You may enjoy shooting them at your friends, but how many of you have actually thought about what goes into those little balls of paint? Here’s a few facts about the paintball:

• Fact 1:Paintballs aren’t actually filled with paint! The “paint” is a mix of non-toxic liquid and colouring (usually food colouring). So there’s no worry about getting poisoned by a paintball!
• Fact 2:The thin outside layer of a paintball is made of gelatine and is biodegradable – that’s why they can litter fields and cause no damage to the environment!
• Fact 3:Most paintball “paint” can be washed out of clothes pretty easily! The only problems occur when a dark-coloured paintball bursts on light clothing, or a light coloured paintball bursts on dark clothing.
• Fact 4:You can get loads of different types of paintballs including various scents (strawberry anyone?) or even glow-in-the-dark paintballs! Obviously, you’d need more than food colouring to make a paintball glow-in-the-dark, but most manufacturers still ensure that these paintballs are as harmless as regular ones.
• Fact 5:Sounds silly – but the colour of the “paint” inside the paintball doesn’t always match up to the multicoloured outside layer. We do get several people asking about this at PaintSplat Jamaica so there are some people who do want to know!