Birdhouse Can Be More Then Farming Swiftlets !!!

What if all our birdhouse are made from a special type of cement which can helps to reduce the air pollution around us?

Just imagine if now we have, say 10,000 BHs, and by year 2010 we might have 20,000 BHs and all these new BHs are made from this special cement.

Well you might think that I am crazy but .....

I was having dinner with my eldest son and he mentioned about this cspecial cement that kill those poison in the air.

Please go to: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/magazine/09smogeatingcement.html

This is what they are trying to say:

Smog-Eating Cement

By LIA MILLER
Published: December 9, 2007

This year a new weapon against smog was introduced in the United States: cement. Called TX Active, it was developed by the Italian company Italcementi. Enrico Borgarello, Italcementi’s head of research and development, says the product can literally “kill” pollution.

The cement’s chemical composition is enhanced with titanium dioxide, which under the right conditions can neutralize some harmful pollutants. When exposed to sunlight or ultraviolet light, the titanium dioxide is “activated,” Borgarello says, and pollutants that come in contact with the surface of the cement are oxidized. Hazardous nitrogen oxides and sulfur oxides, for example, are transformed into harmless nitrates or sulfates, which simply rinse off the building with rainwater. This also keeps it especially clean.

Italcementi developed the cement for the architect Richard Meier, who wanted a very white material for his Jubilee Church in Rome. Titanium dioxide, commonly used to make paints bright white, was added to the standard cement’s mix. It was only later that Italcementi realized that TX Active had pollution-busting properties. For instance, in Bergamo, where Italcementi is based, a stretch of road downtown was coated with a layer of TX Active. Borgarello says that residents reported better-smelling air within 4.5 square miles. The company says their research shows that if 15 percent of the surface area of Milan were covered in TX Active, air pollution would be reduced by 50 percent.

Thomas Cahill, an atmospheric scientist at the University of California, Davis, is skeptical of the full extent of the company’s claims. He cautions that the “benefits, while they might be real in limited cases, are not a ‘cure’ for pollution.”

Borgarello says that he envisions TX Active as an agent of change for air quality — and for cement’s reputation as an uninspired, antienvironmental material. “You destroy the green, and you put a building in with cement,” he says. “Now we put this material in, and we are contributing to quality of life