Tiles That Reduce Pollution

An Ital­ian tile man­u­fac­turer known as Gam­barelli has def­i­nitely been think­ing out­side of the box with a new kind of tile they’ve devel­oped. Called the Oxy­gena line, the new tile, when exposed to sun­light acti­vates a reac­tion sim­i­lar to that of chloro­phyll pho­to­syn­the­sis in plants. In lab tests one square meter of tile has been able to purify 72 cubic meters of air.

Coated in tita­nium diox­ide, the tile’s pho­to­cat­alytic prop­er­ties cause a reac­tion between air and sun­light where active oxy­gen is pro­duced which, when it comes in con­tact with pol­lu­tants such as nitro­gen monox­ide and diox­ide (found in vehi­cle emis­sions) acti­vates a chem­i­cal reac­tion which destroys the pol­lu­tant, trans­form­ing it into harm­less salts.

So, could you sea­son a ten­der­loin with some pol­lu­tion? Pretty cool.