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Pollution from tire wear is worse than exhaust emissions?

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181–190 of 336 posts

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

#181
post #164

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 f…

Most of it must come from the asphalt.

I agree. But tires do shed a lot. Consider a brand new tire has grove depth of about 8-10mm, and many drivers change tires when their groves are 0-2mm (yes, some idiots keep driving until they have slicks or "a pop").

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

#182

I live next to a very busy road (6-lane). When I moved in, the closets were filled with black stains. My brother-in-law cleaned it and said he never saw that kind of dirt. The closets are dirty again. As time passed I also never encountered that amount of dust. The dust was also extremely different from the dust when I lived in the forest, dark colored and plentiful. It accumulates very quickly, it gets abandoned-hou…

If you have a central air heating system like most houses do, you should add a filter near the fan. You won't catch all the dust, but you'll collect a lot of it, making your air healthier to live in

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

#183

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…

>Road wear scales with the fourth power of axle load Could you explain why? (I can't view the Google books link.)

There's no "why", it's a rule of thumb / estimate called the "fourth power rule" (or "fourth power law" but there are other unrelated fourth power laws) established experimentally in the late 50s / early 60s by the AASHO. Basically they built a bunch of roads to the same specifications, drove streams of vehicles through and monitored pavement deterioration.

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

#184
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Toyota Camry weights 3600lbs, so it's not like EVs are extraordinary heavy either. Additionally, 15 gallons of gas is about 100lbs.

Isn’t Model S closer in size to Camry? A Corolla is closer to model 3 size and more like 2900lbs. The P90D with less range than that 100lbs of gas Camry is 5000lbs.

Interior dimensions are all very similar. Exterior, the Model S is the largest, followed by the Camry, Model 3 then distantly the Corolla.

            Shldr  Hip   Head  Leg
  Model S:  57.7   55.0  38.8  42.7
  Camry:    57.7   55.4  37.5  42.1
  Model 3:  56.3   53.4  40.3  42.7
  Corolla:  54.0   53.9  38.0  42.0

            WB     Len    Wdth  Hght
  Model S:  116.5  196.0  77.3  56.5
  Camry:    111.2  192.7  72.4  56.9
  Model 3:  113.2  184.8  72.8  56.8
  Corolla:  106.3  182.5  70.1  56.5

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

#185
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When built properly, roads are quite resistant to the elements, though the execution is often culture-dependent. Roads for light loads can be built much cheaper.

Snow plowing absolutely destroys roads. The blade catches on the smallest imperfections and creates potholes. Then water gets in and the freeze/thaw expansion cycle quickly makes things worse. Here in Canada roads really don't last very long before they have to be peeled up and put down again.

Yes, but this doesn't create particle pollution, just potholes.

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

#186
If the idea is to focus on tires, then why not just look at how many tires are manufactured each year? 100% of tires end up polluting something, somewhere.

Or, again if the focus is tire wear, there must be pretty good data about how much of a tire gets worn off before replacement, and how often they're replaced. It doesn't seem like it should be very complex to calculate how much tire is being emitted due to road wear.

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

#187

The claims here seem dubious. They tested one type of brand new tire. Then they conclude that "high-quality" tires are somehow better without providing any evidence to support that claim. While tires may very well be a source of pollution I have to wonder where the money for the work came from.

Shitty tires start with the same tread depth, but wear out in 25-35k miles. High quality tires usually go 50-60k.

At least in the US, we have Uniform Tire Quality Grading [0]. According to Consumer Reports, which tested at least 47 tires, "most tires should live up to their mileage warranty claims"[1].

I've seen "high-quality" tires with a very low treadwear rating and I've seen "low-quality" or "cheap" tires with a very high treadwear rating. But the press release only mentions "high-quality" without defining "quality" at all. Which adds to the dubious nature of the claims.

[0] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Tire_Quality_Grading

[1] https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2015/09/the-tru...

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

#188
post #164

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 f…

Most of it must come from the asphalt.

Then budget tyres surely wouldn't make a difference?

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

#189
post #164

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 f…

They're torn up from the road and rubbed off from the tyres themselves. The majority is obviously coming from the road. There's been studies done here in Sweden since we've banned studded winter tyres in some areas of Stockholm in an effort to reduce road wear and improve air quality. I don't know of any sources in English off the top of my head though. The last time I read an article about it though (2+ years ago, d…

The studs in tyres are small carbide rods, which will easily chew through a soft material like asphalt. A rubber tyre would seem to be quite a bit softer than asphalt in colder conditions, so I have a hard time imagining the rubber wearing the asphalt down so significantly.

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

#190

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…

Everything is killing us, but some things faster than others and so we have to prioritize, but hedge. Woodworkers have dust collection systems, air exchangers, and occasionally respirators, so they don’t get something akin to asbestosis from sawdust. What escapes gets processed by soil fungi so not a big problem. Microplastics have a possibility to do bad things to us over the long run by accumulating in our soils, a…

A lot of plastics are pretty much chemically inert under a wide variety of conditions though.
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