Ten Things #6: How long will magazines last?

Picture by Mike Bailey-Gates

Ten Things is a collection of magazines, thoughts and ephemera that have been sitting on my desk for a few months while I caught up with deadlines

Here’s a question that has been on my mind for a while: How long will paper last?

I don’t mean, “Will we still print magazines in 20 years time?”, I mean will today’s magazines degrade into unreadability, and if so, how fast? When we look at old newspapers, magazines and books today, many of them are yellowed, faded, and so brittle that they crumble in our hands. Is this the fate of all paper? By the time I’m 50, will my magazine collection be little more than musty and expensive confetti?

Paper experts are welcome to weigh in on this one, but as far as I can gather, there are at least two reasons why this won’t happen, at least not for a few centuries.

The first reason is related to the process of making paper. The second is a result of a shift in raw materials, which has inadvertently made magazines more durable.

Picture by DevonTT

Let’s start from the top. Why does paper yellow and age (delightfully known in the industry as “slow fires”)? The answer is, essentially, that acid is dissolving the paper’s fibres.

Next question: where does the acid come from? Paper is mostly vegetable matter. It contains all kinds of compounds that, if left to their own devices, will slowly degrade into acids and other things over time – more quickly, if placed in direct sunlight and humid surroundings.

A slight aside here, while I explain how paper is made. It’s a bit like where babies come from, except it involves enormous grindstones and/or a chemical bath.

If you want to make paper brutally and cheaply, you put a tree into a grinder, and keep crushing the resulting woodchips until its flat enough to feed into a Laserjet. More or less, anyway.

This is known as ‘mechanical paper’, and its how book and magazine paper used to be made, and is still how newsprint is created. It’s loud, effective, relatively cheap – however it leaves all those degrading compounds within the paper intact. Worst compound of all for our purposes, the one that has archivists waking up in cold sweats, is Lignin, which is the Gremlin of compounds – if you want your mechanically processed paper to last, you mustn’t let it get wet or be around sunlight. (Eating after midnight is ok.)

As mentioned, newsprint is still made from mechanical-pulp paper, which is why it doesn’t last too long outside of a sealed chamber. Very old (earlier than the 1930s is a safe bet) books and magazines are the same.

The faster, more efficient, and leading-to-stronger-fibered way is to put huge amounts of woodchips in industrial-sized vats known charmingly as “digesters”, throw in some sulphur and other chemicals, and go and watch Doctor Who until some decent chemical pulp is pooped out the other end.

The result is a pulp that’s stronger than its mechanical counterpart, created by a process that also has the neat side effect of removing the Lignin.

Some of the acid-producing compounds do remain intact, however. Except they’re then inadvertently neutralised thanks to the second industry shift.

Picture of Kaolin cliffs by Terry

In order to make magazine paper glossy, as well as to give it a little more bulk, manufacturers use a “filler”. In much of Asia and the USA, until recently, that principally meant Kaolin, aka China Clay, also used to make porcelain. In the west, it’s principally mined in Georgia (the state not the country), where it’s known as “white gold”.

There are two downsides to its use, however: it’s mildly radioactive – so a truckload of magazines can actually cause a flicker on a Geiger counter. (Here’s a radioactive measurement from a 1999 copy of Playboy). And the aluminium salts in Kaolin can lead to further acidic degradation. So much for no Lignin.

However, Kaolin isn’t used everywhere. It has also become gradually more expensive, so many paper mills in the US have turned to the ingredient used more commonly in Europe: calcium carbonate, aka chalk. Not only a decent chemical to make paper glossy, it also has the unintended side effect of being a base. In other words, it neutralises acid, and so, any paper made with chalk instantly becomes acid-free.

More chalk in recent paper mills means good news for us collectors, then. The downside is that there’s no easy way to know which compound was used to make each magazine in your closet, until they start to crumble. Deacidification is expensive – it cost the Library of Congress about $12 per book. So best keep the entire collection locked away from the sunlight (UV makes most inks fade) and with a small cup of baking soda nearby just in case.

As for the environmental implications of all this paper milling… that’ll have to wait for another day. In the meantime, rejoice: your European magazines, and more recent American titles, probably won’t crumble in the fingers of your confused grandchildren after all.