White Spirit has been used commercially since 1928 by trades professionals and homeowners, utilising its powerful properties for paint stains, paint thinning, and an ideal all-around heavy-duty cleaner for paint brushes and paint pads. However, due to its excellent cleaning properties, there are negative factors regarding involuntarily ingesting or overexposure.
What is dangerous about White Spirit?
White Spirit is petroleum-based, making the product extremely flammable, dangerous, and incredibly toxic to humans and organic life. Harmful effects that humans may experience through inhaling or indigestion include dizziness and drowsiness, with the possibility of fatality if swallowed.
If consumed, you should seek medical advice urgently. On the other hand, if White Spirit spills on your hands or other parts of your skin, wash them with soap and rinse.
How do you get rid of the White Spirit smell?
Sadly, while White Spirit becomes effective in most oil-based paints and leaves brushes soft, it does produce a smell that can affect the sense of smell if over-inhaled.
There are two ways to deal with the White spirit smell. These include;
- Utilising bicarbonate of soda to break up the smell
- Leaving it to evaporate over a period of time
Is White Spirit the same as Methylated Spirit?
While both are highly volatile liquids, they differ in their formation. For example, a White spirit is petroleum-based, while a methylated Spirit is an alcohol-based liquid.
However, both can be employed for the same purposes, like paint thinners and brush cleaning, without worrying much about their formulations.
Is Acetone a White Spirit?
While Acetone shares similarities with the White Spirit, it is not the same and should not be used for the same purposes without serious consideration. Acetone, while able to clean oil-based paint, is, in fact, more flammable and includes a more pungent irritating odour.
According to Healthline, Acetone is a dangerous chemical compound that can have adverse symptoms such as headache, slurred speech, lethargy and more.
White spirit alternative
Safer Spirit by Everbuild is a potent and valuable product that allows you to achieve almost every property as White Spirit, minus paint-thinning oil-based paints.
Safer Spirit can achieve exceptional cleaning properties with its ability to remove oil and water-based paint from surfaces and brushes. It can also perform excellent cleaning properties on surfaces like laminate flooring, most textiles and glass, allowing endless options. It is also biodegradable.
It has been crafted using non-toxic, low-VOC contents, this includes;
- Water
- Peg-2 Methyl Ether
- Triethanolamine
- C9-11 Pareth-2
- 2-Propylheptanol ethoxylate
- Non-hazardous ethoxylate surfactantÂ
- Trisodium nitrilotriacetate
- Sodium hydroxide
This formula delivers an environmentally friendly formula that is safe for human handling and acts as a superb alternative to White Spirit.
White Spirit has not only been used as a cleaner but also a degreasing solution, priming certain surfaces and allowing better adhesion for paints, varnish and similar products. The Safer Spirit can achieve all of this as well. Typically, White Spirit cleans the surface but can leave remnants of itself, causing a potential fire risk, which Safer Spirit doesn’t carry at all. You can safely degrease a surface using Safer Spirit, ensuring a clean and primed surface for further application.
Other great alternatives to White Spirit include Clear Spirit, a popular water-based alternative that can help clean paint spills and clean brushes. This alternative is one of many non-flammable and safer options on the DIY market that include biodegradable ingredients and conditioning agents and are virtually odourless. This makes them suitable for cleaning brushes after using them with bitumen paint.
Final Thoughts
Overall, the Safer Spirit has not reached the popularity of the conventional White Spirit, with the history of it dating back to 1885. However, Safer Spirit can achieve the same level of popularity with the world’s general mentality shifting towards environmentally friendly alternatives that work with water-based paints and painting tools.
