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Pollution from tire wear is worse than exhaust emissions?

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Re: Pollution from tire wear is worse than exhaust emissions?

#161

Post by cronix »

dhimes wrote: post #126
a3n wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Take a 40t truck with 5 axles vs. a small car with a weight of 1t and two axles ... Truck driver. Not quibbling, just adding nuance. For your typical 40t scenario, allowed max weights are: 12,00 pounds on the front steering axle. It has one tire at each end. 34,000 pounds total on the two tandem "drive" axles on the truck. There are two tires at the end of each axle, so four per axle, eight total at the drive axles…

So it would be better to have a bunch of smaller trucks moving cargo. And that means a lot more work for truck drivers.

Or for the companies who will own/lease the automated fleets, foregoing having to pay wages, health insurance, vacation time, or work breaks allowing them to ship quicker since they aren't forced to stop driving and take a break every x hours. You'll just get a smug smile and a "learn to code" line.

Re: Pollution from tire wear is worse than exhaust emissions?

#162

Post by adrianmonk »

Assuming that this really is a problem (which other comments have thrown into doubt), I see potential conflicts between vehicle safety and fixing this.

One obvious solution is harder tires that don't wear as much. But these tend to have worse grip, which means worse braking performance (and cornering, etc.).

They also mentioned that reducing the weight of cars would help, but one of the reasons cars have gotten heavier over the last few decades is the addition of a bunch of safety equipment.

Re: Pollution from tire wear is worse than exhaust emissions?

#163

Post by modwest »

computerphage wrote: post #144
BenoitEssiambre wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because plastic is not a significant pollutant. What's next, we're going to remove soil from the environment? Soil is full of, mold, bacteria, virus, metals, minerals, fungi, urine, feces, decomposed insects, thousands of chemicals like rust, alumina, silica, heavy metals, many carcinogens, lung irritants etc. It can give you "Farmer ’s Lung" and it's _everywhere_ in nature. Plastic is quite clean and tame by compari…

Can someone substantively reply instead of just downvoting this comment?

Look man anyone trying to convince you in 2020 that "plastic is not a significant pollutant" is not arguing in good faith.

Please, for the love of god, learn about the climate and the impact of human industry on it.

Re: Pollution from tire wear is worse than exhaust emissions?

#164

Post by ratel »

Hold on:

The claim is this:

> "Using a popular family hatchback running on brand new, correctly inflated tyres, we found that the car emitted 5.8 grams per kilometer of particles."

It does not seem to be a mistake:

> "Compared with regulated exhaust emission limits of 4.5 milligrams per kilometer, the completely unregulated tyre wear emission is higher by a factor of over 1,000."

A tire might way up to 15 kilograms for a 20 inch type. Lets assume 10 kilograms for a normal tire which is on the high side. 4 tires is 40 kilograms. Even if we assume half of the particals are not coming from the tire (but from where?). That still leaves 40,000 / 2.9 = 13793 kilometers for the tires to be completly consumed (weighing nothing anymore). That is definitely not happening.

So without an explanation on where the matter is coming from this does not read right.

Re: Pollution from tire wear is worse than exhaust emissions?

#165

Post by toss1 »

sjg007 wrote: post #82
toss1 wrote: post #42

Yes, the tires wear, and the wear can be easily measured by the mass difference between a new tire, worn tire, divided by the distance. Plausible that the total wear is 1-3 orders of magnitude total mass greater than modern tailpipe emissions. A huge question that is never answered is how much of those worn particles actually become airborne, how many stay airborne for how long, and what is their effect on organisms…

It will be dose dependent.

Exactly.

Question is, what is the dosing level that would cause harm, and what are the routes that this material takes that might rise to such a level, vs how much is, e.g., stuck on the pavement and washed into the ditch with every rain?

Re: Pollution from tire wear is worse than exhaust emissions?

#166

Post by BenjiWiebe »

petre wrote: post #54
thinkcontext wrote: post #30

> Using a popular family hatchback running on brand new, correctly inflated tyres, we found that the car emitted 5.8 grams per kilometer of particles. So this is based on n=1, very suspicious. If tires really were this big a source of PM emissions then how would levels in US cities gone down through vehicle pollution control measures. Something is not adding up here.

That's 290 kg per set of tyres in 50k km. Something doesn't add up or the emissions are not linear and they go down with tyre use.

Working in a tire shop I do get the feeling that the wear is highest when new.

Re: Pollution from tire wear is worse than exhaust emissions?

#168

Post by globular-toast »

_Microft wrote: post #32

Maybe offtopic but a surprising bit of extra information regarding wear and vehicles: Road wear scales with the fourth power of axle load, so heavier vehicles do much more damage than one might expect. Take a 40t truck with 5 axles vs. a small car with a weight of 1t and two axles (e.g. VW Polo, maybe an older VW Golf might only weigh 1t as well): (8t axle load / 0.5t axle load) = 16^4, i.e. the truck puts 2^16 (6553…

I drive on one of the routes used by lorries servicing the UK's largest container port. The roads are visibly buckled in the lanes the lorries use. You can feel your car uncomfortably slotting into the grooves. It seems insane to me to use the roads for that. A railway seems like a complete no brainer, especially considering these are containers and easily loaded.

But at least the weight of a lorry consists of mostly the goods being transported. The more pertinent comparison is a bicycle vs single-occupant "SUV". Unlike lorries, those things are tearing up smaller roads in town centres making the roads barely usable by smaller cars, let alone bicycles, despite the fact that cyclists contribute equally to road maintenance.

Those SUVs also require larger brakes which is a major non-exhaust emission. It's high time to start taxing these vehicles heavily and I think using the fourth power of axle load seems like a sensible way to do it.

Re: Pollution from tire wear is worse than exhaust emissions?

#169

Post by elidourado »

Fake news. Smaller particles from exhaust are way worse for you than larger particles from tires. Within a category like PM2.5, mass is a terrible metric. A given mass of fuel exhaust will contain orders of magnitude more particles because they are tinier. Smaller particles can penetrate deeper into your lungs and can go into your bloodstream.

Re: Pollution from tire wear is worse than exhaust emissions?

#170

Post by gpapilion »

ajnin wrote: post #132
gpapilion wrote: post #93

Having lived next to a freeway, I found everything in my apartment covered with a sticky black dust that took hours to remove. I found embedded on books and other items years later. So, I think this has been true for a long time. What I didn’t find mentioned is these emissions were more or less localized to a small distance from the road. For example when I moved it went away. That said I’m sure it’s a nightmare for…

How do you know if that soot came from exhaust, tyres, or something else ?

You could see it was tiny sticky pieces of rubber.
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