I’ll be recording a podcast live today, May 21st, at 3:00 PM Eastern summarizing the results of Big Paint’s most recent quarter, including updates on Sherwin-Williams, PPG, Behr, RPM, Pittsburgh Paints, Benjamin Moore, Home Depot and Lowe’s. And from Graco, the makers of professional paint sprayers which are an indispensable component of most larger paint jobs. Making Graco’s results perhaps the best data available, when forecasting demand for architectural coatings. And

Lawsuits topped the news last week with independent hardware cooperative Ace Hardware getting served with a summons alleging a hub-and-spoke price fixing conspiracy and Behr settling their copyright infringement case with ABKCO Music for their unlicensed use of the Rolling Stones song Paint it Black, in a marketing campaign. The case against Behr lasted as long as I presumed when I covered the filing in January of this year, when I called Behr incompetent for allowing an in

The Sherwin-Williams manufacturing facility in Rochester, Pennsylvania continues to make paint illegally, doing grave harm to the people and planet there. With little regard for the impacts of their actions beyond growing their own earnings, which Sherwin announced were up in the first quarter of this year. A callousness even I did not believe Sherwin-Williams could possess. Because the effects of Sherwin’s illegalities there are evident prima facie, Monty that means it

On Monday of this week specialty coatings manufacturer and distributor of Pittsburgh Paints , Mercury Paint announced a price increase, one of a plethora since the beginning of the war with Iran. In a letter to customers, Mercury refers to the ongoing conflict and the supply chain disruptions its causing, which if not for the situation in Rochester is all I would be writing about. Because like the news from Rochester, inflation is not going away anytime soon. Already th

A retraction becomes necessary when something a writer proffers as fact turns out to be untrue, a crow I have not eaten often as I tend to measure my words. But while facts can’t change circumstances can, so despite all efforts I find I must now suffer the embarrassment of a retraction . Last week I blogged that Sherwin-Williams was illegally operating their plant in Rochester, Pennsylvania, which is not the statement I need to retract . Nor will I need to retract my

Once government and the lawyers arrive in Rochester, a map will show the vast spread of Sherwin’s plume across Western Pennsylvania. Now as much a part of that region’s topography as the Appalachian Mountains and Allegheny Plateau, the chemicals of Sherwin’s greed forever covering that earth. The plume from years of PFAS venting may stretch as many as 50-miles from Sherwin’s stack, depending on airflow patterns and topography. In the range Pittsburgh, Penn Hills, Youngstow

With an insidious disregard for both humanity and the law, Sherwin-Williams CEO Heidi Petz has exposed thousands of Pennsylvanians to the hazards of her process. Leaking and venting a cocktail of waste ladened with the neurotoxin Methyl Methacrylate (MMA). And other Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances or PFAS, also known as forever chemicals . The effects of exposure to MMA are instant: a sensitizer which changes your immunological profile immediately after induction.

One of the chemicals Sherwin-Williams is venting on the people of Rochester—or perhaps leaking—is Methyl Methacrylate or MMA, a liquid, which wants to be a gas as badly as I want to see Heidi Petz held responsible for the venal avarice of her personage. Monty, that means I think she’s an asshole too. At room temperature MMA contains a vapor pressure of 40 millimeters of Mercury (mmHg), so that evaporation happens even at that temperature. Twice as fast as water and there

On January 30, 2026, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection issued Sherwin-Williams a series of violations for illegal operations at their Rochester plant. Since learning that I've uncovered even more truths about that plant, which I intend to share with you each day this week. A deposit on the years it will require to make a full accounting of what in the end, will be paint’s largest environmental disaster sans lead. A criminal act perpetrated by inten