I missed both of these.
I will track them down though.
This is one of the sections of Requiem that I am looking forward to the most. I have always found myself rather comforted by the idea of entropy, and the natural breakdown of things.
I also have to wonder if they mentioned the phenomena of outgassing among petroleum products (plastics). I remember seeing the phenomena among old guitars, where the plastic parts on them would crumble due to the solvent used to bind the plastic together outgassing from the plastic. There were ways to repair the parts (superglue was one way I saw) but doing that one on a huge scale would be impossible)