barb mowery

Safe materials handling is important in classrooms and art studios. But safety is often overlooked or ignored. I found many websites advising artists to pour rinse water down the sink drain—that is not correct. In this video, I demonstrate one method to safely treat and dispose of acrylic paint rinse water. The goal of this process is to keep heavy metals out of the water supply.

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The research supporting this process was conducted by Golden Artist Colors, Inc., and published in their online magazine “Just Paint” in 1996. The method remains the best practice recommended by Golden. They have since developed a rinse water treatment kit called Crash Paint Solids kit, available for purchase for anyone who does not want to search for the ingredients and create their own filtration kit. I was able to purchase everything for my kit at my local hardware store and online.