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 @ajsadauskas
A minute ago you were saying trains only work in BIG cities that aren’t spread too far apart, but now you’re saying Australia is different because it has… smaller cities just as far apart as ours?
I don’t think you realize what sensible design could actually do, to streamline transportation in extremely smart, effecient ways. In the US we hardly ever see anything like that. We assume we’re the best and doing everything the best way it could be managed-- but the fossil fuel industry lobbied to have thousands of miles of perfectly good light rail RIPPED UP in the 60s so they could sell more gasoline to bus and car companies instead.
@ColeSloth @ajsadauskas
Dammit, somebody would need to actually BUILD trains for us to care if our evil overlords were making them run sufficiently on time.
@violetmadder @ColeSloth @ajsadauskas
American here, from the Northeast, so theoretically one of the best served areas by rail in the country. And even over my lifetime it has been unsatisfactory. I went to Uni up outside of Albany NY, when my family lived in South Jersey. To get home for holidays I had to take a bus from Albany to Philadelphia, changing in NYC because the Metro North trains didn’t go that far north.
1/
@violetmadder @ColeSloth @ajsadauskas
Later on I lived in Northwest NJ in a small borough of maybe 1400 people. But its history was a railroad junction, where trains would bring coal in from PA bound for New York. By the time I lived there, the railroad was disconnected from the NJ Transit network, and the nearest train station during commuting times was about 5 miles away. On weekends, the line only went to a station 20 miles away, with service maybe every hour.
2/
@violetmadder @ColeSloth @ajsadauskas
Point being, even in the Northeast, the “best” place for transit, it’s mostly been a story of abandonment for cars and interstates. We went from hopping on the Chattanooga Choo Choo to counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike.
3/end
@scrummy @ColeSloth @ajsadauskas
Exactly. And we can all see how badly even the infrastructure for FREIGHT trains is being neglected, what with all the derailments.
We could do so, so very much better than this if vampires weren’t sucking the lifeblood out of our infrastructure to feed their shareholders.