Make Painting Healthier
Add your voice asking Lowe's and Walmart to stop selling deadly chemicals
UPDATE AUG 21: Walmart has now also agreed to also remove these paint strippers from their stores in the U.S., Canada, Mexico and more. This makes 4 large retailers (Lowe’s, The Home Depot, Walmart, and Sherwin-Williams) who have pledged to remove the dangerous products.
Now, organizations are asking Ace Hardware to do the same. Add your name to the new petition today.
UPDATE: Thanks to the efforts and support of you and others hoping to get potentially dangerous products off the shelves, Lowe’s has said it will be removing those products from it’s stores by the end of the year. Yay!
Now, groups are urging Walmart to do the same. You can add your support to the Walmart petition on change.org today.
A weekend project of repainting a old bookshelf shouldn’t put you at risk of getting sick or possibly dying. But, right now, it might. Simple supplies including paint strippers, that are being sold at home improvement stores, like Lowe’s, can be pretty dangerous.
There are many stories of young, healthy people who just wanted to update the paint in their home, and have died. These cases are almost all because of the same chemical (called methylene chloride) that is frequently used in strong paint strippers. The danger comes from these paint stripping chemicals releasing very strong fumes that people end up breathing in while they work. As they breath in the methylene chloride fumes, they are poisoning their bodies. And, methylene chloride is pretty strong, so it can overwhelm someone’s body in the amount of time it takes to do one project. P.S. There are paint strippers available without this scary chemical that are just fine for run of the mill home improvement projects.
If there aren’t acute side effects, with repeated long-term use, these chemicals can cause liver problems and lung cancer. So, if this sounds scary to you, add your name to this petition specifically addressing Lowe’s CEO asking him to stop selling these products in his stores. Tell him that you don’t want to have to worry about buying lethal chemicals when you walk into Lowe’s stores. If a big company like Lowe’s take a step in the right direction, the hope is that other retailers, both large and small, will follow suit.