Is parking lot sealcoating toxic?

[Sealtite]

Originally Posted by lucknow

The thought of banning solvent based material in favour of CT is just mind blowing.

No kidding. Imagine how much it sucked to be a contractor (like me), and basically having to learn an entirely new application method just to stay in business. It wasn't just the solvent based sealers that got banned too...You'd be hard pressed to find any oil based exterior paints in Pennsylvania these days. Any production or application of those products are now on the "down low".

Yeah, I'm no chemist or anything. All I know is that I don't have cancer from spraying CT for all those years, so I guess I might have dodged a bullet. You're right....it wears off slowly over time from traffic. It either gets ground down between the aggregate, or rubbed off onto the tires. Keep in mind however, that it's on a microscopic level over a long period of time. Also, the dried sealer film that's left behind on the pavement is only about 25% of the wet-applied product. Only about 10% of that is refined coal tar. The rest is sand and ball clay, both of which are obviously harmless. The actual refined coal tar content in a batch of coal tar emulsion sealer is rather small by volume. You wouldn't come to that conclusion by smelling the **** or leaving some skin exposed or unprotected. I think I'd rather be swarmed by yellow jackets than be subjected to a "sealer burn" ever again. It's incredibly painful.

[lucknow]

I was involved in the paving business here for 20 years. I have a few friends that are sealers. My one pal who bit the bullet and changed over to an AM sealer is doing far more business than he has ever done in the past. Over 95% of sealing guys in Canada are fly by night operators who only spray cutback sealer. They have such a bad rep that here in this country less than 5% of commercial parking lots are sealed at all. I helped this pal of mine when he first switched over. He bought himself a nice self porpelled sealing unit and that made it possible to seal ten times more area than he was able to spray in the past. I startes prospecting big commercial accounts that had never sealed their asphalt ever. Some, like a big John Deere plant I went in to talk to responded when I told them that their plants in the USA are pretty much all sealed and that the American property managers only do it because it PAYS. That was the first big 200,000 sq. ft. job and it just grew from there.
I went back to being retired and we are all happy. LOL

[Sealtite]

I just switched to asphalt emulsion sealer myself. Much better, blacker, and above all safer product. Of course it helps when I can apply it year-round here in southern California.

[latgray]

Someone posted that if you get the sealcoat on your car, it's on there for good and can not be removed without taking the paint off. That is UNTRUE. There is one (1) product that will remove the sealcoat. It's called "G-X-TRACT" and its only sold by a company called L & L Quality Products located in Georgia.