I guess some are more sensitive to it than others. To me, the only “strong” smell is from the turpentine and some brush cleaners, which I don’t use because I paint in my house most of the time with a 2yr old and 4yr old and wife. The paints and mediums don’t smell strong to me. I use M. Graham paints and use walnut oil with them for medium and cleanup. No strong odors here.

Hmmm!
Lets have a look at the dangers we encounter throughout our lives…

Rocket fuel being burnt…Big hole somewhere.
Aviation fuel being burnt…helping the big hole get bigger.
Cars,Trucks,Vans,Farming,Construction Vehicles…we must still be breathing this is.
Chemical plants emmiting clouds of harmful remains…is this covering farmland?
The testing of nulear weapons…what can I say.

I could go on.

Personnaly if you drink/eat the stuff then yes it is harmful.

Just my cents worth.
George

I´m wondering what the dangers are with those terrible fumes and smelly things you are confronted with while painting in oils. For example turpentine, painting mediums and the paints themselves smell very strongly…

Turps and mineral spirits (alone, or as part of mediums) pose the greatest potential risk. Turps in particular is commonly the most overtly toxic element in a typical oil painting setup. You generally don’t have to worry about any smell from the paints (which many people, myself included, actually love!) although there are obviously exceptions – some people can enjoy Skippy or Jif but others can’t be near a peanut for fear of dying.

…I´m not sure of how long I can expose myself without protection without taking what risks.

Don’t expose yourself then.

Would it be harmful in any way to work with oils one hour a day in my teenages?

No way to know. Work with good ventillation (good, consistent airflow past you to the work and then out a window) is a must for caution*.

I used to use enamels a lot in my teens and not knowing any better I had the mineral spirits or turps open on the desk almost continuously, with the window shut (hot climate, air conditioning). I don’t seem to have suffered any ill-effects from this exposure, but another person could easily have become quite ill; and one can become permanently sensitised from that point onwards too, meaning that even extremely low levels of exposure can cause rashes and other unpleasant reactions.

So, much better to err on the side of caution – treat all painting supplies as though they were toxic and you won’t go far wrong.

*Other tips:
don’t leave solvents uncapped when unnecessary;
use the least amount of solvents you can;
use a low-odour solvent in place of regular mineral spirits;
or, change your painting process so that no spirits are used at all.

Einion1

I want to ask: are oderless turps harmless? Or are they more toxic. I use oderless. I have read that people paint with acrylics because they become dissy of all the fumes. But i wouldnt worry. If you look to bob ross vids, you see all kinds of black/brown spots on Bobs hands. So i dont use gloves but i paint that way so my hands wont make (long) contact with the paints. If it happens i wash my hands as quick as possible.

https://www.wetcanvas.com/forums/showthread.php?t=382140

i tend to use lytex gloves when working with most paints espicaly cadmiums (I can taste metal right away if I dont) and when washing brushes but other than that, the fumes? how else can I get to the place where I can paint my happy little trees

i tend to use lytex gloves when working with most paints espicaly cadmiums (I can taste metal right away if I dont)

Is this for real? I was sure I read that paints cannot be absorbed through the skin unless you have a cut. I do wipe off paint on my hands during painting, but don’t clean them until the end of the session when I am doing the brushes. Is it mainly the cads that can leech through the skin?

Jason.

I want to ask: are oderless turps harmless?

No. Being facetious, nothing’s harmless but to answer what you actually meant low-odour solvents are usually significantly safer than turps and most ‘normal’ mineral spirits, with much higher ratings for the time you can be exposed to them. This is often expressed as a PEL number in an MSDS; you want to see a high number – turps is 100, good-quality OMSs can be as high as 500.

If you look to bob ross vids, you see all kinds of black/brown spots on Bobs hands.

And??? Plenty of people who have never used paint have brown spots on their hands

Odorless turps is still turps. They change the chemical makeup somehow to reduce the smell, but the fumes are still there.

That’s not at all accurate. That “change” in the “chemical makeup” you refer to changes what’s in the bottle completely, often entirely removing the very things that make another solvent riskier to use, and this goes hand in hand with reducing (often significantly) the evaporation rate.

So simply put: less fumes and they’re less harmful to boot.

Same ventilation care should be taken with odorless as with “odorfull” turps.

The whole point of low-odour solvents is that less ventilation is necessary for a ‘safe’ (acceptable risk) working environment.

You can still make the decision to use the same level of ventilation you would if you were working with open containers of turpentine if you choose to, but low-odour solvents are safer.

Einion