Developing Cleaner
Ink Formulations:
A Flowchart for Ink Formulators
This product was developed
by the Flexography Partner-
ship of the Design for the
Environment (DfE) Program
at the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA).
The Partnership performed a
detailed study comparing
hazards and risks, safety
concerns, and cost and
performance aspects of the
three main flexo ink systems:
solvent-based, water-based,
and ultraviolet (UV)-cured.
The complete results of the
study, Flexqgraphic Ink Options:
A Cleaner Technologies Substitutes
Assessment (CTSA), can be
downloaded from the DfE
website (www.epa.gov/dfe).
To develop and successfully market
environmentally improved ink formula-
tions, formulators need to be able to think
about and implement a process for
assessing inks. The information in this
brochure will help you do that.
Getting the Right Mix:
Performance, Environment,
and Cost
Performance, environment, and cost are
all critical in order for a formulator to
claim marketplace success with an ink
product line. Of course, without accept-
able performance and cost criteria, a new
ink product line will not be accepted by
customers. What may not be so obvious is
that environmental and health consider-
ations also are critical to the success of
inks. Inks with fewer and less serious
environmental and worker risk concerns
can lead to lower costs for formulators
(and by extension for your customers), in
many categories, including the following:
• regulatory requirements,
• insurance needs,
• air emissions,
• wastewater releases,
• solid waste disposal, and
• liability, mediation, and litigation.
Focus on environment,
health, and safety
Ink formulators are continually searching
for new performance and cost features to
help penetrate and build market niches,
hold onto customers, and allow inks to
work with different processes and materi-
als. In just the same way, formulators can
apply the process of continuous improve-
ment to the environment, health, and
safety aspects of inks, looking for such
favorable aspects as:
• formulations with fewer and less-toxic
chemicals,
• "cleaner" formulations (reduced
environmental impacts),
• less need for press-side additives to
maintain performance,
• inks that require less energy to run
acceptably or dry quickly, and
• inks with fewer clean-up and disposal
concerns.
Make improved ink safety a top goal
of research and development.
The flexo industry constantly demands new
and improved inks that can meet increas-
ing performance needs. In addition to
performance research, ink formulators
can meet the needs of your customers by
developing formulations that pose fewer
and less potentially serious risks to workers
and the environment.
Conduct and support environmental
and health risk research.
Additional research will help ensure that
the printing industry has access to as
much information as possible about ink
chemicals. Information is needed to
identify chemicals that
• are not regulated and pose risks,
EPA 744-F-02-003
April 2002
MQ&9
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• have not undergone toxicological testing and have clear or
potential risk concerns, and
• are new to the market, and thus much less likely to be
regulated or thoroughly tested.
The "Sources of Chemical Information" in this brochure may
help you identify avenues for research and analysis of your
inks.
Not only will thoughtful research lead to improved environ-
mental and safety features of ink formulations, but it will also
help you market your products effectively and remain more
competitive.
Develop partnerships for success
Remember that good teamwork will help your research efforts
to be successful. Partnerships can help you obtain expert
information and analysis, spread out the work load, and
strengthen the committment of everyone. Team players and
partners can be found not only within your company, but
among your suppliers, customers, trade associations, even the
community in which your business is located.
Communicate with your customers
Printers see environmental and health risk issues as second
only to performance when selecting an ink .] Ink company
sales representatives are in an excellent position to inform
printers of environmental, health, or safety improvements in
your inks and to encourage adoption of "cleaner" inks.
Explain to your customers that information is the key to getting
the right mix of performance, environment, and cost aspects
— and ultimately to more successful printing. Clear communi-
cation on your part will help ensure that your customers
understand and support your goals. In turn, their support will
provide a strong basis for your future research.
By encouraging your customers to accept alternative formula-
tions, you can position these inks in the marketplace in ways
that may help both you and your customers. For instance:
• Cleaner inks protect workers and lead to a safer work-
place.
• Cleaner inks may help reduce operating costs.
• Cleaner inks contribute to a cleaner environment and a
safer community.
• Public image as environmentally responsible is good for
business.
Also be sure to talk with your customers about other ways they
can reduce environmental/health impacts of inks in operation.
For example, they may be able to
• modify press equipment and/or operating procedures
(e.g., install doctor blades),
• require press operators to wear appropriate personal
protective equipment (e.g., butyl or nitrile gloves for all
workers who handle inks),
• improve pressroom ventilation rates, and
• install new or better control equipment (e.g., oxidizers with
water-based systems to destroy VOCs).
