Xerographic background development is normally associated with toner charge-related issues such as low or wrong-sign charge. Frequently, for two-component developers, carrier or toner aging effects create an increasing level of xerographic background with print count. In the present study, however, a single nominal toner composition was found to give a wide range of background development performance from toner batch-to-batch, even for new developers. For the most extreme toner examples, the rate of background generation was high enough to send almost half of the dispensed toner directly to the cleaning subsystem of a test print engine. From a comparison of print test assessments with a toner production timeline, the periodic background performance was traced to a variation in the quality of a component monomer used in the manufacture of the toner binder resin. While this chemical root cause had no effect on the average q/m value of the test toners, it did create differences in toner-to-toner charging performance, and charge spectra taken from toner-to-toner charging tests proved to be sensitive enough to rank toners according to their compatibility.