Concerned about microplastics? Research shows one of the biggest sources is car tyres
A lot of the emphasis on reducing microplastics has focussed on things like plastic bags, clothing, and food packaging.
But there's a growing body of research that shows one of the biggest culprits by far is car tyres.
It's increasingly clear that we simply cannot solve the issue of microplastics in the environment while still using tyres — even with electric-powered cars.
"Tyre wear stands out as a major source of microplastic pollution. Globally, each person is responsible for around 1kg of microplastic pollution from tyre wear released into the environment on average each year – with even higher rates observed in developed nations.
"It is estimated that between 8% and 40% of these particles find their way into surface waters such as the sea, rivers and lakes through runoff from road surfaces, wastewater discharge or even through airborne transport.
"However, tyre wear microplastics have been largely overlooked as a microplastic pollutant. Their dark colour makes them difficult to detect, so these particles can’t be identified using the traditional spectroscopy methods used to identify other more colourful plastic polymers."
"Microplastic pollution has polluted the entire planet, from Arctic snow and Alpine soils to the deepest oceans. The particles can harbour toxic chemicals and harmful microbes and are known to harm some marine creatures. People are also known to consume them via food and water, and to breathe them, But the impact on human health is not yet known.
"“Roads are a very significant source of microplastics to remote areas, including the oceans,” said Andreas Stohl, from the Norwegian Institute for Air Research, who led the research. He said an average tyre loses 4kg during its lifetime. “It’s such a huge amount of plastic compared to, say, clothes,” whose fibres are commonly found in rivers, Stohl said. “You will not lose kilograms of plastic from your clothing.”"
"Microplastics are of increasing concern in the environment [1, 2]. Tire wear is estimated to be one of the largest sources of microplastics entering the aquatic environment [3,4,5,6,7]. The mechanical abrasion of car tires by the road surface forms tire wear particles (TWP) [8] and/or tire and road wear particles (TRWP), consisting of a complex mixture of rubber, with both embedded asphalt and minerals from the pavement [9]."
Meanwhile car culture: BIGGER CARS, MORE WEIGHT, WIDER TIRES, MORE RUBBER, MORE ACCELERATION
Tbf regenerative braking is likely helping reduce the rate at which microparticles are shed by tires when slowing a vehicle, but the absolutely insane torque on modern cars, as well as the weight of carrying around the battery capacity to pull off that one road trip you'll do once a year is likely offsetting the tiny benefits of that one improvement.
Why be efficient when you can ensure your own safety in an accident at the expense of the people you plow through?
Even small pure evs will wear out faster than a small ice or hybrid, but it would still be a huge help if they sold smaller ones.
Of course the issue is that smaller range EV's aren't all that wanted except as a second vehicle for short trips. If you have a short range EV it won't work as a complete replacement, so you then need two vehicles.
@ColeSloth@CubbyTustard I checked my movement history for the last few months. The furthest I went in a car in a day was 80k. If we look back over the entire year 160k is the furthest.
A small EV with 100k range would be a fine second car. A full sized sedan EV as the primary car with 200k range would be sufficient.
Any trip that is further than that should prefer to use rail for the bulk of the travel, hiring a car at the far end if needed (most holidays I've taken haven't needed a car)
You're European. How your country is sized and built is vastly different than what is capable right now in the US. Heck, I drive 90 miles (so like 145 KM ) each way to work a couple times a week. Stuff is spread out differently when your country is just the size of a US state.
Your decadent lifestyle shouldn't have ever been normalized. Your neighborhood likely should have never been built. And the hundreds of miles of road network that you use weekly doesn't need to exist.
@ColeSloth@LovesTha My friend, this has been debunked many times. Please stop propagating auto industry propaganda. The US is not “too big” for public transportation. We choose to prioritise automobiles & car-centric infrastructure. It’s a choice.
The US is most definitely too big and too spread out for complete or even close to complete public transportation. It's only viable going from large city to large city and within a city. The US would need a complete redesign for public transport to work for a lot of people. Not to mention the lack of time people have and that it can ad an hour to a trip that's 20 minutes by car.
@ColeSloth i’m sorry, but you have no idea what you are talking about. You’re literally parroting incorrect automobile and highway lobby talking points. The US interstate system is the worst thing to ever happen in terms of economy, equality, and ecology on top of the nonsensical logic going on here. I encourage you to seek out urbanist and transit planning YouTube and Twitch channels & educate yourself on the facts.
And I'm sorry, but as someone who lives in a smaller city and outside city limits where it's more affordable, driving to a city, paying to park, taking a bus or train to go to another city and taking a bus to get where I need to go in that city is expensive and wastes loads of time and money. What you want only works if you live in a big city (which costs loads more) and can do everything you need to do almost all the time while staying in that city. Highways are also a requirement no matter what for commercial transport and time sensitive needs. You think things like emergency organ donations have time to take a train without a highway? Or ems transport for patients?
