Los Angeles streets coated with Coolseal to combat climate change

A California-based, asphalt coating manufacturer, is part of the pilot project in Los Angeles. The company began working with the defense industry to develop cool pavement for military spy planes

The city streets of Los Angeles, the city is known as the poster boy of heat-island effect, is being coated with a substance known as CoolSeal, a gray coating designed to reflect solar rays, to reduce rising temperatures.

As per the US media, the coating of the streets is not a crux of the story. In fact, the material used in the coating has received global attention

GuardTop LLC, a California-based, asphalt coating manufacturer, is part of the pilot project in Los Angeles. The company began working with the defense industry to develop cool pavement for military spy planes, according to Jeff Luzar, GuardTop's vice president of sales.

Luzar said the officials were interested in lowering the temperature of taxiways so that sensitive aircraft would be less easily seen by spy satellites using infrared cameras, which form images using thermal energy.

Years later, the product being applied to Los Angeles streets is largely similar but has been refined over the years to make it even more solar-reflective.

Greg Spotts, assistant director of the Bureau of Street Services, said the coating was first tested in 2015 on a parking lot in the San Fernando Valley, one of the hottest parts of town. Officials say has already shown promising results, reports The Washington Post.

"We found that on average the area covered in CoolSeal is 10 degrees cooler than black asphalt on the same parking lot," Spotts said. "We thought it was really interesting. It's almost like treated asphalt warms at a lower rate."

City officials claim Los Angeles is the first U.S. city to test "on-road use" of cool pavement to fight urban heat.

Officials believe the coated streets are more comfortable for pets as well, as Fox affiliate KTTV asked when they tested whether pets were more amendable to a treated roadway vs. typical asphalt.

OneIndia News