[HN Gopher] Evidence mounts on toxic pollution from tires
___________________________________________________________________
Evidence mounts on toxic pollution from tires
Author : chmaynard
Score : 69 points
Date : 2023-09-19 12:43 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (e360.yale.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (e360.yale.edu)
| roflchoppa wrote:
| Is 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.
| Symbiote wrote:
| 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.)
| evilduck wrote:
| But you can build a school and then dump 50 tons of shredded
| tires on the playground as a woodchip alternative.
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| The current state of understanding of microplastics is far too
| inadequate for there to be any useful lab testing available to
| consumers.
|
| 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.
| sidfthec wrote:
| Strange tone to the article. Very adversarial and doomy.
|
| Sounds like 6PPD is essentially required for modern tires. People
| are researching alternatives but haven't scaled any yet.
|
| Other emissions from modern tires are also bad. People are
| researching alternatives but haven't scaled any yet.
|
| Regulatory agencies are pushing to speed this up.
|
| What's the issue? It sounds like things are working as intended.
| irq wrote:
| The issue is this shouldn't have happened in the first place.
| We as a society should have learned from, at least, the debacle
| that was leaded gasoline and its impact on populations over
| generations.
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| And DDT, and mercury thermometers, and Teflon, and the list
| goes on...
|
| It's a fundamental fact: introducing anything new to an
| environment disrupts the status quo. In a living environment,
| that means health problems for living things. You either stop
| creating synthetic materials or you have unforeseen
| consequences. You can mandate more research and more rigorous
| standards, but that has diminishing returns. Some things will
| slip past.
| sidfthec wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean. What would the alternative world
| look like in this case? Less safe / a lack of tires until we
| confirm every chemical used isn't dangerous? I don't think
| that's a good trade off. We still don't have good
| alternatives in 2023, let alone in the last 100 years.
| dkarl wrote:
| Doomy? The tone seems balanced and pragmatic to me. Nothing in
| the article implies an existential threat or takes a doomer
| perspective. The subject is depressing, but if that bothers
| you, you should probably skip environmental news altogether.
|
| > What's the issue? It sounds like things are working as
| intended.
|
| Studying and reporting about pollution is part of how things
| work as intended.
|
| Maybe you sincerely expected something different when you
| clicked the link, but it comes off like you're seeking out this
| material and then complaining that it exists.
| jschveibinz wrote:
| [flagged]
| telchar wrote:
| What an asinine no-information comment. If you think you have
| have something of substance to say on the topic, say that.
| aaron695 wrote:
| [dead]
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Can't tell if you are saying that growing up breathing rubber
| smoke is just fine, or that reporting that widely used
| chemicals are toxic is fear-mongering. Or both.
| zhrvoj wrote:
| Welcome to the truth. Tires wear and all of that stays on the
| road, or next to the roads, seas, oceans. Years...tires... And
| then, we have to sort each plastic HDPE bag to save the Earth.
| Feel guilt if we don't. Ok that. I hope that they are sorting
| waste in Ukraine. Otherwise, my efforts are in vane.
| nirvdrum wrote:
| The indignity! Don't do it if you don't want to, but let's not
| pretend sorting a plastic bag is a major imposition. Just
| because something is a worse polluter doesn't mean we can't
| improve anything else.
| ejb999 wrote:
| sort them if you want, but more than 90% of the stuff that is
| sorted and 'recycled' doesn't actually get recycled - its
| gets buried or burned just like regular trash.
|
| Much better to not generate it in the first place, i.e. make
| a conscious effort to reduce what you buy and consume where
| possible.
|
| "This will likely come as no surprise to longtime readers,
| but according to National Geographic, an astonishing 91
| percent of plastic doesn't actually get recycled. This means
| that only around 9 percent is being recycled. As if that
| weren't enough, nearly all of that plastic that does get
| recycled is actually downcycled, which means it gets less and
| less useful every time, eventually becoming so flimsy that it
| can no longer be recycled properly.
