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Evidence mounts on toxic pollution from tires

e360.yale.edu

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Re: Evidence mounts on toxic pollution from tires

#41

Post by notacoward »

robertlagrant wrote: post #35
notacoward wrote: post #26

There will be mostly two kinds of response to this article. (1) Cars and trucks are evil, get rid of them. (2) Too bad, nothing we can do, get over it. Neither is helpful. We're going to need lots of tires for a long time. Trains don't (and can't) go everywhere. Bikes can't carry everything, and any imaginable bike that could would have the exact same problem. Trucks of all kinds, and buses, are indispensable and nee…

But I'm 23 with no family in Amsterdam with a remote role and I get around on a bike just fine?

How did that bike get to you? How did the food get to your grocery store before you rode there? (Hint: it's not trains and boats. Go watch the traffic on a highway some time and you'll be disabused of that notion.) How did all of the transport involved in your furniture's manufacture and final delivery occur? Even if we completely got rid of passenger cars, there would still be plenty of tires on the road and there would still be a need to make them more environmentally friendly. Your response is a non sequitur. I already said we need to reduce the need for vehicular travel to accomplish daily needs. What more do you want, that doesn't fall into the useless "get rid of them" bucket? And yes, I realize your comment might have been satire, but - as another commenter amply demonstrates - some people here say that kind of thing with no irony whatsoever.

P.S. for the aforementioned un-ironic picador: As I already said, we should address this problem in many ways. "Reduce trips" is one part of the equation, but doesn't eliminate the need to make the trips that remain more ecologically benign. Suggesting that this is "don't address the last 1%" is a total strawman, more insulting to people's intelligence than anything I've said and more injurious to the curious conversation that the guidelines recommend.

Re: Evidence mounts on toxic pollution from tires

#42

Post by redtexture »

swader999 wrote: post #7

So maybe not the best material for playgrounds.

Rubber crumbles are a base layer under astroturf.

Thus a very large number of hig h school fields have astroturf and rubber crumbles.

On pro-football broadcasts, you can occasionally see clouds of rubber dust during a tackle.

Re: Evidence mounts on toxic pollution from tires

#43

Post by sp332 »

lowbloodsugar wrote: post #34
ejb999 wrote: post #29

and unfortunately, EV's are worse than ICE cars of similar size, because of the extra weight - so they can go thru tires 30% faster. "Increased tire wear can also contribute to air quality issues. In Oslo, Norway, where electric vehicles make two-thirds of registered vehicles but a higher proportion of traffic, the "air has unhealthy levels of microscopic particles generated partly by the abrasion of tires and asphal…

Here we go. Funny how we are just learning this now! And EVs are the problem. Not the giant SUVs and trucks!

The Tesla Model 3 "Standard Range Plus" weighs less than the lightest Ford F150 trim. (3,600 pounds vs 4,000)

Re: Evidence mounts on toxic pollution from tires

#44

Post by Freedom2 »

sp332 wrote: post #43
lowbloodsugar wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here we go. Funny how we are just learning this now! And EVs are the problem. Not the giant SUVs and trucks!

The Tesla Model 3 "Standard Range Plus" weighs less than the lightest Ford F150 trim. (3,600 pounds vs 4,000)

That doesn't seem likely, F150s are built to be light and agile, as well as environmental friendly.

Re: Evidence mounts on toxic pollution from tires

#45

Post by Retric »

notacoward wrote: post #26

There will be mostly two kinds of response to this article. (1) Cars and trucks are evil, get rid of them. (2) Too bad, nothing we can do, get over it. Neither is helpful. We're going to need lots of tires for a long time. Trains don't (and can't) go everywhere. Bikes can't carry everything, and any imaginable bike that could would have the exact same problem. Trucks of all kinds, and buses, are indispensable and nee…

It’s not that we can’t quickly transition, it’s that this isn’t dangerous enough to force a rapid change. If this was killing millions of people we could do something extreme like rapidly swap to dual use vehicles with road tires that can operate on rails. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_track

It’s worth remembering how quickly large scale shifts like using private cars and highway infrastructure happened in the first place. Core blocker for such change isn’t the inability to change infrastructure, its lack of urgency to change.

