AGLAIA NATURAL PAINTS AND THE ENVIRONMENT

For over thirty years Beeck's have manufactured Aglaia decorating products using only natural ingredients.

These products are based on traditional formulations that have been developed to minimise the impact on the environment.

These products are based on traditional formulations that have been developed to minimise the impact on the environment and have no adverse impact on our health.

Paint has long been recognised as a medium to protect and beautify architecture and the fittings that adorn its form. Its origins and use have been well recorded throughout history, from prehistoric cave paintings to the works of Michael Angelo.

However the basic make up of historic paints changed with the introduction of synthetic resin dispersion paints introduced in the fifties during the post-war construction boom. They were welcomed at the time because they were relatively cheap to produce and avoided using lead compounds found in some earlier paints. The chemical industries embraced these products manufacturing them on a vast scale.

Over the last decade we have come to realise that materials these paints contain, petrochemicals solvents, mercury, formaldehyde, benzene, defoamers, stabilisers, and preservatives are seriously damaging our health. Additionally, lead, cadmium and chromium can often still be found in the pigments.

Many of these ingredients are harmful because they off-gas dangerous Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC's) into the atmosphere, affecting the health of people and the planet. Dangerous VOC's can produce a number of physical problems such as: eye and skin irritation, lung and breathing problems, headaches, nausea, muscle weakness and liver and kidney damage. VOC's are consistently ten times higher indoors than outdoors, with numbers rising to 1,000 times higher after a new coat of modern paint.

We should not be surprised that cancers and other "modern" diseases and ailments are on the increase. In 1989 the World Health Organisation's International Agency for Research on Cancer, reported that painting as an occupation was carcinogenic. The European Community has started to work towards making paints safer and issued a new directive in 2002 that will require paints in the future to contain fewer dangerous volatile organic compounds.

Synthetic chemicals in paints also cause allergies and chemical tolerance problems. These problems have doubled in the last ten years. Studies have shown that the indoor environment is now up to ten times more polluted than the external environment. Yet we can spend up to 80% of our lives inside buildings, where up to 90% of the internal surface area can be covered with some type of synthetic petrochemical covering.

Natural paints are not carcinogenic and do not damage our health. In addition, these paints do not create allergic reactions because they do not contain synthetic chemicals and do not attract the same amount of dust build up on wall surfaces as vinyl paints.

The Natural Alternatives

Natural paints such as AGLAIA and AURO use only plant and minerals and not synthetically produced compounds. Binders in the form of drying oils can be obtained from linseed oil, soybean oil, safflower oil, dehydrated castor oil, and wood oil (from the fruits of the Chinese tung oil tree). The Carrier or solvent element used in natural paints will almost exclusively be plant terpenes such as balsamic terpenes, citrus terpenes or orange peel oil, once again recovered from renewable resources. The pigments are derived from various sources such as earth pigments, which are inorganic (metal oxides) that have been used since prehistoric times.

Some companies who market their sometimes "suspect" (natural) paints have hijacked the environmental bandwagon. For this reason AGLAIA provides their customer with a complete and honest declaration of all the ingredients used in all of their products.

Aglaia paints are manufactured in a way that does not damage our environment. The manufacture of petrochemical based modern paints is notoriously wasteful and dangerous producing up to ten times their own weight in waste i.e. for each 1 litre of paint, 10 litres of toxic waste is created, this can rise to as much as 30 litres for some specialist paints. Made from biodegradable, natural ingredients AGLAIA's "greener" decorating products compete successfully on performance alongside those using modern chemically blended formulations.

Natural Aglaia paints also help our homes to breathe and to control moisture levels. Walls must be allowed to breathe, in order to allow them to release the vast quantities of water they are often capable of holding. Traditional materials such as lime and many of AGLAIA's natural paints allow any moisture within the wall to be given up as vapour. This can have tremendous benefits in terms of reducing paint flaking, as it is the moisture trapped beneath a paint skin that sets up the mould and blistering often associated with painted damp walls. A permeable natural paint simply allows exchange of vapour to take place, resulting in a coating that stays on the wall much longer.

AGLAIA's Natural paints also allow timber to breathe and to help to regulate the relative humidity of our rooms. If timber is coated in breathable natural glazes it can take in excess water vapour into itself and release it back when the room starts to become too dry. The oils and resins used in AGLAIA's natural finishes also penetrate deep within the timber fibres, providing timber long lasting, deep protection, arresting the onset of decay.

For further information please contact us.