Zealous environmental regulators in the State of Washington are bearing down on an inherent feature of printing ink chemistry that federal environmental regulators see little or no threat of harm in—and printers in the state are growing apprehensive about what the disconnect could mean for their business.

At issue is a class of chemicals known as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). PCBs are well-documented as carcinogens, and their production has been banned in the U.S. since 1979. Nevertheless, they can be generated in chemical reactions that take place as a side effect of the manufacture of pigmented ink. Incorporated in this way, they are deemed to be “inadvertent” PCBs (iPCBs) that were not intentionally created or added as part of the ink manufacturing process.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has determined that products containing trace amounts of iPCBs averaging less than 25 parts per million (ppm) may be excluded from regulation because of the limited risk they pose to people and the environment. iPCBs in most printing inks—including those tested by the Washington State Department of Ecology (DoE) for rulemaking purposes—fall below that threshold.