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Safety of "Safe" Solvents

Home Improvement Asked on July 12, 2021

I put off stripping the paint of my interior trim until the winter, since there were so many more pleasant outdoor tasks during the warmer months. Now that it’s time to fish or cut bait, I’m thinking about ventilation.

The paint I am trying to remove seems to be latex, just a coat or two, and not terribly ancient. (I’m very confident it’s not lead-based). I started out (over the summer) using denatured alcohol as a stripper, but it was pretty slow going, lots of scraping, so I recently picked up some multi strip, which has dibasic esters, ethoxyproprionate, and benzyl alcohol as active ingredients. Not as dangerous as methylene chloride, but not exactly non-toxic either.

If I don’t want to open my windows in January in Chicago, should I just put this project off until spring? Or will I be fine with the natural ventilation of my forced air system? The effected area will be in just two rooms–living room and dining room.

3 Answers

I would rather have posted this as a comment, but pics don't work in comments so I'm posting this as an answer. Also while product recommendations are frowned upon here, I'll bend the rules a bit and post this. I've had great luck with this product. It's pretty non-toxic, actually smells like oranges! And works pretty well. You have to have patience, it's not nearly as fast as a harsh chemical stripper and you may have to apply twice so as not to let it dry out. You'll still want to wear gloves and follow labelled directions, But it's pretty environmentally friendly, easy to wash brushes and even the work product in plain water.

Citristrip

Answered by George Anderson on July 12, 2021

If you're trying to just remove latex paint, it might be better to try something more targeted at latex paint. That usually means less chemicals in the cocktail involved.

There's a product called Krud Kutter, Latex Pain Remover that contains Acetone, and something called Dipropylene Glycol n-Propyl Ether. Googling the latter indicates there's some decent evidence from valid sources like NIH that this stuff is relatively low toxicity.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15705495/

In general, I'd choose a more targeted stripper with the least toxic substances you can find than a general one that'll take off everything.

It seems strippers are getting quite a bit less toxic than "the bad old days" of methylene chloride. I'd still be cautious of this stuff, since stripppers are still likely the nastiest chemicals most consumers experience.

There's other alternatives out their, like infra-red heaters (different from a heat gun). Since you say there's no lead, this may present a completely non-toxic way to strip the latex. I haven't used them myself, but I do recall a friend having good luck with them.

Answered by user30371 on July 12, 2021

Not exactly a paint stripper recommendation, but this might come in handy:

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Due to COVID they're a little bit more expensive, but still available. 3M 7502 mask is comfortable and easy to breathe through. What you need here is "Organic Vapor Cartridge" like 3M 6001 or similar. It is very effective at filtering out solvents and makes paint stripping, or even painting with smelly paint, a much less "intoxicating" experience.

You'll still need to ventilate the room once you're done, but you won't need to keep the windows open during the whole job.

Answered by bobflux on July 12, 2021

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