When I was a small boy back in the 50s, I remember my parents periodically bringing out the ugly old black photo albums with the ancient black-and-white photos of their parents, grandparents, and others surrounded by Model T's. and wearing funny clothes like on Little House on the Prairie. They were all held in place by little black stick-on corners, but the pictuers looked like new. Then, we got modern, and things changed.
For years now, we of the modern age have been blissfully putting our photos in albums with plastic pages, Now we are finding that the photos, over a period of years, are being damaged by something in the plastic called polyvinyl chlorides, or PVCs. These chemicals drain the colors from the photos over the years, which is really tragic, since many of the pictures we have in albums stashed away all over our homes are unable to be replaced with an on-file negative. Sure, they can be taken to a camera store, and restored one by one, but the cost for that would become outrageous very quickly.
So, what can be done? There are several routes to take, but both require quick action. One is to move the photos to albums which verify that their pages are photo safe, that is, free of polyvinyl chlorides, while the other is to look for albums which have paper pages. None of this is very fun, but once the work is done, it will ensure that your photos will be safe for generations to come.
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