Vitamin Green

We’ve been advocates of using more eco-friendly and healthy alternatives in our homes. But how healthy are our homes themselves?

A recent scientific study conducted by the Center for Science and Environment (CSE) found that over 72% of paints in the Indian market to have dangerous levels of lead in them. Why’s this a problem? Because they are slowly releasing the lead into our home environments and this is known to have a negative impact on growing children.

Unfortunately, there are no standards that the industry is obliged to comply with except the voluntary limits prescribed by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS).

The study (published in August 2009) says that different colours and brands have different levels of lead. The highest lead content was in the deep orange paint of the Shalimar’s Superlac brand – 185 times the BIS limit and 308 times the US paints limit of 600 ppm. Berger brand Luxol’s golden yellow color had a staggering 162,559 ppm lead – 163 times the BIS limit and 271 times the US paints limit.

So which brand is healthiest? All samples of ICI-Dulux had lead much below the specified limit. In fact, of the five paints manufacturers, only ICI didn’t use lead in its paint formulations. The white shades of Asian Paints and Nerolac also conformed to the standards.

For the Down to Earth article read here:
http://www.downtoearth.org.in/full6.asp?foldername=20090831&filename=news&sid=14&page=1&sec_id=9

For a summary of the Study read here :
http://www.cseindia.org/aboutus/press_releases/press-index.htm

For the full Laboratory Study read here:
http://cseindia.org/lead_paints.pdf