PDF saved from Illustrator converts placed image colors

Greetings,

I have a file that when saved to PDF, 1-2% tone is created in areas that should not have any tone.
For example, a orange fruit is void of Cyan color in the EPS file created in Photoshop. When the EPS is placed in the Illustrator file and saved as a PDF, there is now a "scum Dot" of Cyan throughout the area of the placed image.

This is a new issue, since the preveious versions of Illustrator did not have this issue.

Any ideas?

I have:

saved various encoding types of EPS(non-JPG)

Saved out various PDF version, trying to have PDFX4.

Adjusted color setting to ignore or maintain color profiles.

Assigned/removed document profile

I have found that the Normalized PDF from Esko saves fine but I cannot embed a profile for viewing using Esko.

Thank you.