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This is a great way to get microplastic through abrasion into even more places within the foodchain. Wonder if it burns nicely too, plastic after all is "frozen gasoline" - here mixed with sand. /debbiedowner
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Microplastics can be much smaller than sand, and may play a role in persistent inflammation*, though really, we just don't know yet. The safe default assumption is maybe don't spill massive quantities of a completely novel compound into the entire biosphere. Its an action we can't undo and will have implications for generations.
* https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004896971...
This is brilliant. It's like asphalt, which is just concrete (cement, sand and lime) with some of the cement replaced with oil/tar. This is that same idea but using plastic not oil/tar. Truly brilliant. It's a new type of composite building material.
The bricks will aspirate toxic chemicals when exposed to direct sunlight: "...Plastics leached twice as much pollution in sunlight as in darkness, they found. One bag leached 263 different chemicals in the dark but more than 13,000 when exposed to light! Others leached even more. And the longer bags were exposed to sunlight, the more chemicals they leached. ..." https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/everyday…
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The bricks will aspirate toxic chemicals when exposed to direct sunlight: "...Plastics leached twice as much pollution in sunlight as in darkness, they found. One bag leached 263 different chemicals in the dark but more than 13,000 when exposed to light! Others leached even more. And the longer bags were exposed to sunlight, the more chemicals they leached. ..." https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/everyday…
How does one even begin to address concerns about toxicity with so many different chemicals? Go in order of concentration? Most to least likely to be biologically active based on models? Cluster them and evaluate the clusters?
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The bricks will aspirate toxic chemicals when exposed to direct sunlight: "...Plastics leached twice as much pollution in sunlight as in darkness, they found. One bag leached 263 different chemicals in the dark but more than 13,000 when exposed to light! Others leached even more. And the longer bags were exposed to sunlight, the more chemicals they leached. ..." https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/everyday…
Mixing graphite into HDPE appears to make it immune to UV photo-degradation. There’s even a company that capitalizes on this by making durable boat hulls with it: https://tidemanboats.com/ Not sure how it holds up in plasphalt, but it could be worth exploring graphite additives.
Can they be recycled, or is it another dead end? Trash brick projects are popping up every few months or so. It seems more like a cheap filler material than a sustainable product.
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The bricks will aspirate toxic chemicals when exposed to direct sunlight: "...Plastics leached twice as much pollution in sunlight as in darkness, they found. One bag leached 263 different chemicals in the dark but more than 13,000 when exposed to light! Others leached even more. And the longer bags were exposed to sunlight, the more chemicals they leached. ..." https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/everyday…
This is where “new car smell” comes from too.
When the concrete weathers, will the plastic in the bricks turn into micro-plastic?
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This is where “new car smell” comes from too.
And it's worth noting that this problem that the OP brings up is literally present in every plastic product in our modern world. It's easy to pick apart new ideas with problems that are true for every other existing product. People are like wait, this isn't X, or Y, but it's like neither is the existing status quo, but it is incrementally better in X and Y, so it's going in the right direction, therefore worth doing.
Just imagine being alongside Henry Ford and him making the same argument, "Yeah, gasoline stinks a little but it's definitely better than horse droppings!" Then fast forward to our current global climate problems.