with regard to using old tyres as growing beds - a "permaculture" idea I think. It was found that there were heavy metals (mainly cadmium) and other toxins in the tyres, and that they leached, ie leaked into the environment, and thus most likely into the plants via the soil.
Uh... Scotty-brand beam-up beamers have been found to frazzle the ozone layer, just thought you'd like to know.
Best wishes Keith
Hi All, I haven't done or seen any recent degradation studies on rubber in tires. It breaks down rather slowly in the environment at it doesn't wet (absorb moisture)very well. Vulcanized rubber has some sulfur in it so burning tires as a fuel is bad unless you have the right scrubbers. They have a real high BTU value and can be burned in certain high temperature kilns such as in making Portland cement. The real problem seems to be their lack of degradation rather than them breaking down into something toxic. It actually gets recycled reasonable well for playgrounds and horse tracks as it provides a nice soft, flexible surface once you remove the steel belting. I've also heard of them being filled with cement to make artificial reefs. Tom Irwin -----Original Message----- From: Andrew & Tracey To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 4/22/05 5:54 AM Subject: [Biofuel] rubber? Hi everybody, we have a question for all those technical and scientific members of this group and would love some feedback from those that understand this better than us. We have just read an article about rubber and are concerned enough to ask does anybody know much about it. The article suggests that (well it says) rubber is toxic. Is this correct? It doesn't mean the basic product but what tyre's are made of is a menagerie of toxic chemicals and that every day thousands of tons of it wash into our creek,river,ocean systems from tyre's being worn out on our roads.The effect of it will be with us for a long long time to come. There is no research into coral reefs falling apart from rubber that we can find ,but the article suggests it should be of concern to all of us still breathing whats left of our fresh air.It also goes on to say that bitumen is also toxic and that it grinds down slowly to do more enviromental damage. If this is true ,shit it is scary because every country in the world (just about) is doing the same thing. If you add all the rest of the eviromental bad things to this it's time to call for Scotty to beam us up, this planet is toxic. Andrew & Tracey.
_______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://wwia.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuel archives at Infoarchive.net (searchable): http://infoarchive.net/sgroup/biofuel/