|
| As it is, that 91 percent just sits in landfills, piling up
| and breaking down slowly into arguably more dangerous
| microplastics. National Geographic reports that by 2050,
| approximately 12 billion metric tons of plastic will be
| sitting in landfills across the globe. For scale, that amount
| of plastic weighs approximately 35,000 times more than the
| whole Empire State Building."
| [deleted]
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| "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?
| ars wrote:
| 78% by _number_ not by amount (mass).
|
| The tire particles are incredibly small, so there are lots of
| them.
| sp332 wrote:
| 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.
| myshpa wrote:
| Depends. Those macroplastics there haven't degraded yet.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-64889284
|
| _Oceans littered with 171 trillion plastic pieces_
|
| _The concentration of plastics in the oceans has increased
| from 16 trillion pieces in 2005, data suggests._
|
| _It could nearly triple by 2040 if no action is taken,
| scientists warn._
|
| https://www.seaspiracy.org/facts
|
| _150 milion tons of plastic in the sea, 1 garbage truck every
| minute, 46% of plastic in the pacific garbage patch is fishing
| nets_
| myshpa wrote:
| The 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_
| hankman86 wrote:
| Or walk, cycle, use car pooling or public transport. Move
| closer to where you work, if that's an option.
| foxes wrote:
| [flagged]
| notacoward wrote:
| 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 need tires. The question is how to make the
| tires _better_. Fortunately-people are working on this.
|
| Bridgestone: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/04/eco-friendly-
| tires-brid...
|
| Goodyear: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/goodyear-
| unveils-90... (specifically using soybean oil in place of 6PPD)
|
| What we need to do is not argue tires vs. no tires, but _keep the
| pressure on_ these makers and others to continue developing less-
| harmful tires. And the best way to do that is with our wallets.
| If there 's _demand_ for less toxic and more sustainable tires,
| they 're more likely to be made.
|
| We also need to reduce the average weight of passenger vehicles,
| and reduce the need for vehicular travel to accomplish daily
| needs. That includes everything from urban design to WFH, but
| those efforts are largely orthogonal to the issue at hand.
| Retric wrote:
| 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.
| hankman86 wrote:
| Tyres don't last forever. With regulatory intervention in
| place, tyre manufacturers will bring products to market that
| lower or eliminate hazardous emissions. This problem could be
| solved in less than a decade.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| > 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.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| But I'm 23 with no family in Amsterdam with a remote role and I
| get around on a bike just fine?
| notacoward wrote:
| 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.
| Retric wrote:
| 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.
| hedora wrote:
| So, add some kids, and send them to a good school and sign
| them up for some interesting extracurricular activities.
|
| 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.
| foxes wrote:
| Yeah because having some small passive argument is really going
| to change things?
|
| Yes it's fairly obvious we need them in some situations (you
| carry equipment on a farm).
|
| But fixing the car problem is going to take proper activism and
| a greater push given it has such inertia and driving is so
| embedded. Not to mention corporate interests trying to preserve
| it.
| hedora wrote:
| Also, we'd need to demolish lots of buildings, including
| whole towns. Buildings and construction have 2x the
| environmental impact of cars.
| abraae wrote:
| We just brought home some old tires to plant pineapples in. Maybe
| time for a rethink.
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| 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.
| _vertigo wrote:
| That seems to be contradicted by the article
| liquidpele wrote:
| mmmm, wouldn't say they're inert...
