Acid-Free, Lignin-Free, and Buffered Paper

Why You Should Care, What You Can Do

An earlier version of this article was three times longer, but unfortunately after spending six hours writing, I accidentally deleted the entire article, and what follows is the shorter version I reconstructed the next day.

Every time I encounter claims about products being "acid-free" or "lignin-free" or "buffered," I wonder what the heck it's really all about. Does it really matter? Isn't it all just a sales pitch? Aren't they just trying to persuade us to buy more expensive products than we really need?

But although I am a skeptic, I have some clear evidence that something is wrong, in the form of yellowed scrapbook pages like the ones at right. This is a 2005 photograph of a blank spread of pages from a scrapbook album my parents worked on in 1964, but never finished. Clearly, these pages were never left open in the sun, yet they have yellowed just as much as the pages with newspaper articles attached.

So I did some homework, some research, and I reached the following conclusions:

• Lignin is a chemical substance found in wood that bonds (glues) cellulose, making wood stronger; paper without lignin is not as strong. However, lignin breaks down over time, turning the paper brown and releasing acids.
• Acid: Acids actually can make paper better for writing or printing, but they gradually deteriorate or disintegrate paper -- whether used in the paper-making process, leached from other materials, or released during the breakdown of lignin. Over time, acidic paper becomes brittle.
• Buffering: A "buffer" in paper refers to the addition of alkaline materials into the paper-making process, in order to offset or cancel out the effects of acids. However, some studies suggest that excess alkaline materials may also damage paper.

Nearly all paper made before the 1850s was acid-free, and survives quite well for centuries. Nearly all paper made from the 1940s through the 1980s is highly acidic (due to the manufacturing process) and yellows quickly. Although acid-free, lignin-free paper is now widely available at reasonable prices, most paper made is acidic, because it's cheaper and acceptable for most uses (keep in mind the huge volume of paper used by newspaper.)

In the end, I concluded that yes, we should seek to use only acid-free, lignin-free materials for our scrapbooks, if we want them to survive for future generations. But this brings me to another question: how can we know if something is really acid-free, lignin-free, or buffered?

Why am I a skeptic about what salesmen claim? Last year, there were news stories about a "coastal cleanup campaign" in which thousands of volunteers scoured California beaches to remove debris. Since the organizers (a state agency, the California Coastal Commission) were obviously sensitive to environmental concerns, they decided to pay extra to buy biodegradable trash bags (made from corn starch instead of plastic), and they went through a bidding process and bought the bags from the low bidder. The only other bidder was suspicious, and arranged to obtain some of the bags used in the cleanup, and had them scientifically tested -- and discovered that the "biodegradable" trash bags were just ordinary plastic trash bags. Of course, then it was too late! ( See this article in the Santa Cruz Sentinel about this fiasco.)

Testing for the presence of lignin is apparently a somewhat complicated process, requiring chemical treatment of the paper, which is then examined under a microscope. However, there is a much simpler test for the presence of acid or alkaline materials, and a number of vendors sell pH pens containing a chemical which, when written onto paper, turns different colors depending on the pH level of the paper. You can read a comparison of several different pH pens at: http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/byorg/abbey/ap/ap03/ap03-5/ap03-508.html.

Once I learned this, I hopped into my car and drove to Joann Fabrics, and then from there to Michael's, and then back home to check the web sites of a dozen scrapbooking-merchant web sites. To my astonishment, none of these merchants offered a pH pen for sale.

Eventually, I tracked down several sources and ordered several different pH pens (once I receive them, I will report my results in a column here on ScrapbookCritic.com).

Here are the five pens I ordered:

• Abbey pH Pen - purchased from Demco, $5.09 plus s&h
• American Crafts pH Tester Scrapbooking Utility Pen - purchased from a seller on eBay, $2.39 plus $1.25 s&h ($3.64 total)
• Light Impressions pH Test Pen from Light Impressions, $4.95 plus $6.95 s&h ($11.90 total)
• Lineco pH Testing Pen - purchased from Paper Mojo , $7.00 plus $7.25 FedEx s&h ($14.25 total)
• Lithco pH Paper pH Test Pen - purchased from Bosworth Papers, $10.85 plus $4.25 s&h ($16.00 total)

• The stores may suspect that some of the products they sell as "acid-free" might not be acid-free, and they may not want consumers to find out.
• The stores may suspect that consumers might not use the pens properly (this is what Creative Memories says in its Paper FAQs to discourages consumers from using pH pens -- but after I tested its papers with pH pens on July 20, Creative Memories admitted that at least one of its products did not remain acid-free after manufacture!).
• They may believe that pH pens may not be reliable or accurate (and on July 25 one pen maker admitted that a recent batch of its pens did not work correctly).
• The stores may hope that without any way to test existing papers, consumers will simply discard their current papers and buy all new papers from the store.

• "How can we verify that something is archival-quality?" (acid-free)
• "Acid-free vs. Photo-safe?"

These entries (reviews, critiques, commentaries) are written by Mark J. Welch, and reflect his personal opinions. They are not the opinions of this site's advertisers and sponsors, who are not responsible for this content.