SSPC, for example, is on the verge of dropping its specifications for lead-containing paints, said Executive Director Bernard Appleman. Paint manufacturers have come up with other rust-inhibiting pigments, like barium metaborate. This alkyd paint does double duty in both industrial and architectural settings. Add zinc to a paint and you provide the steel with galvanic protection. A current of electricity flows from the zinc to the steel when moisture is present, corroding the zinc and leaving the steel intact.
Most zinc coatings are solvent-borne.
Solvents are VOCs, about which you also may have heard. A number of states, led by California, already have passed laws limiting VOC content of architectural paints. As a coup de grace, the EPA is drafting a national standard that's expected to reduce VOC content by 45 percent over the next 10 years. The standard represents a consensus reached by the EPA, PDCA, environmentalists, and large paint manufacturers after much pow-wowing. Paintmakers have responded to the ongoing VOC clampdown in two ways.