Smog clouds printing environment.

Southland printing companies, which last year inked more than $1.5 billion in sales, are struggling with more than just a down economic climate -- they are also contending with increasingly strict South Coast Air Quality Management District smog-fighting rules.

"Any printer operating in Southern California, whether they are large or small, are having a substantial difficulties meeting district rules," said Wayne Peterson, president of Interprint, a Santa Fe Springs printer that last year had sales of $9.9 million in commercial, book and index-tab printing. "When we compete with someone outside the area, they have an edge right from the get-go."

"There are no alternatives to their rules. You do what you have to or you'll be fined or closed down," added Ewel Grossberg, chairman of George Rice & Sons, a Los Angeles-based general commercial printer that made $117.4 million in 1991 revenues.

In the long-running battle against smog, printers represent a new class of polluters. While printers spew only a small amount of pollutants, they have found a growing number of clean air rules aimed at them during the last two years.

According to AQMD logic, the region's biggest smog producers -- oil companies, defense contractors and chemical makers -- have already been regulated to the hilt, leaving it to smaller businesses like dry cleaners, barbecue restaurants and niche manufacturers to pare back.

And that shift is placing a heavy load on the Southern California printing industry, where competition is tight and profit margins are tighter.

Of the 1,200 tons of volatile organic compounds produced daily in the South Coast basin, which includes Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, printers generate only about 10 tons -- roughly eight-tenths of one percent of the total. Volatile organic compounds, known as VOCs, react with nitrogen oxide in sunlight to form smog.

The VOCs are contained in various solvents, many of them petroleum-based, needed to make ink dry on printed stock or used in the cleaning of presses after a job in completed.

In general, printers are affected by four major smog district regulations. First, there is Rule 1130, which sets strict limits on the types of inks used by the region's estimated 2,000 commercial printers engaged in lithography, letter presses or flexography, which relies on rapid-drying inks.

Last August, the AQMD district board tightened that rule for the ninth time in 11 years, lowering maximum VOC content in general printing ink to 300 grams per liter, in metallic ink to 485 grams per liter and in matte finish ink to 535 grams per liter.

For the Southland's 2,500 screen printers -- who pour ink through special screens, fabrics or webs -- VOC limits are set at 400 grams per liter under rule 1130.1, which was enacted last summer and goes into effect this December.

And there are other new strictures as well.

For example, fountain solutions -- liquids that channel ink into templates -- can no longer be derived from long-used isopropyl alcohol because of its high VOC content, a setback to lithographers, who represent 80 percent of the area's printing industry. Under new rules, fountain solutions may not contain more than 10 percent of alcohol per gallon.

Finally, the AQMD last August also stamped a 200 VOC-gram-per-liter maximum on cleaning solutions vital in purging presses, plates and equipment of ink and fountain solutions. Those cleaning solutions account for more than 50 percent of printer-generated VOCs.

When all four rules go into effect, printer-generated VOCs will be halved from their current levels, to approximately five tons a day.

Emulating what defense and furniture makers have done in the last five years, printers are trying to meet the new clean air laws by working with new-generation solvents or specialty equipment. That means switching from oil-based inks to those derived from water or soybeans or buying equipment that burns or oxidizes VOCs, which renders them harmless.

But relying on lower-VOC solvents sometimes carries with it a stiff price, industry experts say.

"The drying time for the new inks have gone from eight hours to three days," said Peterson of Interprint, which produces, among other things, software manuals. Thus, "our ability to compete with someone outside the area is dramatically affected" because rival printers are free to use faster-drying inks.

The smog district rules are part of a regulatory landscape that appears hostile to business, said Robert Howlington, president of Lithographics, a general commercial printer that also does advertising inserts and other preprint materials. The Cerritos-based company, which reported $31.5 million in 1991 sales, has spent between $600,000 and $1 million on VOC-incinerating devices and research and development of soybean-based solvents during the last several years.

"When you don't have tremendous margins, any time you take $600,000 it's bound to affect the bottom line," said Howlington. "I don't think the AQMD or politicians really know they are driving business out of the state. You stack environmental regulations on top of expensive labor, expensive rent and expensive sales taxes and you can see why other states are profiting."

Gerry Bonetto, director of government affairs for the Printing Industries of California, a trade group, said the VOC limits are "probably achievable." It's the indirect costs that are hurting an industry that employs 60,000 people and produced $5.5 billion in total sales for the South Coast basin and Ventura County last year, he said.

"What has been the bane of the industry are the (pollution) bookkeeping requirements and picky inspectors," Bonetto said. "It's driving our members up the wall. . . . Also, the rules have been drafted without a good understanding of our technology and problems and the interaction with inspectors has been very negative."

Responding to those types of complaints, the AQMD officials said they have tried to improve relations with small businesses by streamlining paperwork, offering pollution equipment loans and introducing other reforms.

Furthermore, district officials said, the AQMD has no choice in ratcheting down small sources of pollution if the region is to meet federally mandated clean air levels by 2010 without penalties.

"We realize the smaller industries are having a hard time. They don't have large environmental staffs and the record-keeping can be onerous," said Laki Tisopulos, an AQMD program supervisor who works with printers.

To cut down on paperwork, AQMD is experimenting with a system that would allow printers to use a bar-code scanner and computer to feed VOC information on containers directly to regulators. In addition, there is talk of including printers in a proposal to create a first-ever smog exchange, where polluters could buy and sell shares allowing them to emit more than legal limits.

So far, that exchange is only being envisioned for individual companies that spew more than four tons of smog-forming ingredients a year.

Bonetto, of the trade group, said there are emerging signs the district and printers are mending a sometimes divisive relationship.

"We're starting to get more access," Bonetto said.