Certainly if trying to produce museum quality maximum archival prints then acid free non OBA papers may be in order. But there is plenty of evidence that OBA containing papers, as well as other paper making techniques are more than adequate for extreme print longevity ... certainly decades longer than any color process we had as little as 10-15 years ago when the only real option was silver halide technology.
Absolutely, this is the major advance that digital photography has brought to us all. Pigment inks move us into a realm that the dye based photography of the past cannot (I don't include B&W printing here as the archival qualities are well known).
I offer one comparison example. According to Wilhelm permanence ratings images printed with an Epson 7900 on Epson Exhibition Fiber, which is not a 100% acid free rag based paper (it is wood pulp based) and contains OBA's is rated at 90 years when displayed under glass, 150 years when displayed under UV filtered glass, 44 years when not protected at all and greater than 200 years in album dark storage, and this last test includes paper yellowing. Compared to Somerset Velvet which is a 100% acid free cotton rag paper with no OBAs (and is a gorgeous paper) - 62 years framed under glass, 128 years under UV glass, 37 years when unprotected, and >200 years dark album storage (which again includes paper yellowing).
I think the
Aardenburg data shows the same results. I was surprised to see some of the matte papers lose color at a much faster rate than a coresponding glossy paper from the same company. Well worth looking at the data (and supporting the effort) as you can see the time decay data for each individual color square (some colors deteriorate faster than others). Of course B&W digital prints are more stable as the blacks are carbon based and there is very little color used in their production.
I for one and both happy and frustrated that we have so many great papers to print on (the frustration comes from the old aphorism, updated to: "so many papers, so little time").