Paint your home healthy

Mold and dirt make my family paranoid. Many years ago, the family spent a week visiting a brother who was in college and living independently for the very first time in his life.

We were unprepared for the chaos, grime and filth in his flat. Dirty, smelly laundry lay all over the unit, muddy sneaker tracks trailed on the floor, and there was not a single clean plate, cup, utensil, pot or pan in the house. We found these stacked haphazardly in the kitchen sink or in unlikely places like the bathtub and utility closet, with a lush garden of greenish-gray mold growing on leftover food. It was a good thing that the place did not allow pets because if my brother was allowed to bring his dog, the place would have become a flea-infested kennel, too. As it was, in fact, my dad wryly suggested that we should just hose down the place and burn all it contained.

However, my mom was undaunted and put everyone to work. After many hours of sulking and elbow grease, the place was spic and span again. The bad thing about it, though, was that the little kids in our family had to stay while the place was getting cleaned up. With no adult left to watch them while they swam in the hotel pool, we felt that it was safer if they hung around.

We were so wrong! When we got home, my youngest brother was hospitalized for a serious respiratory infection. We spent a couple of anxious weeks camping out in the hospital until his condition improved. He had gotten sick from the mold.

"The most common disease-causing bacteria are the enteropathogens such as E. coli, salmonella, shigella, S. aureus, and parasites like E. histolytica," says Dr. Raul Destura, microbiology and infectious diseases specialist and laboratory manager of the National Institutes of Health Central Laboratories. "The most serious types of diseases brought about by these organisms are diarrhea, skin and soft-tissue infections and respiratory infections. Respiratory tract infections and diarrheal diseases rank first and second as the leading causes of morbidity in the Philippines, across all age groups."

Dr. Destura was a resource speaker at the press conference to introduce a new antibacterial paint distributed by Pacific Paint (Boysen) Philippines.

You can be sure that after my family’s unpleasant personal experience with mold, an antibacterial paint that inhibits the growth of bacteria, mildew and fungi is of special interest to me. Add to that the nugget of information shared by my cousin about a certain kind of mold being suspect as a cause for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, and you can be doubly sure that mold-killing paint will be a welcome product in my household.

The antibacterial agent incorporated in paint is Microban. Tom Ellefsen, Microban managing director for the Asia Pacific Region, explained that the technology that gives antibacterial properties to the paint is the same one used to keep hospital and food service equipment safe. The clincher for me, however, was that Microban technology is also used to keep surgical drapings free from contamination with dangerous organisms. As you know, surgical drapings are the sterile cloths that are swathed around the patient when he is cut up during surgery. And those have to be really clean.

Incorporating Microban with Boysen imbues the paint with antibacterial properties and the secret behind this innovation is the incorporation of the technology early during the manufacturing process. "What this technology does is really change the concept of what paint is all about," says Boysen vice president Johnson Ongking. "Traditionally paint has been used to protect the surfaces that make up the structure of the house, whether it be your cement wall, wooden floor, or metal roof. Now, with the incorporation of Microban, we will have paint that will help protect the people living inside the structure as well." The paint is recommended for homes, hospitals, schools, food manufacturing facilities, hotels, restaurants and places that are likely to harbor mold and bacteria. In a humid and congested metropolis like Metro Manila, that is just about everywhere.

The best part about Microban technology in Boysen Healthy Home Paint is that the antibacterial properties do not wear or wash off, even for long periods of time. Moreover, experts say that Boysen Healthy Home is a low-odor and low-volatile organic content (VOC) paint that does not diminish indoor air quality. For us lay people, this simply means that the product has no noxious fumes that will make you pass out while you are painting indoors. I suddenly remembered that mold occasionally grows on our basement wall, and couldn’t wait to try the product there.

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Boysen Healthy Home is the most affordable co-branded Microban paint in the world. It is manufactured by Pacific Paint (Boysen) Philippines, the first Philippine paint company to be awarded Responsible Care, the global chemical industry’s environment, health and safety initiative to drive continuous improvement in these areas.