Oil based paint restrictions

Anchor Paint Company has been making, mixing, and selling paint in Tulsa for forty years.<br/>And they've seen a lot of changes. In the 60s, oil-based paints dominated the market.<br/><br/>Chip Mead,

Saturday, May 28th 2005, 5:52 pm

By: News On 6

Anchor Paint Company has been making, mixing, and selling paint in Tulsa for forty years.
And they've seen a lot of changes. In the 60s, oil-based paints dominated the market.

Chip Mead, Owner: "now its completely the opposite very little oil based paint is used on the exterior of homes."

Chip Mead says latex or water-based paint is increasingly the paint of choice for homeowners. But some painters are stuck on oil.

Chip Mead, Owner: â€œpainters still a lot of em still prefer that good ol oil based because it flows out nice and smooth and you can still get a higher gloss with an oil-based paint."

But some states are seeing oil-based paint supplies thin because of environmental regulations. Some scientists say the paints contain ingredients that interact with sun and heat to create ozone pollution.

So California, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Northern Virginia have all taken steps to restrict oil paints to cutdown on pollution. And some say those states are just the beginning. Don't expect all these barrels of oil based paint to completely disappear. Companies like Anchor are working to make oil based paint environmentally friendly.

Chip Mead, Owner: "Some people say well we just won't make that paint anymore or people like me that says no if there's a will there's a way we're going to research and we're going to make it happen."

Mead says Anchor Paint has already taken steps to reduce the amount of solvent in their paints to make them more ozone-friendly. He says they're also working to make latex paints just as good as oil-based ones.

Chris Mead: "but technology on the water-based side is getting there we're getting closer and closer every year."

It could be a win-win, better and cleaner paints.