gwfrase wrote:
I have been composting for years, but have no idea what to do with this. My painters rinsed their brushes into my compost bin.
If it's acrylic latex, it probably is a styrene and/or butadiene polymer variant, which yields nitrogen oxide, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and hydrocarbons such as styrene/butadiene as breakdown products. That's quite a bit different from natural rubber latex, but then latex paint is designed to resist biodegradation. (Imagine how much non-degradable paint is used in the world in a year and how many brushes are washed off in kitchen sinks!) Even so, a robust compost pile should do as good a job as any with it. I doubt the amount is large, so I'd probably compost away. The option is to dump it, ultimately in a landfill, which I don't think is a very good choice.