Who doesn’t love trying something new? In the mid-1900s a number of modern artists experimented with new types of commercial paint using it as a base layer for their paintings. Now, decades later, their paint choices are turning out to have some negative consequences.

Abstract Expressionist painters Hans Hofmann, Jackson Pollock and others took advantage of an explosion of new paints, including zinc oxide and commercial white house paints, that became available in the years following the first and second world wars.