@ColeSloth@TransitBiker I don't live in a city. And certainly not a big one. I use a bus or train to get into the nearest city. Bus 30 minutes, train 15 minutes , car 45. Longer at peak times except train of course. Car is most expensive, petrol tax, parking etc. bus cheapest. I can even take a train to London airport for international travel, and I don't live in England. ,🙂
Wanna know how different things are in the US? Two times a week I drive to work from my little city. It's 180 miles (not kilometers) round trip. Even if where I lived were big enough to warrant any sort of bus network to get to a train, I'd still not be within a walk of a bus stop. And no train would get close enough to where I work, so that would mean another bus. Literally wouldn't work. Y'all can't really fathom how the US is built unless you actually came to the US and drove/got around anywhere outside of the major tourist cities. Most of the country isn't like NYC or Orlando.
Yeah, Australia is "built different" to the US in that we have less than 1/10th the population in a land mass roughly the size of the continental US.
Yet despite that we still somehow manage to have better public transport than most of the US.
Long commutes? One of my colleagues at my current job travels from Bendigo to Melbourne at least two days a week. That's a 186 mile (300 km) round trip.
In a previous job, one of my colleagues commuted from Katoomba to Sydney. You wouldn't have heard of it, but it's a town of around 8,268 people in the mountains. A 126 mile/102km round trip.
And in my previous job I semi-regularly had to commute from Sydney to Newcastle. That's 324km (202 miles).
The difference is that all those commutes are by train.
(Of course, you won't consistently get those speeds driving, because of traffic jams.)
So how can Australia do it while America can't?
Because the US federal government has literally spent trillions of dollars subsidising roads, subsidising the auto industry, and subsidising fossil fuels.
Because governments mandate that business owners subsidise drivers by imposing minimum parking requirements.
Because zoning codes explicitly outlaw mixed use development and higher density developments in many parts of the US.
Because US governments at all levels have imposed this on its citizens for the past 70 years, while hardly investing in public transport infrastructure.
Your entire population has no city over 100,000 people that doesn't live near the coast and almost all of those are in the southeast and east side of the country. All you need to get around by train there is essentially one track shaped in a funny looking circle.
So you're saying you have like 30 with populations at or over 100k? Ok. Wow. The US has over 330 like that. A rail system doesn't sustain when people are trying to get from one place to so many different destinations and you can't claim it can, when it's literally never been created on a scale of anything similar to the US. For everyone to get to their destinations without it taking many extra hours of travel time you'd have to have a massive amount of trains and track, and tons of them would be going places where they may only have a handful of passengers on board, and a train running with just a dozen passengers is a hell of a lot worse for the environment than a dozen cars. A lot worse. Trains are only efficient if they're closer to full. That can't happen in the US unless travel destinations limit themselves way down, which cuts a lot of people off from using them.
@ColeSloth "So you’re saying you have like 30 with populations at or over 100k? Ok. Wow. The US has over 330 like that."
So you should have many more pairs of cities that should support rail.
And once you have a pair of cities that support rail, you can have stations in each of the towns between them.
Even if they're only a couple of hundred people.
"A rail system doesn’t sustain when people are trying to get from one place to so many different destinations and you can’t claim it can, when it’s literally never been created on a scale of anything similar to the US."
That's all the places where it's viable for a commercial operator to have railways based on freight.
So a decent starting point would be just to run passenger services along those existing freight corridors, as Brightline did in Florida.
And frankly, if the US had spent a fraction as much on rail as it has on propping up the auto and oil sectors, it'd be viable.
(By the way, before the World Wars, the US had even more railways with a smaller population. Many US towns are where they are because of the railways.)
"For everyone to get to their destinations..."
You have a hub where many lines converge, or lines that cross one another.
If trains are timetabled to arrive and leave at the same time, or arrive frequently, you transfer.
So think of multiple lines between pairs of big cities, serving many smaller towns in between.
Even if you're the only person travelling between one tiny town on one line to another tiny town on another line. And you're the only person making that particular journey in a given month.
If there's a station or hub you can transfer at, you can make that journey by rail.
"...without it taking many extra hours of travel time..."
Trains are significantly faster than cars, and don't get stuck in traffic.
"...and tons of them would be going places where they may only have a handful of passengers on board..."
If it's on a line between two larger cities, even small towns are viable for rail. If it isn't, you run a frequent feeder bus service to the nearest town with a train station.
"a train running with just a dozen passengers is a hell of a lot worse for the environment than a dozen cars. A lot worse."
You do realise electric-powered trains exist, right? And electricity can come from renewables? And renewable energy can be stored?
"That can’t happen in the US unless travel destinations limit themselves way down, which cuts a lot of people off from using them."
