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Tire toxicity faces fresh scrutiny after salmon die-offs

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Re: Tire toxicity faces fresh scrutiny after salmon die-offs

#4
some links from Google Scholar

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=jenn...

" a Ph.D. student, Haoqi Nina Zhao, suggested a new way to separate out chemicals that led to a prime suspect. But they couldn’t test it, because they didn’t know what it was. “It’s almost like you have a fingerprint,” Dr. Tian said. “But you really don’t know who this is, because in your database, this fingerprint doesn’t exist.”

Dr. Tian’s “aha!” moment came one morning. Guessing that the mystery chemical had transformed from a substance originally added to the tire, he looked for a compound whose carbon and nitrogen molecules matched, ignoring the oxygen and hydrogen, since the latter are more likely to be altered when a chemical transforms. In an Environmental Protection Agency report on tire rubber, he found a match: an antioxidant called 6PPD.

The researchers ordered the smallest amount they could, about a pound of purple pellets. When they oxidized the substance, the resulting chemical looked just like the one they had worked so hard to isolate from the tire water. It was time to test this version, 6PPD-quinone, on the salmon. “I find it incredibly sad to watch fish die,” Dr. Kolodziej said. “You’re just watching these fish struggle. And yet you’re happy you understand why.”

The killer was the 6PPD-quinone from the tires in the roadway runoff. “The analysis that they did is really amazing,” said Nancy Denslow, a professor and director of aquatic toxicology at the University of Florida who was not affiliated with the study. She also praised the large number of authors. “It’s wonderful to see big groups of people coming together to solve problems,” she said. “Group science is fantastic.”

  -- How Scientists Tracked Down a Mass Killer (of Salmon)
https://www.asf.ca/how-scientists-tracked-down-a-mass-killer...

Re: Tire toxicity faces fresh scrutiny after salmon die-offs

#5

some links from Google Scholar https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=jenn... " a Ph.D. student, Haoqi Nina Zhao, suggested a new way to separate out chemicals that led to a prime suspect. But they couldn’t test it, because they didn’t know what it was. “It’s almost like you have a fingerprint,” Dr. Tian said. “But you really don’t know who this is, because in your database, this fingerprint doesn’t…

I don't understand how testing toxicity of chemicals, and their oxides, is not a standard part of allowing them in manufacture?..

Re: Tire toxicity faces fresh scrutiny after salmon die-offs

#6
Perhaps tires can be made less toxic, but over all, we need to prioritize driving less.

WFH means I put barely 3000 miles per year on my car. It's absurd we are not aggressively promoting WFH or hybrid WFH at the national level. It's the easiest win for the environment and it's right there for the taking.

Re: Tire toxicity faces fresh scrutiny after salmon die-offs

#9

Perhaps tires can be made less toxic, but over all, we need to prioritize driving less. WFH means I put barely 3000 miles per year on my car. It's absurd we are not aggressively promoting WFH or hybrid WFH at the national level. It's the easiest win for the environment and it's right there for the taking.

Same here, been WFH since 2015, however I did do a lot of driving for other reasons previously. Since 2022 however I drive less than 7000 miles a year, and that includes a family road trip each year for the holidays that is ~2500 miles round-trip. One thing that bothers me is that insurance is getting extremely expensive where I live, even though I hardly drive and my car is garaged year-round due to the greatly increasing amounts of vehicle theft. I've considered a few times just not having a car and renting a car regularly, but services like ZipCar have pretty much died out and I don't live in a city center where they still sometimes exist. I drive on average just once per week, if I could that for a fully-laden cost of less than $500/mo it would be cheaper to rent than buy, but it doesn't seem like there's anyone that's captured this market.

Re: Tire toxicity faces fresh scrutiny after salmon die-offs

#10

Perhaps tires can be made less toxic, but over all, we need to prioritize driving less. WFH means I put barely 3000 miles per year on my car. It's absurd we are not aggressively promoting WFH or hybrid WFH at the national level. It's the easiest win for the environment and it's right there for the taking.

Yeah, the big focus on exhausts from cars has hidden lots of other problems they lead to.

EVs don't solve most of these problems. The cars are heavier, hence their tires spread even more micro plastic.

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