The Zero VOC Home Program
You are breathing your walls.
The EPA found the air inside the average home is 2–5 times more polluted than the air outside it. We built this program to fix the biggest reason why — permanently, and from $85 a month.
Start here
The air in your home
is not what you think.
I'm Ben Lynch. I started LimeWash Pros after reading what the EPA had published about the air inside ordinary American houses — and realizing the walls were the problem. Watch this, then stay for the podcast and I'll show you what I found.
Meet LimeWash Pros
Sixty seconds on who we are, what lime does that paint can’t, and why the air in your house is the reason we do this.
The podcast — more episodes coming
- 11:33
From Setback to Limewash Success: Meet Ben Lynch
Why I walked away from conventional paint, what I found in the research on VOCs, and how that turned into LimeWash Pros.
- 12:09
How Modern Paint is Killing You
The VOCs in ordinary latex paint don’t stop off-gassing when the wall dries. What that does to the air in your house, and what the EPA has published about it.
- 9:42
The Carcinogen On Your Walls
Benzene is a known human carcinogen and it is in the paint on every surface of your home. Here is what the research says, and what lime does about it.
The problem
Your home is a sealed chamber. And everything in it is off-gassing.
Start with the number. The EPA measured the air inside ordinary American homes and found common organic pollutants at two to five times the levels outside — in some cases ten times. Rural homes too. Clean air outside, contaminated air in.
Here is why. Every wall and every ceiling in your house is coated in paint, and paint seals the surface. Air can no longer move through it. At the same time that coating is releasing volatile organic compounds into your rooms, and it keeps releasing them for years after the smell has gone — long after you stopped thinking about it.
Then you add to it. Household cleaners. Candles. Air fresheners. Every one of them putting more VOCs into the same air. A VOC is a gas. And it is building up inside a chamber with nowhere to go, because every surface around you has been sealed.
There is more painted surface area in your home than any other single material. It is the biggest source in the building, and it is on all six sides of you.
This is not an argument about one bad product. It is about the material we defaulted to for the entire interior of every home built in the last eighty years, and what it does to the air a family breathes for the twelve or more hours a day they spend inside.
The evidence
We didn't make this up.
Here is the research.
-
2–5×
higher VOC levels inside homes than outside
The EPA’s TEAM study measured about a dozen common organic pollutants at 2–5 times higher concentrations indoors — and found it held true whether the home was rural or industrial. Some VOCs run up to ten times higher.
US EPA, Total Exposure Assessment Methodology → -
~40%
of indoor VOCs come from paints, solvents and varnishes
Building materials are the single largest contributor to the VOC load in a house — and there is more painted surface area in your home than any other material. Every wall. Every ceiling.
Reported across the indoor-air-quality literature → -
Asthma
prevalence rises with exposure to newly painted surfaces
Peer-reviewed studies link indoor VOCs to childhood asthma and wheeze, with the highest odds ratios for benzene. Formaldehyde exposure shows a significant positive association with childhood asthma across systematic review.
Asthma and the indoor environment, PubMed → -
70%
formaldehyde reduction measured on lime plaster
Lime doesn’t just sit there. Research shows lime surfaces take up formaldehyde from indoor air and chemically convert it on their alkaline surface sites. A University of Bath study measured up to 70% formaldehyde reduction.
University of Bath; Building and Environment →
Who it lands on
Lung cancer in people who never smoked is, overwhelmingly, a women's disease.
Of the women who develop lung cancer in Western countries, 22% never smoked. Among men, that figure is 2.9%. Roughly two thirds of never-smoker lung cancer cases worldwide occur in women.
One study followed married couples — same house, same air, same years — and female never-smokers still carried the higher risk.
Same home. Same air. Different outcome.
There is a reason worth sitting with. In most households, one person does the cleaning — and that person is absorbing the chemical load of the whole family. Researchers at the University of Bergen followed 6,235 people for more than twenty years and found that in women, the decline in lung function associated with cleaning was comparable to smoking just under 20 pack-years. Using sprays at home as little as once a week was enough to show harm. The same effect was not found in men.
Now put that person inside a house where every wall and ceiling is sealed with a coating that is itself among the largest chemical sources in the building, still releasing years after it dried. The cleaning products are added to air that has nowhere to go.
We can't do anything about what's under your sink. We can permanently remove the biggest source in the building.
The solution
We limewash the walls and ceilings, and the house breathes again.
Limewash is high-calcium lime, water and mineral pigment. There is nothing in it to off-gas — not on day one, not in year five. It doesn't seal the surface; it becomes part of it, and the wall stays open.
And lime works in the opposite direction to paint. Peer-reviewed testing shows lime surfaces take formaldehyde out of indoor air and chemically break it down on their alkaline surface. Lime has been one of the best filters we have had for drinking water for two centuries. We want it working on your air.
Removing the largest source in the building, and replacing it with a surface that pulls in the opposite direction. That is the whole program.
How it works
Four steps. From $85 a month.
-
One
We test your air first
We measure the VOC levels in your home before anything is touched. Real numbers, not guesses — so you know what you started with.
-
Two
Every wall. Every ceiling.
The program transitions your home from paint on every surface to limewash on every surface. Not an accent wall — the whole envelope, because that is where the load is.
-
Three
We test again
The same measurement, after. You see the difference in your own house rather than taking our word for it.
-
Four
Add the forest, if you want it
Optional monthly Sylvana subscription: whole-home therapeutic forest diffusion and oils delivered each month. Peer-reviewed studies show measurable health benefits, including lower cortisol, lower blood pressure and a 56% rise in natural killer cell activity. We take the bad VOCs out; they put the good ones back in.
Zero VOC Home Program
from $85/month
Entry pricing for smaller homes. Your monthly cost depends on the size of your home and the contract length you choose — longer terms bring the monthly down. Covers transitioning every painted surface in the house to limewash.
Sylvana add-on — optional
from $65/month
Our sister company. Where we remove the harmful VOCs from your home permanently, Sylvana replaces them with beneficial ones, through whole-home therapeutic forest diffusion. Peer-reviewed studies show measurable health benefits: a 12.4% drop in cortisol, lower systolic blood pressure and heart rate, and a 56% rise in natural killer cell activity, still 23% elevated a month later. Priced on the size of your home. Visit Sylvana.
Apply
Start with your air.
Tell us about your home and we'll come measure what you're actually breathing — then show you what the transition looks like and what it costs per month for your square footage and term.
Prefer to talk? 469-773-9067