Talk with your suppliers
Developing cleaner formulations doesn't have to stop with
your final products. Your suppliers of ink inputs also play a
very important role. Involving them in your process will not
only encourage them to think about and work toward cleaner,
safer materials. It also will expand responsibility, share the
work, and in the long run ensure that workers and the environ-
ment are well protected. Some of the ways you can work with
your suppliers include the following:
• Require them to provide all the information possible about
the ingredients they sell you.
• Encourage them to conduct and support additional
research about chemicals that have toxicities and potential
risks.
• Challenge them to identify and make available chemicals
that have reduced toxicity and lower potential environmen-
tal impacts, and to stop supplying more toxic and risk-
prone chemicals.
Getting the right mix means continuous
improvement
The goal of developing cleaner inks requires a continuous
improvement process. Environmental improvements will not be
achieved overnight, but must be viewed as a long-term,
evolving process. Such a process need not be viewed as a
burden, but rather it can be seen as an opportunity to
strengthen your company in important ways.
1 ICF Consulting. 2000. Internal document for the EPA Design
for the Environment Project. January 18, 2000.
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Tfie flowchart on the following pages
takes you through the process of
thinking about and assessing the
environment, health, and safety issues
of ink formulations.
Sources of Chemical Information
Following are some sources of chemical information to help
you better build chemical profiles on flexographic ink ingredi-
ents and better understand the health and environmental
impacts of flexo inks.
ASTDR (Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry).
http://atsdrl .atsdr.cdc.gov
• ToxFAQs. A series of summaries about hazardous sub-
stances from the ATSDR Toxicological Profiles and Public
Health Statements. Each fact sheet serves as a quick and
easy-to-understand guide to the effects of hazardous
substances on human health.
http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxfaq.html
• Toxicological Profiles. Toxicological profiles for hazardous
substances found at National Priorities List sites. Profiles
include minimum risk levels.
http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxpro2.html
ChemlD. The National Library of Medicine's Chemical
Dictionary. Contains over 339,000 compounds of biomedical
and regulatory interest. Records include CAS Registry Num-
bers, molecular formulae, generic names, synonyms, and other
references.
http://chem.sis.nlm.nih.gov/chemidplus
ChemFinder. Searchable database of chemical names,
synonyms, CAS Registry Numbers, and molecular formulas.
http://chemfinder.camsoft.com
Chemical Right-to-Know (RTK) Initiative, U.S. EPA. Devel-
oped to rapidly test chemicals and make the data available to
scientists, policy makers, industry, and the public.
http://www.epa.gov/chemrtk
ECOSAR (Ecotoxicity of Structure-Activity Relationships
Database). Based on structure analysis, contains estimates of
toxicity to fish, invertebrates, and aquatic plants.
http://www.epa.gov/oppt/newchems/21 ecosar.htm
ECOTOX Database System. Chemical-specific ecological
toxicity databases. Includes AQUIRE, for aquatic toxicity.
http://www.epa.gov/ecotox
International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).
Overall evaluations of carcinogenicity to humans. List and
searchable database of chemicals evaluated as IARC Mono-
graphs.
http://193.51.164.ll
National Toxicology Program (NTP) Annual Report on
Carcinogens. This contains lists of chemicals known or
reasonably anticipated to be carcinogenic to humans.
http://ntp-server.niehs.nih.gov/NewHomeRoc/
CurrentLists.html
Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics (OPPT), U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency. Databases and software
produced by OPPT are valuable tools for obtaining chemical
and regulatory information.
http://www.epa.gov/opptintr/opptdb.htm
continued on back page
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Obtain management support to
develop a "cleaner" ink.
Commit to the Challenge
Select Another Ink to
Evaluate
Some or the ink chemicals that were
analyzed for the Flexography Project showed to:
exposures, and risks to workers. You may wish to be
research by reviewing those chemicals and categories. ^
this by looking in Flexographic Ink Options: A Cleaner Ted
Substitutes Assessment (CTSA). Also see the Sources c
Information section of this brochure for recomm
locations where you can obtain chemical
information.
Adopt New Formulation
Is the
New Formulation
Acceptable?
Encourage customers to adopt new
formulation. Stress environmental/
marketing reasons.
