Manage Your Hazardous Chemicals
Take proactive steps to eliminate or minimize hazardous chemical use and waste.
Without chemicals where would the printer be? At all stages of the printing process—darkroom, pressroom, finishing—we find chemicals. They help us to process our films and plates, transfer ink from plate to paper, bind pages together and clean-up the whole place after all is done.
There is a down side to all this activity, though. For every chemical entering the print shop, a product or waste must find it's way out. If the chemicals do not become part of the printed product, they are released as vapors or become a hazardous waste or a waste water discharge. For those vapors that remain in the pressroom, indoor air quality becomes an issue.
Finding The Culprits
The more proactive approach is to eliminate or minimize the quantity of the waste or the hazardous nature of the chemicals we use. Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) are a major tool in the identification and quantification of hazardous chemicals. The listing of hazardous components and percentages in the MSDS and the instructions for disposition of the product and its wastes will help to identify specific substances and describe the potential dangers of releases.
In the darkroom, fixer solution washes the silver off of film and paper during developing. If the fixer that is discharged from the developing system contains more than five parts per million of silver, that liquid is a hazardous waste. Silver recovery filters placed between the processors and the discharge to the sewer will remove the silver from the water and collect the metal for reuse.
Photographic film and paper contain leachable silver in the emulsions. Once processed, the silver will not leach from the paper or film. Unprocessed waste paper and film can carry the silver halide wastes to a landfill. Many suppliers arrange for the collection and return of all waste or used films for silver recovery.
Dirty, spent cleaning solutions are usually hazardous, both as flammable liquids and for the health hazards that have been associated with particular solvents. Shop towels can be contaminated with solvents, inks or other chemicals. If listed chemicals, such as Methylene Chloride or MEK are used, these rags cannot be sent with the regular garbage for disposal in a landfill and must be treated as hazardous waste.
Containers that are not completely empty of inks, solvents or other chemicals may pose a problem as a hazardous waste, or many simply be refused by the garbage disposal company.
Minimizing All Wastes
A key factor in managing hazardous wastes is having a program to eliminate or minimize the contributing chemicals or processes. Find substitutes that are safer, or find other means of accomplishing the same productivity and quality.
Darkroom chemistry is rapidly giving way to computer-generated graphics and negatives, opening a way to remove such chemistry from the scene. Plate processing chemistry may also have a limited future as a result of direct-to-plate technology.
Where darkrooms continue to function, silver recovery canisters should be a fixture between the processors and the sewer pipeline. Removing the silver halide helps to purify the water to acceptable levels. It also rewards the user by capturing the silver for reuse, with compensation to the printer.
There are a number of options to replace some portion of the inks that create air pollutants or volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Vegetable oil inks, notably soy oil inks, have captured the imagination of the public and will work well on the typical offset press. Some tweaking of the ink train may be needed.
Cleaning the press with press wash offers many opportunities. Safer, less hazardous, low- or no-VOC cleaners have been on the market for a number of years. Working practices may have to be altered, but the environmental and workplace safety benefits are there.
Perhaps the easiest way to reduce pollution at the press is to observe how clean-ups are done. Do you use the best working methods to clean? Are cans of solvents left open to evaporate during the process? Better working methods and common sense can reduce the amount of solvent used.
Fountain solutions traditionally have used isopropyl alcohol in a mixture with water and concentrate. Many new fountain solutions have been formulated that do not require alcohol. Beware of other chemicals when selecting a substitute. Ethylene glycol ethers are not good substitutes for alcohol.
Paper waste can add to solid waste. Recycling is an important consideration. Some printers have taken their cutting wastes and cut them to sizes that have been used by students at the local schools.
Overall, a safer, cleaner operation will reflect in the quality of product as well as life. Reduced costs for compliance and potential legal liability are very real concerns. Put into effect, a pollution prevention program can add up to profits at the end of the year.
Fred Shapiro is the environmental chairman for the Association of the Graphic Arts and an industry consultant. He is also president of P-F Technical Services. He can be reached at (516) 935-7241.
Safer Blanket Washes
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Design for the Environment program studied offset blanket washes—with testing conducted by Graphic Arts Technical Foundation. It has prepared a number of documents to assist the printer in finding safer, cleaner washes.
Copies can be obtained by writing: USEPA Pollution Prevention Information Clearinghouse, 401 M Street SW (3404), Washington, DC 20460.
