WHEN it comes to building, renovating and maintaining a home, paint is a little like milk: it's a staple, a basic ingredient. And much like milk, a product that helped make the organic food movement a mass-market phenomenon, paint is leading the expansion of the green building movement, as stricter regulations, pressure from environmental groups and increasing consumer demand for eco-friendly products force manufacturers to produce paints with fewer dangerous and smog-producing compounds.

In the last few years, the marketplace for paint has undergone a dizzying revolution, with paint companies furiously researching technologies that will help them compete with new green lines in this changed universe. A number of start-ups, too, have introduced paint brands (several made with milk) that they claim are not only safer for humans and the earth than conventional paint, but more durable and better performing than the paints billed as eco-friendly that came on the market in the early 1990s and failed to take hold.

Not everyone is happy about the shift. Many designers, painters and consumers who applaud environmental responsibility are nevertheless worried about the growing restrictions on oil-based paints (which contain high levels of harmful volatile organic compounds), and even on less hazardous water-based latex ones. They argue that there is no way, at least with the products currently available, to replicate the sheen, consistency or lasting power of an oil-based paint, particularly for use on cabinetry, trim, bookshelves and other specialty jobs. And they complain that painting a wall or ceiling can require several more applications of the newer paints made to be low in volatile organic compounds, or V.O.C.'s, than of old-fashioned latex blends.

Full Story: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/15/garden/15paint.html?_r=1&oref=slogin