ARTICLE

Scott Heitzman
scott.heitzman@na.sunchem.com

Colored Organic Pigments; A primer for the plastics industry

Cincinnati - Peter A. Lewis - March 04, 2003 -- In this series of articles concerning colored organic pigments I would like to briefly cover each class of organic pigments as are used in the USA today within the plastics industry. Rather than cover the pigments based upon their chemistry I will sub-divide the article by "color," dealing first with blue, to be followed by articles on green, red, yellow and orange. I do not intend to ignore the chemistry, quite the contrary, I hope that readers of these articles will become familiar with terms such as diazotization, coupling, condensation and similar phrases as the series unfolds.
I welcome questions relating to organic pigments and can be reached at my email address as above.

Definition Of A Pigment
Before entering into any discussion relating to pigments, it is first necessary to clearly define the distinction between an organic pigment as opposed to a dyestuff. In a naïve way we can look at dyestuffs as being "soluble in the medium in which they are being used." A better definition however, has been proposed by the Color Pigments Manufacturers Association (CPMA)1 in response to a request from the Toxic Substances Interagency Testing Committee.

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