Replacement of Lead and Cadmium pigments
Lead and Cadmium based pigments have been used extensively in the plastics industry due to their relatively low kilo price coupled with the good fastness properties and reasonable processability.
However, there is now major public concern over the dispersal of lead and cadmium into the environment.This has led to legislation in a many countries restricting or banning their use. Responding to this social and environmental concern, many manufacturers, even ones unaffected by the new limitations, have initiated programs to eliminate the use of lead and cadmium pigments and to switch toward the organic solutions.
Ciba has been contributing to this move to more environmentally friendly alternatives through the development of organic pigments with improved application and processing performance.
The higher color strength and excellent performance of these modern organic pigments enables organic solutions to be competitive with the cheaper, but weaker, heavy metal formulations.
Ciba Specialty Chemicals is leading the search for organic coloring alternatives to heavy metals. Not only does this mean high performance solutions but also more cost effective general performance formulations where cost is the major constraint.
In the following pages we will give examples of organic formulations to match given shades typical of those to which heavy metals are applied. These shades RAL3002, greenish/yellow and reddish yellow. For the most part we will give a range of organic formulations to reflect cost against performance .
These studies have been conducted in three types of plastic media:
- PVC Film
- LDPE Film
- Injection moulded LDPE Plaques
Further work is underway. New information will be added here as it becomes available
 
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