As a Painting contractor in the wonderful state of California change is the order of the day. In an effort to reduce air and water pollution the Environmental Protection Agency better know as the EPA has found it urgently necessary to make sweeping changes in the areas of paint manufacturing, application and disposal.
The awareness and the process of "cleaning up our act" began many years ago with the elimination of lead from paint and related products and although change has been gradual, the past three years beginning with 2006 have been most challenging. Imagine being a chef and going to the market to buy ingredients to make your most popular entres only to find that they are no longer available. Well this is the predicament that the California painter finds his or herself in. Product after product is being eliminated or replaced by products that quite frankly are often inferior in behavior, appearance and ease of application.
I applaud the work of the EPA, one only needs to think back a decade or so ago when the smog layer cast its ugly cloud over our beautiful horizon to know that their efforts are paying dividends. It is now more important than ever for the California painter, and I emphasize "California painter" because few states have the stringent envioronmental rules that we do to do research and performance tests. The only way that a painter can be confident of his or her work is to be confident of the products that are used.
The goal of paint application has always been two fold, to beautify and to protect. Both of these characteristics are in jeopardy during this transitional period unless we continue to find and use products and tools that are worthy of our strokes.
