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Fly ash bricks actually help absorb minute amount of toxic metal from air

By , From net, Date: 2008-01-03 15:13:17

May 28 : A new study by an American researcher has revealed that bricks made from fly-ash particles captured as waste by coal-fired power plants might be safer than predicted.

Rather than leach minute amounts of mercury as some researchers had predicted, the bricks do the reverse, pulling minute amounts of the toxic metal out of ambient air.

New experiments by Henry Liu, a longtime National Science Foundation (NSF) awardee and the president of Freight Pipeline Company (FPC), which developed the bricks, has revealed that fly ash bricks help lower the concentration of toxic materials in enclosed air.

On average, air contains low amounts of mercury that can range from less than one nanogram per cubic meter (ng/m3) to tens of ng/m3–a small fraction of the Environmental Protection Agency limit for continuous exposure.

Liu found that inside a confined experimental chamber, the bricks did not raise the mercury levels in the surrounding air (originally more than one nanogram).

Instead they appeared to lower the concentration down to roughly half a nanogram.

According to Tom Allnutt, who oversaw Liu