Does the chemicals in our writing utensils affect our environment?

If you have used a pencil you have seen the fine dust that it produces. If you were in a space ship you would have to breathe that dust. That is why astronauts don't use pencils. Pens use such a small amount of material that the effects are hard to notice. The amounts are too small to recycle, so they all go to landfill.

People joke that we should cross ball point pens with coat hangers so coat hangers would not multiply so much, and pens would multiply instead of disappearing.