Cad Yellow, At-Home O.H&S
This morning I added some Cadmium Yellow into the current painting I’m working on.
This is a toxic pigment and as such you have to be careful with it.
Firstly though, establish whether you actual have the real-deal in your hands. “Cadmium Yellow” is one of those names that is applied to yellows that don’t have any real cadmium in them, as long as the hue looks right when applied to the surface.
If you are drawing with a yellow pencil called cadmium yellow, It almost certainly is not that. Unless that single pencil cost $50AUD or more.
Cadmium is expensive. In the art stores a small tube usually commands a relatively high price. Probably approaching/at a 3 figure sum.
Why bother? Because its a strong opaque and durable yellow. It’s versatile and resists ageing and discolouration.
Once again, you’ll need to get familiar with how pigment classifications work. In oil paint cadmium yellow is often classes as PY35 (bearing in mind some variance, as there is also cadmium red and orange, and within these pigments there may be sub-varients, eg: Cad yellow light).
Really, with some good sense you should be fine.
I apply the following precautions:
-keep your hands clean of any paint
-keep food away from the paint room
-never put your hands in your mouth while painting. Consider this carefully if you are a smoker or if you like a drink nearby.
-watch for any open wounds you might have on your hands
-keep the paint off your clothes
-keep paints like these off other surfaces if you can
-always know where the pigment is, whether in tube or palette form, and where the brush is.
-wipe up any mess with a paper towel or similar
-avoid getting the paint in the sink when washing up
-don’t sand back an old surface that contains cadmium
-keep your hair away from the paint. Tie it back if needed.
Though cadmium is a metal, and metal particles are heavy, a fine enough particle can become airborne. Hence why sanding cadmium is a bad idea, as would be any contact with particles that might float freely. Like hair, clothing fabric or carpet strains. I paint in a room with a hard-wood floor. When i used to live in an apartment with a carpet, i had a large plastic sheet I stood on (formally mattress packaging) that covered the area around the easel, and I also covered the desk that my smaller easel sat on with a clear vinyl plastic sheet that I bought from the hardware store.
Apply whatever solution you can. Just future-proof yourself: can the surface that the cadmium paint lands on someday be theoretically ground into a small enough particle that can get into your body? That’s how i think.
If you have kids or pets, keep them away from the studio or the toxic paints, and apply similar cautions around the washup area.
If you are a messy enough painter that you need designated old clothes or a smock/apron for this activity, (and don’t get toxic pigments even on these garments), don’t wash these clothes. If you really had to wash them, keep them separate from your normal clothing load. But really I wouldn’t bother, ther'e’s alsways another old t-shirt you are about to throw away that can be converted to art-room use. There are no style points for safety vs excessive recklessness.
WIth cleanup, I wipe as much as possible of the paint off my brush with a paper towel, which i then deposit into a mini-bin (an old yoghurt tub). I’ll apply brush-soap to the paper towel too and scrub the bristles into the towel, wipe that clean with a blacnk section of the towel, then dispose of that used towel in the plastic tub also. As much as possible I avoid getting this pigment into the sink. I have found I can do that and still keep the brush clean and useable.
For cleaning up my own hands, noting i hardly ever get any paint on my hands, i clean them with a dry paper towel, then use the mechanics’ green hand soap (In Australia you can get this from Supacheap AUto), clean the fingernails with a bristle hand brush (not a painting brush obviously), do a repeat treatment with regular soap, dry the hands with another piece of paper towel or an old towel/cloth designated solely for post-painting cleanup, and then move on with the rest of my day.
This sounds insanely tedious. The truth is, I’ve learned to paint in a way that is careful enough that cleanup is minimal. You can too, if you want to. Or avoid toxic pigments if you can’t.
There’s also the option of PPE. I tried these in the early days: Latex gloves, disposeable and non-disposeable, a protective mask. This seemed to make more sense when my motor skills weren’t so refined and careful. Not something i do anymore, i found them distracting and affected my feel for the tools and materials. I’m not convinced that wearing this stuff all the time makes you safer to such a degree that it’s worth the trouble. You need proper oxygen intake. And the gloves would often tear when i was opening a paint tube, or just because they wear out and break down. latex gloves in a cardboard box have a shelf life, and old ones will tear apart the moment you try putting them on. I do believe ventilation and a dry space is important, as mould and liquid condensation are another concern you have to watch out for, and that stuff can mix with pigments and cause problems too.
Last thing to consider is how much paint you squeeze out of the tube. As you get more experienced you learn only to squirt out what you need for a given session. For me it’s basically a smudge on the aluminium palette. I also experimented with labelled aluminium tins in the past and still use these sometimes. I’ve had the same ones for years (you can buy the tins in a packer at the $2 shop) This is not just about health precautions but also being sparing with an expensive pigment. You can’t use dried-out paint. Once it’s out of the tube, the drying process is beginning to take place as the paint reacts to the oxygen. Try to extend it’s usability by only squirting out what you need and keeping the lids on the tubes, and keep the tubes vertical in storage if you can. I’ve even gotten to the point where I can get unused clean paint back into the aluminium tube (you can squeeze the tube lightly at it’s wider end to get a suction effect going).
Been doing this for years. Still here. Don’t feel sick. Maybe one-day ill be proven wrong by the doctors or the autopsy lab. But you can’t rubberpad everything in life.