The problem is that the US has government-owned roads and not rail.
The problem is the US spent $597 bn (adjusted for inflation) building the interstate highway system, instead of investing in rail.
Half a trillion subsidy for the interstates alone.
The problem is that the US government mandated planning codes that make it illegal to build the types of developments that support rail.
The US doesn't have just "pairs of cities". You branch off from city to city to city to city you'll turn a 140 mile straight drive that's just over 2 hours into a 400 mile train ride with three transfers and 10 hours long.
This is what America used to have, albeit with a much smaller population.
Lots of hubs, lots of lines crossing each other. Lots of small towns served in between.
See, what the people in America knew was that trains are faster than automobiles, and they still are.
So you've effectively turned one-hour straight train journeys (with one or two transfers at most) into two hours stuck in traffic.
Because unlike cars, the more people use trains, the more frequently services run, so it gets faster the more people use it. Whereas the more people drive, the more traffic there is, and the slower it gets.
I don't live near one of the big cities with traffic jams. There's generally only a couple cities per state (average) at most that commonly have traffic jams like that.
And yes, in the early 1900's. When a car was "fast" if it did 30 mph, had shit suspension, was good for about 60,000 total miles, had no freeways everywhere, and had like 3 million cars in existence. People didn't take the train because it was faster, so much as because people didn't own cars, and the ones that were available were only cars in the sense of they had 4 wheels and an engine attached. The trips taken back then by train were much slower than what a car can do today.
@ColeSloth Complete myth. EVs are far more durable than any ICE vehicle, having a couple thousand fewer parts and requiring far less maintenance. @CubbyTustard
I used to live in a farming area with some roads that were basically semi truck conveyors. You could see the dirt next to those roads was caked in oil and rubber dust
Someone living in rural Tanzania is responsible for close to zero kg, and some people are probably responsible for dozens of kg.
I really hate when people say "each person" implying that everyone use about the same amount, rather than an actual tonnage. Feel free to add distribution across nations, life styles and other categorizations after that.
The article obviously tries to highlight a systemic problem. Do we really need to put that much emphasis on avoiding any feeling of individual responsibility to the point where that's no longer possible?
Nobody reading this puts the blame on someone in rural Tanzania. It's a complete non-issue and definitely not what we should be focusing on coming from this very important article.
Yes that is how averages work. The point is more that looking at averages can avoid or diminish responsibility, and in that case likely isn't the right metric.
If 80% of the problem is caused by 20% of the people, then average really isn't the best way to discuss the problem.
But I guess if the most important thing for ya all is to be of the hook personally, sure, fixating on the question of individual responsibility becomes the most important part and averages are just a distraction to that (because they say nothing about the individual). To me that wasn't the relevant takeaway from the article. Our society must fundamentally change, or we will destroy ourselves. And for that it doesn't matter at all how much microplastic you personally produce, but how much we all create - on average.
Can YOU please stop killing people? And I suggest that YOU stop being a drug mule.
(Please address that)
Systemic problems are seldom systemic, but agendas driven by the ruling class. Taxation and regulation have created the monster that USA (and other places) is, for instance in the suburban crawl, unlivable cities, and long distance shipping/transport. The ruling class bought off by the oil industry to ensure the growth of oil consumption over the last 100+ years.
Close to zero. I haven't bicycled regularly since I was teenager, but back then I did about 2000-5000km per year, and a set of tires weighed ~1kg and lasted 3-5 years, and most of the weight was not scrubbed off, but part of the regular waste.
How much am I responsible for? If I weigh the tires (all 4) when I buy them, then use them for X years, then weigh them when I get rid of them for the next ones- then that is how much I responsible for. And I can divide it by the years I had it for a yearly number too.
And that is how much microplastic I would agree I am responsible for with the tires. There is also the carbon cost of making them, supplying them, and disposal. But we were talking about microplastics...
"Microplastics are of increasing concern in the environment [1, 2]. Tire wear is estimated to be one of the largest sources of microplastics entering the aquatic environment [3,4,5,6,7]. The mechanical abrasion of car tires by the road surface forms tire wear particles (TWP) [8] and/or tire and road wear particles (TRWP), consisting of a complex mixture of rubber, with both embedded asphalt and minerals from the pavement [9]."
You quoted the introduction, not even their conclusions. That's not how scientific papers work.
Your post amounts to mostly baseless fear mongering while ignoring the real data you actually link to:
(TWP = tire wear microplastic particles)
Results indicate that TWP occur in relatively high concentrations compared to microplastics in general and that the corresponding risk of TWP is above threshold levels. Because TWP exists both as anthropogenic particulates and as a source of a suite of chemicals, providing a risk assessment is challenging. This study provides a first risk assessment posed by particle effects (TWPMP) as well as risks posed by chemical effects (organic micropollutants). Additional research is required to further address the risks of TWP, e.g. toxicity testing for environmentally realistic TWP material and aligning exposure and effect data.
