Papercreters: [papercreters] Re: What's in your papercrete?

Sunday, October 18, 2009

[papercreters] Re: What's in your papercrete?

The beauty of emulsification to any fibreous material.... cardboard, newsprint, white bond, etc. is that it takes the fibre down to a particulate size that is easily encased by the bonding agents, aggregate, and the binders affiliate materials. There need be no paronoia about offgassing or other potential contamination no matter what area of the home it is used in.

--- In papercreters@yahoogroups.com, Vincent Pawlowski <pawlowski@...> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> This article has some interesting points to consider especially if you
> are using papercrete made from cardboard in your kitchen. I use mixed
> paper and especially like mixes made from white bond. Others use
> newsprint. Wonder how much it matters, as long at there are not volatile
> toxics?
>
> http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/48316/title/Bad_perfume_Cardboard%E2%80%99s_intense_scents
>
> Bad perfume: Cardboard's intense scents
> Wet cardboard and food should not share the same air space
> By Janet Raloff
> <http://www.sciencenews.org/view/authored/id/18/name/Janet_Raloff>
> Web edition : Tuesday, October 13th, 2009
>
> We often joke about food that lacks any perceptible flavor as tasting
> like cardboard. In fact, cardboard's blandness is one facet of its
> appeal to the food industry. Manufacturers pack foods in cardboard and
> pizzeria's deliver their cheese-topped pies in it precisely because it
> won't affect the flavor of their products. Or at least that's been the
> presumption.
>
> A pair of researchers in Germany has now catalogued 37 smelly compounds
> emitted by cardboard — chemicals that they argue could indeed temper the
> flavor and scent of foods. "Most of the identified compounds were
> described as odor-active [i.e. smelly] cardboard constituents for the
> first time," report Michael Czerny of the Fraunhofer Institute for
> Process Engineering and Packaging
> <http://www.ivv.fraunhofer.de/index_e.html> in Freising and Andrea
> Buettner
> <http://univis.uni-erlangen.de/form?__s=2&dsc=anew/tel_view&pers=nat/dchph/llmch/bttner&anonymous=1&founds=med/PI/LAPPA/bttner,///KZ/kv_bea/bttner,nat/dchph/llmch/bttner,tech/IMMD/IMMD6/bttner,med/KZ/ZKFR/bttner,zwiss/rrze/dbuvf/bttner,tech/IE/LEEAS/bttner,rw/fbwiwi/LPW/bttner,zentra/abteil_5/g1/gerlac,nat/zentr/bttner,//dphy/IAP/pbmt1/bttner,rw/recht/IZZ/LBRZG/bttner,akadem/bd/zentr/wlfing,med/uzuleh/c4medp/wlfing&sem=2009w&tel_nosem=1&__e=530>
> of University Erlangen-Nuernberg <http://www.uni-erlangen.org/>.
>
> They found some of these compounds present in relatively high amounts,
> although their predominantly woody/musty notes tended to remain below
> the radar screen until cardboard got wet — as might occur if your pizza
> was delivered on a rainy night, or a food warehouse was not humidity
> controlled.
>
> Indeed, "The aroma profile changed drastically when the cardboard was
> moistened," becoming "intense" and yucky — as in woody and musty with
> very pronounced fatty and moldy highlights, Czerny and Buettner report
> in an upcoming issue of the /Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry/
> <http://pubs.acs.org/journal/jafcau>.
>
> Contributing to the overall off-putting smell were the leathery-inky
> scents of 3-propylphenol and 3-methyphenol. Another 29-letter-long
> compound smelled metallic and benzothiazole imparted the smell of rubber
> or car tires. Yum.
>
> And it gets better. Czerny and Buettner describe two constituents of
> cardboard's scent — 4-methylphenol and 4-ethylphenol — as having a
> "horse stable-like, fecal" smell. Other off-gassed chemicals smelled:
> "cheesy, sweaty;" soapy, fatty, mushroomlike, citrusy, spicy, woody or
> coconutty. A compound known as 2-methoxyphenol seemed to have a
> particularly complex scent — at once smoky, vanillalike and sweet.
>
> The chemists aren't sure why most of these chemicals don't assault our
> noses while the cardboard remains dry, but speculate that some might
> remain walled off in cellulose until contacted by water — "which acts
> like a solvent."
>
> In a followup experiment, the pair showed cardboard's off-scents could
> transfer to salad oil, presumably a substance meant to model fatty foods.
>