Re: Evidence mounts on toxic pollution from tires

#47

Post by Retric »

notacoward wrote: post #41
robertlagrant wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I'm 23 with no family in Amsterdam with a remote role and I get around on a bike just fine?

How did that bike get to you? How did the food get to your grocery store before you rode there? (Hint: it's not trains and boats. Go watch the traffic on a highway some time and you'll be disabused of that notion.) How did all of the transport involved in your furniture's manufacture and final delivery occur? Even if we completely got rid of passenger cars, there would still be plenty of tires on the road and there w…

Food largely gets to grocery stores on trains and boats and then to peoples homes in private vehicles. The last mails delivery from distribution centers to retail is a tiny fraction of overall transit.

Saying we can eliminate 99% of pollution but that last 1% is hard therefore why bother isn’t a rebuttal, it’s just insulting the intelligence of your reader.

Re: Evidence mounts on toxic pollution from tires

#48

Post by sp332 »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #19

"Seventy-eight percent of ocean microplastics are synthetic tire rubber, according to a report by the Pew Charitable Trust." How true is this? Seems like we have been focusing on the wrong sources if this is true?

A recent study shows that ocean microplatics were overestimated. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-plastic-litter-oceans-overesti... Most of the platic is in larger pieces. So it seems probable that focus was misplaced, yeah.

Re: Evidence mounts on toxic pollution from tires

#49

Post by ryukafalz »

notacoward wrote: post #26

There will be mostly two kinds of response to this article. (1) Cars and trucks are evil, get rid of them. (2) Too bad, nothing we can do, get over it. Neither is helpful. We're going to need lots of tires for a long time. Trains don't (and can't) go everywhere. Bikes can't carry everything, and any imaginable bike that could would have the exact same problem. Trucks of all kinds, and buses, are indispensable and nee…

> Neither is helpful. We're going to need lots of tires for a long time. Trains don't (and can't) go everywhere. Bikes can't carry everything, and any imaginable bike that could would have the exact same problem. Trucks of all kinds, and buses, are indispensable and need tires. The question is how to make the tires better. Fortunately-people are working on this.

As with many things, scale matters.

You are correct in saying that bikes can't carry everything, but a significant portion of vehicle trips are private car owners driving alone (whether for shopping, commuting, etc) and over shorter distances bikes can serve a very similar purpose. Likewise, while nobody is seriously suggesting replacing (say) long-haul trucking with bikes, mail carriers have made good use of cargo bikes for last-mile delivery within cities.

You are correct in saying that trains don't go everywhere, but they can go more places than they do now. (And in the US, they used to!)

The discussion shouldn't be a binary choice between "eliminate cars and trucks" and "do nothing" - there's room in between those two for reducing our reliance on motor vehicles. To the extent that the problem of tire dust (among other things) scales with the number of vehicles on the road, reducing the number of vehicles on the road will help to mitigate it.

And yes, we do also need to pressure tire manufacturers to develop less harmful tires. But I don't think the other concerns are as orthogonal to the issue at hand as you say they are.

Re: Evidence mounts on toxic pollution from tires

#50

Post by washadjeffmad »

WendyTheWillow wrote: post #33
kyleee wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s actually quite a high bar for a parent to completely prevent unintended items from being put in a child’s mouth. I suspect you either don’t have children or you are an extremely militant helicopter parent if you can tell us with a straight face you’ve met that bar.

While it may be a full time job, keeping toxic materials out of your child's mouth is one of the primary responsibilities of a parent. This is not a high bar.

Oh, get a grip. If parenting was really critical for their development, then it would be on my infant's YouTube playlist.
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