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_Reef
| swader999 wrote:
| So maybe not the best material for playgrounds.
| hedora wrote:
| Kids that play soccer goalie on astroturf fields (ground up
| tire base) have an absurdly high cancer rate.
|
| But, causation is hard to prove in court, so cancer for kids it
| is!
| redtexture wrote:
| 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.
| dTal wrote:
| The risks seem to come from tire dust, which obviously is only
| generated when a tire rolls along the ground. So it's probably
| not all that bad for playgrounds.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| You don't think tire shreds rubbing together when kids run,
| jump, or land on them create dust?
|
| Tire shred playgrounds always remind me of the Sigur Ros
| Untitled 1 / Vaka music video.
| [deleted]
| Almondsetat wrote:
| I don't think children cause the wear and tear of 18
| wheelers, no
| spcebar wrote:
| Clearly you don't have children.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Not to nearly the same extent as when they're carrying a
| 3,000 pound vehicle down miles and miles of rough asphalt,
| no.
| swader999 wrote:
| I've seen kids eat the stuff.
| [deleted]
| Airsinner wrote:
| You've seen neglectful parenting then, which would exist
| irrespective of what material playgrounds are built from.
| kyleee wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| 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.
| ars wrote:
| 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.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| I guess it depends what you mean by "toxic".
|
| I wouldn't suggest eating wood. It probably won't do
| great things to your health long-term. But I think it's
| probably okay to build playgrounds out of wood, even if
| some children will try to eat it. Largely because I don't
| think building playgrounds out of fully edible material
| is feasible.
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| Oh, get a grip. If parenting was really critical for
| their development, then it would be on my infant's
| YouTube playlist.
| soperj wrote:
| Because people can control what their kids do at
| school...
| nvy wrote:
| Haha, ask me how I know you don't have kids.
| notatoad wrote:
| rubber and plastic are pretty inert and probably not going
| to cause too much harm if a kid eats some of it. i'm sure
| it's not good, but kids eat lots of dumb stuff and it's
| mostly fine.
|
| the problem isn't somebody eats a chunk of it once, it's
| when the school is beside a road and kids are breathing the
| dust in all day, every day, for twelve years.
| ejb999 wrote:
| 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 asphalt," The New York Times reports."
|
| from here: https://www.pcmag.com/news/the-unexpected-problem-
| with-evs-t...
| hankman86 wrote:
| Then again, EVs often use regenerative breaking ("one pedal
| driving"). I have made it a habit to engage this as often as
| possible, avoiding to use the brakes. I wonder if this results
| in fewer sharp stops and is easier on the tyres.
|
| 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.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| Here we go. Funny how we are just learning this now! And EVs
| are the problem. Not the giant SUVs and trucks!
| ejb999 wrote:
| they are both a problem, but if you buy a 'small' EV and it
| weighs as much or more as a bigger ICE, the EV contributes
| more of this type of pollution.
| sp332 wrote:
| The Tesla Model 3 "Standard Range Plus" weighs less than the
| lightest Ford F150 trim. (3,600 pounds vs 4,000)
| Freedom2 wrote:
| That doesn't seem likely, F150s are built to be light and
| agile, as well as environmental friendly.
| chmaynard wrote:
| [flagged]
| thesh4d0w wrote:
| Being a dick isn't a good way to get positive engagement.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| 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)
| hackermatic wrote:
| I support EVs over gas cars, and small gas cars over SUVs, but
| any of those will always be worse for the environment (in terms
| of resource and land use, emissions, and traffic noise) than
| more mass transit and a built environment that is convenient to
| get around without cars.
| hedora wrote:
| 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 switching entirely to EVs
| would leave us with 60% as much particulate emission as we had
| before.
|
| It's likely much lower than 60% of course.
| nenaoki wrote:
| Driving standard I only use my brakes on rare occasions,
| generally for the last part of coming to a stop at a sign.
| For lights I can largely slow down ahead of time with gearing
| and by the time I get there the light is green or traffic is
| moving. Braking early in an automatic gives the same benefit,
| with less overall braking; EVs basically give the everyman
| engine braking with some great efficiency bonuses on top, but
| not stopping at all or slowing less is best.
|
| The practice was drilled into me by a driving instructor, and
| I'm always glad to see other drivers practicing it as well
| because it's a boon for economy. If more drivers were
| cognizant of breaking the stop-and-go waves we could often be
| a lot more judicious with braking.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-09-19 23:01 UTC)