Under pressure from environmental activist groups, Menards, the Wisconsin-based retailer, will remove a line of toxic paint strippers from its shelves.
The company has agreed to stop buying paint strippers containing dangerous methylene chloride as a result of a coordinated campaign from concerned citizens. Safer Chemicals Healthy Families, a nationwide coalition of organizations dedicated to removing toxic chemicals from everyday use, partnered with the Sierra Club on the effort to persuade Menards to stop selling products containing methylene chloride. This action follows a trend that began in 2018 when eleven home improvement and auto parts retailers, including The Home Depot, Lowe's, Walmart, Amazon, and Sherwin-Williams, pledged to stop selling products containing methylene chloride and NMP, another toxic solvent used in paint strippers. These retailers plan to transition to safer alternatives.
A total of seventeen Midwest environmental and consumer protection groups joined together in the movement to pressure Menards to stop selling products containing methylene chloride. These groups were following a move by the Environmental Protection Agency in 2017 to ban methylene chloride from products, citing health concerns, birth defects, and at least 64 deaths since the 1980s.
Eric Uram, of the Sierra Club's National Toxics Team, said, "Retailers have a responsibility to protect their customers from unnecessarily deadly products like the paint strippers in question. Other home improvement retailers offer only less-toxic substitutes. Menards needs to do the same."
According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Menards has agreed to stop retailing products containing the two harmful chemicals, and its spokesperson Jeff Abbott confirmed the retailer will exhaust its supplies of paint strippers rather than remove them from shelves. Menards, which has 300 locations nationwide, is opting to phase these products out of its inventory for the time being.
Paint stripper photo copyright Raquel Baranow.