Bill Seals, owner of Harbourtown Auto Body, poses with a pair of bottles of Envirobase, a water-based paint product. (Photo by Steve Manheim, The Chronicle-Telegram.)

By Steve Fogarty, The Chronicle-Telegram

A local auto body shop is among the very first in Lorain County to go green and chuck environmentally unfriendly and unhealthy solvent-and-thinner-based paint for repaired or restored vehicles.

Harbourtown Auto Body Inc. made the switch to waterborne, or water-based, paints about a month ago, according to owner Bill Seals, who said the pro-environment paints produce very good color matches, and in some cases, closer matches to factory colors than were possible with chemically mixed paints.

“It’s a lot more uniform in appearance,’’ he said. “There’s a more consistent look overall. It’s a way to get closer to what the factory is using.”

While such eco-friendly paints are becoming common in California, Canada and Europe, they are just now starting to catch on in some areas of the U.S., according to Seals, who employs six people including himself and his wife, Sandra, at the collision repair and auto restoration shop at 50870 Telegraph Road in Amherst.

“Carmakers and paint makers are just getting it dialed in to where we can use it,” he said.

Chief advantages of the go-green waterborne paints presently manufactured only by Pittsburgh-based PPG is that they greatly reduce emissions of VOCs, or volatile organic compounds, that create smog and pollution, according to Kathy Minut, territory manager for PPG in Northeast Ohio.

“These paints have a latex core that contains no chemical solvents that refinishers use,’’ she said. “Now, they’re as safe as house paint.”

Harbourtown Auto Body, which is regarded as an average-sized small refinishing business, could look to reduce emissions of chemically based compounds by some 300 pounds a year because of the switch, Minut said.

“That’s the equivalent of taking 1,250 cars off the road a year. That’s pretty significant,” she said.

Seals’ shop is believed to be among the first auto body businesses between Cleveland and Fremont to make the jump to waterborne paints, Minut said.

“Those solvents, found in thinners and lacquers, evaporate into the air, where they go through the skin and impact the nervous system,” Minut said.

Such solvents have been shown to contribute to liver damage, she said, and workers using them typically wear protective suits and gloves.

Automakers such as General Motors, Ford and Honda have been using waterborne paints for 20 or more years, Minut said.

Long known as oil-based paints, solvent-based paints account for only about 20 percent of all architectural paints, with water-based paints making up the other 80 percent, according to the Paint Quality Institute’s Web site.

Stricter regulations governing VOCs in paint have been enacted in California and Canada, according to the Web site.
Such regulations could well be required by federal EPA guidelines by 2012, Minut said.

That expectation, Seals said, is part of the reason for the switch.

“We figured that if we had to go to it, we might as well get on board now,” Seals said.

Contact Steve Fogarty at 329-7146 or sfogarty@chroniclet.com.

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