I will be the first to admit that I did poorly at high school chemistry. These days though when I think back on my college art classes I find myself wishing that there had been a chemistry class geared towards artists.
After all we handle chemicals as artists. As a printmaker I have worked with ferric chloride, nitric acid, and dutch mordant (seven parts water to one part hydrochloric acid with a little potassium chlorate) We were taught some basic saftey stuff, but a little deeper understanding I think would be a good thing. That being said I think I got more information than what the painters did. In the one painting class I did take there was no mention of saftey issues with the oil paints we were using. Even though the cadmium colors are listed as hazardous inorganic pigments. In fact the painters where I went to graduate school were being pushed to use flake white (i.e. lead white). They were easily able to bypass this by just having a tube of flake white sitting out. The professor could not tell that they were actually using the much safer titanium white. That professor could stand to read A History of Color. Then maybe she would know that lead white is not only unsafe it is also unstable as a color. Over time lead white can turn to black, so personally I don't see the point of using it at all. Unfortunately I have heard of oil painters who have to switch to acrylic because their frequent use of oil paint leads to toxic build up and overload in their system. Maybe if people had a better understanding of what they are working with and proper saftey precautions this would not be happening.
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