Paper is used for a wide variety of media documentation, exposed to countless chemical formulations of ink, depending on if it's used in a book, a document printed in an office, a photograph, etc. All of these inks will potentially impair the longevity of the media, as will environmental factors like temperature, humidity, bookworms, book lice, and the oils and residue transferred to the paper by contact with human hands.

Museums, libraries, national archives, and similar public media organisations, all strive to preserve historically, culturally, and artistically significant media for posterity. It's bad enough when the chemical composition of paper leaves a single document more vulnerable to damage from handling and its environment... but it is far worse when one document can cause damage to another document, by its mere proximity in the same enclosed space. This is by far the greatest threat presented by acidic paper in an archival environment: books breathe , volatile compounds evaporating off them into the air over time and interfering with other books nearby. These compounds make paper increasingly yellow, brittle, flammable, and susceptible to book parasites which locate books by detecting this odor.

Archival paper can last hundreds of years; some has lasted over a thousand years. Acidic paper - and archival paper exposed to acidic vapours - typically degrades within a single human lifespan.

Many paper producers market a wide variety of paper which they list as "archival quality," but these labels, on their own, are not to be trusted, as there is no formal regulatory standard for paper acidity, and most retailers do not test paper for acid before selling it. Neither do they store it sufficiently far from acidic paper, in a suitably climate-controlled environment: even if paper is truly acid-free, as its packaging states, it can become inadequate for an archive based on how the retailer stores and transports it.

Being nominally acid-free is also not enough, even with optimal storage. Paper needs to be free of lignin, a by-product of the paper-making process. Lignin undergoes slow chemical decomposition which emits acids, turning non-acidic paper acidic.. Paper that is acid-free today will become acidic over time if it contains lignin, and documents using this paper will yellow, fox, and become brittle and tacky (pages sticking together and crumbling when pulled apart), rendering the document unusable by future readers, and certainly unsuitable for any formal archive.