Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Does Non-Petroleum based toner make laser printers safer/healthier?

There was a report that came out of Queensland Australia that examined the particle emissions of laser printers having the same health effects as smoking due to their ink. I was wondering if the ink is instead soy/vegetable and/or water based would it negate the emissions all together, or is there some other chemicals involved that I do not know about?Does Non-Petroleum based toner make laser printers safer/healthier?
Am, the ';ink'; is just carbon, the same stuff you scrape off an oil lamp chimney. If you use ask.com and search on laser printer emissions (no quotes) you will get quite a few sources of discussion on this point. I've included one which you should find interesting. I believe that if you do not have printers concentrated in one room (where there are people) and there is reasonable ventilation, there should not be a problem. Placement of printers, from my prior employment experience, is local to the user group thus they are not concentrated. After reading the report, you will likely conclude (as I did) that this study is based on the ';stand close and inhale deeply for 72 hours'; approach used in many such test.

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