I interpret that as there are clear signs of it being an issue but further research is required to actually find out how big the issue actually is.
I tried to read the paper for more details but I'm not very well versed in risk assessment of substances, so I barely understood it.
I don't see what's wrong with quoting the introduction. Generaly, literature reviews are more reliable than a single study, and the introduction is a mini literature review.
I guess if op was writing a scientific paper, they ought to cite the original research to give credit to the right people. And maybe it would be better to cite a proper review article in a Lemmy post, but I think what op did was fine.
I don’t see what’s wrong with quoting the introduction.
Because the motivation is mostly a formality, not the actual contents of the paper.
literature reviews are more reliable than a single study, and the introduction is a mini literature review.
I'd generally agree but not if the paper they're citing adds new information that (at least partially) invalidates/updates the literature.
If I wrote a paper that said in its introduction "It is generally believed that x is the cause for y. So and so have found weak evidence in [42] and someone else similarly weak evidence in [69]. Someone else still theorised the effect could be greater than assumed in [1337]." and then found out in the paper that x does not cause y at all.
Don't you think it'd be disingenuous to quote the introduction and leave out all of the conclusions when talking about the effects of x?
To me, that'd be an obvious lie by omission.
In this case, it's not quite as bad as the paper does not conclude the literal opposite of what was quoted but its conclusion is quite a bit more differentiated than the "TWP bad" of its motivation.
@Atemu@lemming934 What was more of interest was that literature review and overview of the state of research, rather than the specifics of the research itself.
Currently, a lot of the public disclosure around microplastics focusses on things like plastic bottles and bags. There's little public discussion around the impacts of driving and tyres.
Whereas, in the academic discourse, there is an acknowledgement that one of the top sources of microplastic pollution is from tyres and asphalt, particularly in waterways.
i remember about a decade ago when GM announced they had developed tires made out of mushrooms. but of course nothing came from it and i cant find anything online. anyone else remember?
@ajsadauskas@fuck_cars This is the elephant in the room that most environmentally conscious organization do not want to think about.
"But our results are still worrying, particularly as the time in which the animals were exposed to the particles was short. The observed decrease in bivalve feeding and burrowing at low concentrations suggests exposure to tyre wear microplastics in the wild will significantly impact this species."
It occurred to me last week, humanity has always feared nuclear weapons. People warned of the extinction of humanity should they see widespread use. But all this time we've been happily consuming and discarding something more subtle, but poisonous to life. And it's literally everywhere.
@ajsadauskas@fuck_cars "you will not loose a kilo of plastics from your clothing" but I have a lot more clothes than tyres. I wonder kilo for kilo how it compares.
The forces being applied to tyres are orders of magnitude higher than the forces being applied to your clothes. Tyre plastic compounds are also designed to wear a certain amount, or in other words they must be relatively soft and therefore subject to wear, in order to provide friction sufficient to keep hundreds of kilograms safely connected to the road surface at high speed.
@ajsadauskas@fuck_cars tires wear down - where do you think all that material goes? Waterways, soil, your respiratory system, skin, clothing, crops, livestock feed etc.
Tyre degredation is a lot about fast accelerating and braking.
The lower mass and speed of a bike should mean quite a lot less degradation to move one person the same distance (albeit probably slower).
But as you add more cargo or need more spped the equation will change.
Of course, steel wheels on steel rails are pretty durable at high speed and load.
@oo1@abroad_octopus A typical bike weighs somewhere around 6.8 – 10kg or so. Even when carrying an adult human and some cargo, you're only looking at maybe 80 – 100 kg
By comparison, a Ford 150 pickup truck weighs 1837 kg and 2375 kg. The 1.2 (on average) humans on-board are a rounding error.
So you're looking at the difference between around 100kg on two fairly thin tyres, versus over 2 tonnes over four thick tyres.
What that means is when you hit the brakes on a pick-up truck, you have twice as many tyres are doing an order of magnitude more work to stop a far heavier vehicle.
Now on to road damage. (Road wear and asphalt degradation is the other half of this equation.)
A 10kg bike with a 70kg rider is going to do a miniscule fraction of the damage to a paved road that a 1837 kg pick-up truck or SUV does.
(A 160kg vehicle does 16x the road wear of an 80kg one, a 320kg one does 16x the wear as a 160kg one and 256 times an 80kg one, a 640 kg is 4,096 times an 80kg one, a 1,280 kg vehicle is 65, 536 times an 80kg one, and a 2,560 kg vehicle is 1,048,576 times the road wear of an 80kg one.)
So a motorist, especially an SUV or pick-up truck driver, is likely to cause an order of magnitude less environmental damage on a bike than in a pick-up truck or SUV.