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Identify Product to Evaluate
acity
gin your
fou can do
mologies
)f Chemical
.ended
Conduct Baseline
Assessment of Each
Ingredient
itify and Evaluate
Alternative
Identify an ink to evaluate, because of concerns that may include:
• Safety issues
• Toxic or hazardous chemicals
• Known/potential risks to human health/environment
• Legal/regulatory requirements
• Performance problems
• High cost
Gather input and assistance, by teaming with printers, chemists,
engineers, quality control, safety & health, legal, marketing, others.
Assess toxicity.
• Develop chemical profile. Consider acute and
chronic toxicity as well as carcinogenicity
• Consult MSDS, suppliers, and on-line information
sources.
Assess anticipated exposures to workers and communi-
ties. Consider using mass-balance calculations, models,
and monitoring data.
Assess potential risks, by considering both toxicity and
expected exposures.
• You may want to do this qualitatively or quantita-
tively, depending on resources and priorities. For a
quantitative assessment, does expected exposure
exceed critical toxicity values (e.g., OSHA PELs,
reference concentrations)?
• You may want to focus only on hazard, presuming
that by minimizing toxicity, risk also will be mini-
mized.
Decide if the ingredient presents hazards or risks to
human health/environment.
• If so, could it be replaced with a more desirable (less
toxic) chemical?
• If not, can you mitigate its potential environmental/
health impacts?
Determine whether the alternative ingredient and
formulation exhibit acceptable properties, such
as:
• Performance
• Toxicity
• Worker safety
• Emissions
• Other environmental impacts
• Regulatory requirements
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For printed copies of this or any
DfE document, contact the
National Service Center for
Environmental Publications.
http://www.epa.gov/ncepihom
telephone: 1-800-490-9198
Sources of Chemical Information (continued)
• EPA's Exposure Assessment webpage
includes exposure assessment meth-
ods, databases, and prediction
models.
http://www.epa.gov/opptintr/exposure
• Estimation Program Interface (EPI)
Suite is a series of physical/chemical
property and environmental fate
estimation models.
http://www.epa.gov/opptintr/expo-
sure/docs/ep isuite.htm
http://www.epa.gov/opptintr/expo-
sure/docs/epiwin.htm
• Flexography Project website contains
many documents to help flexo profes-
sionals develop market environmen-
tally improved ink formulations.
http://www.epa.gov/dfe
RTECs (Registry of Toxic Effects of
Chemical Substances). Toxicity data for
over 140,000 chemicals. Only available
through commercial vendors; URL
provides further vendors.
http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/rtecs.html
TOXNET. The National Library of
Medicine's Toxicology Data Network.
Contains databases on toxicology,
hazardous chemicals, and related areas.
http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov
Toxnet includes:
• CCRIS (Chemical Carcinogenisis
Research Information System).
Sponsored by the National Cancer
Institute, a scientifically evaluated and
fully referenced data bank containing
some 8,000 chemical records with
carcinogenicity, mutagenicity, tumor
promotion, and tumor inhibition test
results.
• GENE-TOX. Genetic toxicology
(mutagenicity) test data, resulting from
expert peer review of the open scientific
literature for approximately 3,000
chemical substances.
• HSDB (Hazardous Substances Data
Bank). Data file that focuses on the
toxicology of over 4,500 potentially
hazardous substances. Includes human
exposure, industrial hygiene, emer-
gency handling, and environmental
fate. Scientifically peer-reviewed.
• IRIS (Integrated Risk Information
System). An EPA database that contains
health risk information on over 500
chemicals. This includes cancer
weight-of-evidence classifications and
cancer potency factors. These data
have been reviewed by EPA and
represent EPA consensus.
http://www.epa.gov/iris
The Design for the Environment (DfE)
Flexography Project
The DfE Program is located within the Economics, Exposure and Technology Division
of EPA's Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics. DfE works directly with industries to
help them integrate health and environmental considerations into their business
decisions.
The DfE Flexo Project is a voluntary collaboration between representatives of the flexo
industry and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The Flexo Project performed a
comprehensive, comparative assessment of risks, costs, and performance of a cross-
section of inks.
The Flexo Project has developed a variety of materials to help flexo professionals.
These materials are available on the DfE website (www.epa.gov/dfe). For more
information, call the DfE Program at 202-564-8780 or send e-mail to dfe@epa.gov.
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