STYRENE IN THE NEWS
The Styrene Information & Research Center (SIRC) links to stories in the news about styrene and products made from polymers derived from styrene. All links on this page are to external sites. SIRC provides highlight quotes from the articles for your convenience.
Making styrene from biomaterials would bring big benefits [Arizona State University News]
At Arizona State University, student researchers David Nielsen and Rebekah McKenna are experimenting with engineering microorganisms to act as catalysts for making styrene from renewable resources—in this case biological materials, like sugars from plants...
House construction made easier and cheaper [NTV]
The National Housing Corporation of Kenya has started the construction of houses built with Italian technology that is said to use cheaper building materials.The technology known as EPS, or Expanded Polystyrene Panels, is said to reduce the time taken to put up housing by up to 50 percent and reduces the technology cost by about 20 per cent...
The Lucrative Styrofoam Cup Cartoons Of Cheeming Boey [Comics Alliance]
Based in Newport Beach, California, Cheeming Boey is a cartoonist whose medium of choice is the Styrofoam cup. While seemingly innocuous, original Boey's routinely sell for hundreds of dollars, sometimes even over $1000. Trained in computer animation...
HHS Is Way Off-Base On Styrene [Health News Digest]
On June 10th, to the surprise of virtually no one—but to the dismay of many—the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services included the widely-used chemical styrene in its 12th Report on Carcinogens (RoC) as a substance that is "reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen."... However, as you will soon discover, the Congressional mandate is a little spotty these days, and any claims regarding "science-based" are downright ludicrous....
Recycled polystyrene underpins new housing [Scoop News]
Wellington (New Zealand) City Council’s new housing development 'Regent Park' in Owen Street Newtown, mirrors WCC's 2040 future vision in providing a safe, green environment for the council tenants and their families. Right from the start of the project an innovative foundation choice that uses polystyrene waste to achieve a superior foundation design, ensures that these homes will cope with seismic events such as those that have left some Christchurch homes built on traditional concrete slab foundations, red stickered and uninhabitable...
Health risks: Scared to death [Ethical Corporation]
Why everything you thought about the health risks from chemicals is wrong. You’re luxuriating in newly constructed digs, napping on your Barcalounger, sipping coffee from a plastic cup, gossiping on your iPhone. Here’s today’s quiz: What’s your biggest health danger? Based on recent news reports, you’d think you’re in cancer alley: formaldehyde leaks from the plasterboard walls, ceiling tiles are made with out-gassing phthalates, radiation spews from your BPA-made phone and the toxic du jour, styrene, leeches into your latte. Yet as any cancer expert would tell you, that’s the wrong answer...
Homes for Haiti: Foam and steel-panel house [Montreal Gazette]
Thin polystyrene (like Styrofoam) panels are fitted within and around a wire mesh framework to form the walls and ceiling. Then all of it is coated with concrete that is either sprayed or plastered on by hand...
Temporary levees do the job [Omaha World-Herald]
The slowly rising flows have also been the mother of invention for new uses for duct tape and a local Styrofoam product normally used for building foundations. But a 7000-foot-long, temporary earthen levee, built almost a month ago by the US Army Corps ...
First Dutch train platform made of polystyrene [Radio Netherlands Worldwide]
It is the first time a Dutch train platform will rest on polystyrene across its entire width. The surface will be covered by concrete slabs. Owing to the light-weight material, which can be cut to size with chain-saws, the whole platform will be ...
Styrofoam cups, coming to a Capitol near you [Washington Post]
When the House returns Monday from a week-long recess, members and staffers will see something that hasn't been in the Capitol for four years: Styrofoam.
In the first move toward phasing out part of Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) "Green the Capitol" program, polystyrene cups were reintroduced this week as an option for coffee drinkers in the Capitol Carry-Out, the building's mini-cafeteria.
“Inside The Secret Science Of Packing Material” [Gizmodo]
“Since its humble beginnings as a lab experiment in the late 1830s, polystyrene—you might be more familiar with its “foamed” format, a.k.a. Styrofoam—has emerged to become one of the world’s most useful man-made materials. And thanks to its form-fitting mouldability, it’s a pretty good packaging medium to boot. Styrofoam isn’t great for the environment, but it will protect your gear on its journey through the currents and eddies of the global shipping infrastructure ...”
“Think to tap RV industry skills” [Plastics News]
“Its exterior is made of coextruded acrylic styrene acrylonitrile/ABS, which is pressure formed. The interior is mostly polypropylene, relying heavily on ...”
“In Praise of Plastic” [Boston Globe, Mass.]
“...plastic bags require 70 percent less energy to manufacture than paper bags and, because they're so much lighter, less energy to transport. It takes seven trucks to deliver the same number of paper bags that would fit in one truck if the bags were plastic, the American Chemistry Council says. And if these arguments fail to persuade, plastics proponents can always return to the fact that plastic bags and packaging are recyclable. Instead of banning plastic, proponents argue, governments should increase recycling efforts.
In many cases, this would be a relatively simple solution. "Plastic bags are made of polyethylene," says Bob Malloy, a professor and the chairman of the plastics engineering department at UMass-Lowell. "In terms of the recycling of material, there isn't anything in the recycling world more easily recycled than polyethylene." And yet, for the most part, it isn't happening, leaving a total of 27 million tons of plastic each year in search of a landfill or incinerator near you...”