Dutch Town Lays Air-Purifying Concrete

eldavojohn writes "In an effort to combat air pollution, a Dutch town has paved some of its streets with air-purifying concrete. It contains a titanium dioxide-based additive that utilizes sunlight to turn car exhaust into harmless nitrates. It was shown to do this in a lab and now the scientists are interested in just how much this will affect the air quality around the road. They will sample the air quality by a normal road and by this newly paved one."

Comments

Offset?

[Recovering Hater]

Because the purifying concrete offsets the pollution incurred from mining the titanium to create the concrete? Am I wrong in thinking I knew an old lady who swallowed a fly? Someone weigh in on this please. Thanks :P

Re:How green?

[ArcherB]

This sounds like a great idea if it works, but surely producing concrete is a far from 'green' process. I wonder how long the concrete has to be in place to neutralise the polluting effect of manufacturing it in the first place.

But we are producing concrete anyway, so we'll still be ahead as long as this process does not produce more pollution than the pollution from standard concrete + whatever it absorbs.