Something Learned in Uni...

All this money has not completely gone to waste. I have just figured out why its really bad to burn plastic: most plastics are sort of modified hydrocarbon chains. Hydrocarbon chains are what you put in your fuel tank of your car. They burn. Quite nicely. Good fun. Only problem is that plastics and nylons and Teflons and all this stuff are very similar chemically. Difference: when you burn hydrocarbons you release carbon and hydrogen and bond them with oxygen to release copious amounts of heat, water, and carbon dioxide. All good fun. Useful for exploding things. (and transport.) Plastics and such though. Different story: Carbon and something else entirely than hydrogen. Say Florine. Or chlorine. Or almost anything else. Or a combination of things. I think good old Styrofoam is chlorine... and when that burns... I'm not sure what comes off of that, carbon dioxide and something else, and its going to be one of three things: worst case scenario: chlorine gas. Used in world war II to wipe out soldiers in trenches. Not good. that or dichlorineoxide... actually, make that four things: dichloro-oxide or hexachloro-oxide, or any combination of the above. I have no idea what dichloro-oxide is, nor do I want to know what it does to a human body. Suffice that burning plastics and breathing the smoke is not a good idea. Nuff said.