These days when you hear people talking about green construction it is almost impossible for them not to mention VOCs and low or no VOC paint.  VOCs are volatile organic compounds.  The EPA defines VOCs as organic compounds that participate in a photoreaction.  Essentially this means that it is something that turns into vapor under normal conditions.  So in regards to paint what it is saying is that some of the chemicals in the paint are vaporizing into the air when you open your paint can.  A lot of this is the familiar "paint" smell that we are all familiar with.  By lowering or eliminating VOCs paint companies can now produce paint that has little or no odor. 

So, all of these paint companies are now making low VOC paint.  My question is how do they compare?  What I did was to take 5 paint manufacturers and look at their products and compare the VOC level.  I found the VOC levels on their respective websites.  Most were taken from MSDS Data Sheets.  Here are the results:

So what does all of this information mean?  It is a tool for you to compare the VOC levels of different paint.  It is one more piece of data for you to consider when choosing a type of paint.  Not that you should base your decision entirely on VOC level but if all else is equal it may help you decide.