What effect does ink, graphite, pens, plastic etc have on the environment?

Question

What effect does ink, graphite, pens, plastic etc have on the environment?

Answer 1

Modern inks contain many plastics consisting of long chain polymers.  These are very durable and often only break down after a lot of exposure to strong chemicals or UV light.

They can have a toxic effect on their surrounding environment.  Also they can impact through allergy.  There is investigation ongoing for links with carcinogens too.

The toxicity of Lead is well known and it was a common constituent of the ordinary pencils until fairly recently.  Graphite is essentially just basic Carbon and non toxic to humans.