🇮🇹 Italy's pollution-eating cement - earthrise

According to the World Health Organization, 80 percent of city dwellers are breathing polluted air. Smog is linked to respiratory illnesses and cardiovascular disease.

In 2012, Italy had the most pollution-related deaths in Europe. More than 84,000 people in the country died prematurely owing to bad air quality. Milan remains one of the worst polluted cities, not only in the country but also on the continent.

To combat this, scientists have developed a new type of photocatalytic cement that absorbs pollutants and turns them into harmless salts.

[armymen]

Please do more testing. I have read the comments on this cement but does not sound good. Cleaning the air while polluting the soil and water in the process is not a fix.

[sharsasuke]

5:18 when your pullout game is on point.

[husnainar]

I've been there that building was created for Expo 2015.

[AmbitiousLearnWithGeorge]

pollution is a killer..I lived in London for almost a decade and in that time I have developed allergy to pollution. After moving to Scotland I feel that my allergy has receded to a level where it doesn't bother me anymore (only when I find myself in a heavy traffic and for some reasons my windows are open). Which is a great improvement in quality of life for me, going from having allergic response almost on a daily basis to a non existing one....My advice-dont wait for governments to sort it out - move out of polluted areas - your life and health are worth it.

[J.Cameron.Stuart.Adams.Fisher]

Now we can capture the CO2 emitted during cement manufacturing and sequester the CO2 by adding it to the concrete. Hence making cement carbon neutral and even carbon negative, in some mixtures, while increasing the tensile strength of the cement mixture. This reducing the amount of cement necessary in certain concrete applications. While these concrete panels are not structural, the rest of the building can be made with concrete strengthened by sequestered CO2. By utilizing other green technologies: a growing food on the roof, rainwater harvesting, porous concrete walkways and drives, human and food waste composting, solar energy, geothermal HVAC, planting deciduous fruit and/or nut trees or using solar panel awnings to shade windows and large exposed southern walls, etc, etc.... a building can exceed LEED ratings and become carbon neutral.

Changing the way we build is a major step in the right direction. Planting more trees for lumber is one of the most economical ways to sequester CO2. The added benefit is cooling the earth, stopping the advancing and expanding desserts. Utilize the vast farmland sitting idle to create timber farms. Doing so in the area of the US known as tornado alley, will reduce local temperatures, wind swept dust storms, and best of all the number and severity of tornados. Once tree canopies cover the ground rainfall will increase, flash floods will decrease, and the ground will become fertile again. Many farms suffer from very poor soil conditions because of over farming, dry conditions killing all organic nutrients and organisms, contaminated water, pesticides, herbicides, and other toxins used to improve crops. Instead of the government subsidising idle land, let's put the last d to use and naturally repair the soil. Build vertical farms and use the land for the CO2 sequestering, oxygen producing, earth cooling, weather taming, green, and valuable natural resource: timber.

Cheers!

[shawnturner]

Nitrates wash into watershed, Rivers streams and oceans causing algae blooms.

[armandozessar]

What's worries Italy today are the drought's that would make a collapse of tourism's and on exporting mainly processed foods abroad.

[thetourist]

we seek the beauty in the history of a distant past, while we obliterate the history we seek through pollution! ( Just think about that)

[gloriatsang]

Not sure if she misspoke or lost in translation. Nitrate is a carcinogen, not a good idea to put it into the waterways.

[altond]

Every time somebody creates a silver lining somebody has to find a godamn cloud.

[allyourcode]

Titanium dioxide is the main ingredient in white paint. Europe just passed a law that says such paints must be labeled as "may cause cancer" as a possible danger to ppl who work with the paint.

[sanjuansteve]

I wonder if they have a similar model without the coating to see if there is also a small reduction just from the UV alone or some other factors as a baseline for their test.

[mike]

Hey hey my sliding glass door does that! Mic drop!

[ethylgallarte]

Anyone here who could tell me what kind of rocks which contain titanium dioxide? Especially those that are abundant? Thanks for helping. :))

[art.alagna.design]

What will happen once that building will be demolished?

[Blackpilled]

This is a beautiful architectural technology but to reverse CO2 emissions you'll need much more efficient technologies to clear it out of the atmosphere. 2:38 "Yes this is uh 9, 000 m^2 of active concrete. This can clean uh equivalent of exhaust gas of uh 100 diesel cars or uh 300 gasoline cars." This is basically feel-good art, but useless compared to the pollution being put out. I can comfortably guess it doesn't even offset the emissions that went into making the building itself.

[Rod-bpow]

All the health for the people as well as the EU as a whole. Welcome Asian Countries. Growth in GDP and preservation of GDP. Solientes Italia, Americas.

[benshivd]

So they are removing plant food from the environment. How long before there is an agricultural crisis ?

[brydonjesse]

The text dub for the lovely Italian woman is grand... being a comet..poopsie

[antoniorsoftware]

All that great old architecture in the city and then comes a modern architect and best he can do is throw spaghetti over a building.