Visitors to the Venice Biennale can check out the smog-eating cement that Italian inventors claim will help cities clean themselves. Business Week reports.

In the Italian Pavilion of the architecture exhibition in the Venice Biennale, parts of the concrete walls and grounds have been built with cement containing an active agent that, in presence of light, breaks air pollutants such as carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, benzene, and others through a natural chemical process called photocatalysis.

… The technology, called TX Active, has been under development for almost 10 years in the labs of Italcementi, the world’s fifth-biggest cement producer, and is starting to be applied commercially to buildings and streets in Italy, France, Belgium, and elsewhere.