How to Remove Spilled Toner Cartridge Powder

Exploding toner cartridges may sometimes be beautiful to look at, but I’m guessing your first thought will be “how am I going to clean the mess up!”

Here are some simple steps to remove toner from your clothes:

Cleaning up a toner cartridge spill is easier than cleaning up spilled ink from printer ink cartridges.

Toner is made of electrically charged plastic particles, when a sheet of paper goes through a laser printer of photocopier the particles of toner are melted and ‘fused’ onto the paper. Toner is essentially a very fine dust, whereas ink from ink cartridges is a liquid. For this reason, removing toner is easier than removing printer ink.

Follow these simple steps to remove toner from clothes:

Shake off the toner. Because toner consists of plastic particles, it is in a fine powder form and most of the powder can be shaken off as long as the surface isn't too warm.

Use cold water to wipe or soak the toner. Cold water will prevent the particles from melting and fusing onto the surface, allowing a spill to be easily cleaned up. DO NOT use Hot water, will cause the toner to smear.

If the toner has smeared spray the stain with hairspray, blot well with towels on both sides of the fabric, and then wash in cold water in a washing machine. You can also try standard stain removal products.

Toner should not be vacuumed with a conventional home vacuum cleaner. Static discharge from charged toner particles can ignite dust in the vacuum cleaner bag. Also, the toner particles are poorly filtered by regular household vacuum cleaners and are so fine that they and can be blown through the vacuum motor and into the room, turning a small spill to become a larger mess by spreading the toner particles across the entire room. If toner spills into your laser printer or copier, a special type of vacuum cleaner with an electrically conductive hose and a HEPA filter is needed for safe and effective cleaning. These are called electrostatic discharge-safe (ESD-safe) or toner vacuums.