[SML] advice on some old pigment

[Pat Kight]

Paul Schreiner via Stagecraft wrote:
> So I'm cleaning the paint area at my new(ish) gig from a couple dozen
> years or so worth of accumulated detritus and random stuff, and I came
> across what used to be a 20 lb. bag of dry "chrome yellow medium"
> pigment from Gothic Color in New York.  There's still a couple of
> pounds left, but the brown paper bag it was purchased in had
> deteriorated and is leaking.
>
> While I generally am getting dangerously close to Auld Pharte
> territory, this is something I've never actually worked with.  It's
> obvious that I either need to dispose of it or find better storage,
> but since I don't know how it would have been used, I'm not sure which
> way to go.  Is this something that mixes with latex?  If I dispose of
> it, what environmental precautions do I have to take?

Predates latex, from back in the days - my college years, for instance - 
when scene shops mixed their own paints using traditional artist 
pigments into neutral casein bases (this is not ancient history - 
Rosco's Iddings Deep Colors line is casein-based, and the last time I 
was in the local university scene shop, they still had the ingredients 
for mixing their own).

Chrome yellow is derived from lead chromate, and thus probably qualifies 
as hazardous waste. Check your recycling company - around here, ours has 
periodic days when people can bring in their housedhold hazardous waste 
for safe disposal. I'd suggest putting it in a sealed container such as 
a lidded plastic tub to avoid spills, more to rpevent a mess while 
transporting it than out of any inherent dread of touching it.

-- 
Pat Kight