausea and headaches, I finished up my last semester teaching at SFUAD with the students painting en plein air.

I changed my own studio practices to solvent-free mediums when possible, minimizing solvents when necessary for glaze techniques. I installed intake and exhaust fans for whole studio air exchange (general exhaust). I also built an open faced paint booth for point of contact (local exhaust). In addition to ventilation I use a respirator with organic vapor cartridges for oil mediums and cartridges that absorb ammonia and formaldehyde when priming with gesso and painting with acrylics.

Many people wrongly believe acrylics are safe and do not off-gas toxic chemicals. Acrylics off-gas ammonia/amines and formaldehyde. Monnona Rossol recommends using local exhaust ventilation when working with acrylics. For an in-depth look at artist materials and studio practices please purchase Monona Rossol’s book: The Artist’s Complete Health and Safety Guide

Monona is a remarkable woman. She’s a living treasure who flies around the country at the request of opera houses, movie sets and art schools. She walks in, points out a safety issues and tells them to shut it down until they are fixed. Not a woman to mess with!

Proper Air Ventilation

General ventilation, put simply, is all the air in the studio should be completely exchanged in a certain amount of time, based on the toxicity and solvent used. Two fans are required. One for supply and one for exhaust. Ideally the exhaust is on the painting wall or close to the painting wall. One can google search a “room air change calculator” to figure out what size CFM fans are recommended for one’s studio.

A room air change calculator is to get a general idea, but the real formula used for calculating room size and CFM fans depends on the toxicity of the solvent.

Attached here is the real formula…  Notice that the TLV is in the denominator, so the more toxic the solvent, the greater the rate of exchange. Friedrich-vent-calculations

Respirator and Proper Cartridges

Cartridges are selective in what they capture and in very limited in amounts.  That’s true of all carbon filters including Organic Vapor OV cartridges.  The cartridges are only good for about 8 hours once you open the package.  If you only wear them 2 hours, you need to take them off the respirator, put them in Ziploc bags until you use them again.  Total hours are of use is about 8.

When I’m using odorless mineral spirits, final picture varnishes and other oil based mediums and solvents I use a general OV cartridge. The standards require them to be pretty uniform, so any major manufacturer’s OV cartridge should do it.

Also, I still get brain fog even when subjected to off gassing acrylics  so I use a respirator in additions to exhaust. If you are as sensitive as I am and want to purchase the right respirator cartridge here is the proper 3M cartridge for acrylics:
3M Multi Gas/Vapor Cartridge 6006 -ammonia  and formaldehyde

Avoid the Chemical Agents that Caused the Problem in the First Place!

One of the known, and more obvious, cures to chemical sensitivity is to stay away from chemicals. For nearly six months, I spent as much time as possible in fresh air, both hiking and skiing. I relied on a surplus of paintings in my studio to sustain my income. After the initial 6 month break from painting I re-entered my studio with caution and learned to separate my fears from symptoms, and over the years gained the ability to recognize brain-fog, which is the first symptom to set in, before nausea and headaches.

“Non-Toxic” Doesn’t Always Mean Not Toxic

“Non-toxic” is a misleading standard in our greed driven economy,
because non-toxic often means not-tested. One must learn to read a MSDS Material Safety Data Sheet, when it comes to choosing materials to work with, especially if they become incorporated into long term painting habits. Many products which claim to be non-toxic haven’t gone through the process of proper testing. Manufacturers can state “not-tested” on their MSDS sheet and get away with advertising it as non-toxic. A pregnant woman using some of these “non-toxic solvents” can result in permanent neurological and learning issues with her baby!

All solvents are toxic. That’s why they work so well. It doesn’t matter if it was made from lemons, lavender or mineral sprits. Some solvents are less toxic than others. Gamblin’s OMS odorless mineral spirits will make me feel sick in just a few hours of exposure if I don’t take precautions. I choose to continue to use the product, but I use it sparingly, with proper ventilation and respirator with OV cartridges.

Water-Miscible Oils

Other artists have found water-miscible oils to be the perfect solution. The oils have some –OH (hydroxy) groups added onto their structure which makes them somewhat soluble in water.  The finished work has been looked at technically by a conservator at the Library of Congress and the final painting is just fine in terms of archival quality. I’ve tested them for my own work and with my students. The results are perfectly good for almost all painting techniques. The oils with water alone are a good not-toxic solution. Artists wanting to use glaze layer techniques, working from lean to fat will need to take precautions. In order to increase the fat, one must add a painting medium (as opposed to just more water), and all mediums are made with solvents. So we’re back to the original problem.

Multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS)

When a strange and difficult health issue comes along, it is often difficult to diagnose and one may even wonder if it’s really happening. A dear friend once asked me if it’s possible my Multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS) is psychosomatic. After some thought… I replied yes. The root words, “psycho” mind and “soma” body are both a play.

I’m not an overly neurotic person, and I have over 25 years of meditation practice to thank for that. However strange syndromes like MCS are not the result of a single phenomena. There is a symphony of mental and physical contributing factors at play. Though it was in an instant that I became sensitive, and it was an acute and somewhat extreme event, I imagine there was a culmination of events over the years. There are environmental factors such as having been surrounded by paint and paint fumes for three decades. Included in environmental factors is diet and travels. There’s also the stress of providing for my family with the economic uncertainty of being an artist. Medical research estimates stress is the root cause of 90% of illnesses and disease.

MCS: Culmination of Events and Influences

I’ve had acute and general injuries over the years. Some of the seemingly acute injuries were actually the result of long term habits. As an example, when I tore my MCL a few years ago, I couldn’t help take note that the martial arts event which tore the ligament was not remarkable or dramatic. After finishing a year of physical therapy,  I had a Tai Chi teacher point out that my knee problem was not a knee problem at all. It was a hip and ankle problem. Inflexible hips and ankles created stress on my knee in everyday walking and movement routines. The injury was the last straw.

Why do I point this out? MCS can be a culmination of stress, diet and for me, a gut problem.  A doctor friend recommended a battery of tests related to my gut and found that I had Giardia hiding in the folds of my intestines. This could have been a carry over from travels or camping trips.

Diet and Colon Health

I eliminated dairy and wheat from my diet, which had many additional benefits.  My tennis elbow went away, my back problems went away and I can breathe easier at night. Dairy and wheat do not cause inflammation for everyone, but they certainly did for me. Elimination diets are easy and free to try. With a little discipline one can discover which foods cause problems for one’s body.

You can check out this simple Elimination Diet handout from my alma mater University of Wisconsin at Madison.

I also did a gentle 6 month colon cleanse. The friend who recommended it suffered from fibromyalgia. She attributed this cleanse to being able to get out of bed and on with her life. Whether or not this colon cleanse is for you, it’s not expensive to try out. The cleanse was developed by Dr Robert Gray who set out to make an easy to use, gentle, inexpensive colon cleanse that would not interfere with ones workday. It requires no special diet. There’s a bulking agent powder, and tablets which lift up the calcified mucoid lining in our large intestine. One theory (I’m not a doctor and have no idea what I’m talking about) is the calcified lining not only reduces efficient digestion of healthy nutrients, it also blocks chemicals from properly dumping into the large intestine to be eliminate out the body. I have no clue if any of this is true, I just know when I did the colon cleanse, stuff came out that smelled about 40 years old. I won’t go into detail. Here’s the cleanse. I you choose to try it, buy the little booklet that explains what you’re doing, why and how to do it: Holistic Horizons Intestinal Cleanse

I don’t know anyone who works there. I have no affiliation with their product. I just found it to be helpful. My supportive wife Kim Richardson, did the colon cleanse along side me, and she also enjoyed health benefits and fun conversation around what came out that day.

Exercise and Martial Arts

Over the years I sought the healing council of friends and experts in their field, which ultimately lead me to the joyful journey of qi-gong and  tai chi. It goes without saying that exercise is related to overall health and wellbeing. I made point to promote exercise at the art schools where I taught. I’m not sure when the concept started that artists are allowed to be unhealthy and die young started, but I certainly want to end it. Here’s a more in depth radio interview with about my martial arts journey and how it related to my art practice with John Shannon on KSFR.

The reason I went into depth on this topic is I have encountered so many artists that have been debilitated by MCS and art practice related health issues. Unfortunately most of my colleagues find themselves only more sensitive so solvents and chemicals. I certainly had to put on the brakes with the amount of time I am in my studio, but I am constantly working with finding balance and able to create at a pace suitable to me. Events in my life have me convinced this is a shared dream, and any situation can be transformed. Don’t give up!

I have rules around my diet, studio practice and lifestyle, and I no longer wonder, Will I feel sick today? Also during the time away from my studio, I was able to reflect on my work and put new energy into my vision and career.

Resources:

• Environmental Health & Safety in the Arts- A guide for K-12 Schools, Colleges and Artisans
• Friedrich Vent Calculations

Disclaimer: each of us is responsible for our own well-being and health and safety. I am sharing my experience to serve as a guidepost or starting point but I’m not a doctor nor an industrial hygienist. Please do your own research!

To know more about my work and vision: artist statement, and essay on The Artistic Thinking Process.