How to Turn Toxic Gunk into Glass

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Toxic sludge cakes the bottom of the Gowanus Canal. Snaking through Brooklyn, New York, the canal is a newly EPA-designated Superfund site. To clean the 300,000 cubic yards of mud mixed with industrial metals, coal, tar and sewage, the EPA will most likely have to dredge the waterway over the next decade. The question that remains is what to do with the muck once they dig it up. One option that the agency is considering is melting the ooze into something both non-toxic and surprisingly attractive: washing machine-sized glass cubes. Using a process called vitrification, the agency could put the sludge in metal molds and heat them up to very high temperatures. If there is enough sand in the material, the result will be transparent blocks that can be used in building construction or sculptures.

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