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].”
https://microplastics.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s43591-021-00008-w
#car #cars #urbanism #UrbanPlanning #FuckCars @fuck_cars #environment #microplastics #pollution #plastics
@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)
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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.
@TransitBiker @ColeSloth @LovesTha fyi, in New Zealand they tend to say public transport won’t work. And long distance rail. Mostly the people who have never used it
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.
@ColeSloth @epistatacadam I noticed you didn’t respond to @LovesTha after they mentioned they’re from Australia.
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.
Yes, we have towns like Katoomba in the mountains with less than 10,000 people that have a half-hourly peak and hourly off-peak train service: https://transportnsw.info/documents/timetables/93-BMT-Blue-Mountains-Line-20230708.pdf
Why not drive? Well, because the (by world standards) slow trains from Bendigo to Melbourne travel at 160 kp/h, compared to 110 kp/h at best for driving: https://vicsig.net/index.php?page=passenger§ion=rollingstock&subs=railmotors&rmtype=VLocity
(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.
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@ColeSloth @epistatacadam “Y’all cannot fathom how the US is built”-the entire point that everyone is trying to communicate is that-you’re right, public transport in the US is awful and essentially useless. But the reason is not any geographical, geological or inherent reason. It’s purposefully built that way due to the auto & oil companies being successful with changing public policy over the last 70-80 years. It’s a choice. It’ll take decades to fix but another choice can be made at any time.
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@ColeSloth not disputing your comments at all. I have family with Children in US. They lived in Baltimore, whilst he worked for John Hopkins. Now in rural Oregon. So I know how it is currently, but it didn’t have to be like it is and could change, to a better less effort and expense for all, if the politicians chose to.
@TransitBiker @ColeSloth You don’t even need modern day urbanists to interpret for you. Just look at a historical map of streetcar lines basically anywhere in the eastern US, or take a walk around a small US city or town that was mostly built out before the automobile era and didn’t get demolished to build a freeway.
@ColeSloth @LovesTha If you look at a historic section of any US city that survived the urban highway building/neighborhood destroying boom of the mid-late 20th century, you see development patterns more similar to Europe than to modern US suburbs & exurbs. Sprawl hell is a recent invention that was built on purpose and can (must) be dismantled on purpose.
@ColeSloth I’m Australian. My country is less dense than yours. Try again.
@ColeSloth Victoria, the state I live in, is the same area as Minnesota, with a few more people (5.7 V 6.8 Million), but not enough to skew the population density by much (their densities are listed as the same on Wikipedia)
The actual difference is that we have neglected our PT less than America has, but we have both neglected it. The US has less excuse for bad inter city rail because your density is much higher than Australia’s (USA: 35, Australia: 3 people / square km)
@ColeSloth @LovesTha
Europe and the US are about the same size. We definitely could organize ourselves more like Europe.
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/usa-europe-same-size.html#:~:text=Europe%20occupies%20about%202%25%20of,Europe%20is%20approximately%204%2C905.79%20miles.
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@LovesTha @gregspooner @ColeSloth
Right you are. Let’s get busy and change it.