Funny how now that electric vehicles are winning, it turns out that, no, it’s tires that are bad and gosh look EVs have more tire wear because they are heavier. Regular people with regular sized EVs must be taxed more than gas cars!! (But of course not trucks and SUVs)
The article contains a caveat that tailpipe emissions only recently were reduced below tire emissions, and even then only in some places. Also, EV’s produce much less brake dust, and the article doesn’t compare that decrease to the 20% increase in tire dust. Anyway, this mathematical bound holds in the absolute worst case for EV’s. If tailpipe emissions used to be 51% of the problem and brakes were zero, then switchi…
Evidence mounts on toxic pollution from tires
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Re: Evidence mounts on toxic pollution from tires
#62and 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…
What car owners (EV or otherwise) can do to relieve their conscience is to use tyres with the smallest possible dimensions. This should reduce the amount of particle emissions from tyre abrasions. As a plus, smaller tyres are also cheaper, lighter and increase the range.
The principal problem of hazardous chemicals in tyres and non-degradable micro abrasions appears solvable to me. Probably comes down to regulatory intervention and cost and not so much to an insurmountable chemistry challenge.
Re: Evidence mounts on toxic pollution from tires
#63Is there a place where I can lab test my soil? Just over our fence is a main road, we grow a bunch of veggies on our side of the fence. I wonder what’s being accumulated into our veggies.
For example TFA talks about 6PPD-q which is acutely toxic to fish, but "no one has studied the impact of 6PPD-q on human health." So we don't know if you should worry about that one. What we do know is that toxicity for aquatic animals is extremely different from toxicity in mammals. Soap, for example, is very toxic to fish.
Another example that caught my eye: in one sentence there is a claim that 3.5 trillion tire microparticles are washed into the SF Bay per year. Then a couple of sentences later, there is a claim that a car emits 1 trillion microparticles per kilometer driven. So the cumulative distance driven across everyone in the Bay Area is around 2 miles per year??
When two different estimates disagree by nine orders of magnitude, you're either doing astronomy or you're doing something very wrong.
Unfortunately the field of microplastics research is filled with work that is not just overly sensationalist, but that is very clearly wrong if you do a little napkin math. And almost without exception, the people involved are just plain bad at chemistry. I mean basic stuff like not understanding that a monomer has very different properties from the corresponding polymer. SMH.
Edit: For soil specifically, there has been ample research showing that burying large amounts of tires in the ground is safe:
"There is no evidence that tyre bales embedded in the ground represent a real or potential source of pollution, or pose a threat that water and soil quality in the vicinity will deteriorate."
Re: Evidence mounts on toxic pollution from tires
#64The WFH era should stay. https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1001874 Remote work can slash your carbon footprint — if done right. Remote workers can have a 54% lower carbon footprint compared with onsite workers
Re: Evidence mounts on toxic pollution from tires
#65Is there a place where I can lab test my soil? Just over our fence is a main road, we grow a bunch of veggies on our side of the fence. I wonder what’s being accumulated into our veggies.
Search for "soil testing". There should be local companies doing it, as it's a standard procedure when planning new buildings. (You can't build a new school or playground on polluted ground, for example.)
Re: Evidence mounts on toxic pollution from tires
#66We just brought home some old tires to plant pineapples in. Maybe time for a rethink.
The tires themselves are pretty inert, it's the constant road friction tearing off tiny little pieces of it and spewing it intot he air that's the problem. I wouldn't worry about using tires as building material.
Re: Evidence mounts on toxic pollution from tires
#67There 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 th…
Re: Evidence mounts on toxic pollution from tires
#68Funny how now that electric vehicles are winning, it turns out that, no, it’s tires that are bad and gosh look EVs have more tire wear because they are heavier. Regular people with regular sized EVs must be taxed more than gas cars!! (But of course not trucks and SUVs)
Re: Evidence mounts on toxic pollution from tires
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
If a playground has toxic material, then the playground is doing it wrong, not the parent. And yes, it's a full time job (at certain ages), and no it's hardly the primary responsibility, it's one of many.
Re: Evidence mounts on toxic pollution from tires
#70There 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?
Later, once the kids are gone, fuck up your knee (or back, hips, etc).
Don’t get me wrong, I like city life, but it’s not for everyone and doesn’t eliminate all use cases for cars.