
Car tires biggest likely source of microplastics in California coastal waters - lnguyen
https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2019-10-02/california-microplastics-ocean-study
======
tedsanders
This is one reason why I don't like living near freeways, especially near on-
ramps, off-ramps, and interchanges. Car pollution isn't just tailpipe
emissions - I believe a lot of airborne particulates come from tires and
brakes (especially during acceleration, deceleration, and turning).

[https://www.cdc.gov/air/particulate_matter.html](https://www.cdc.gov/air/particulate_matter.html)

~~~
hinkley
Came up in conversation when I took my car in that up until recently they were
using little bits of copper in brake pads for... noise control? heat? I can't
recall which.

But that's been outlawed now, presumably due to potential for metal toxicity
(any mineral you need in your diet is also lethal at higher doses). We're
leaving powdered copper at every stop light.

~~~
reaperducer
Weren't brakes made of asbestos at one time?

~~~
kube-system
Canada banned asbestos brakes this year. Brakes are still exempted under US
asbestos bans. Manufacturers and repair shops avoid them for obvious reasons,
but they're not illegal.

[https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-
xpm-2006-05-04-06050400...](https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-
xpm-2006-05-04-0605040031-story.html)

[https://canada.autonews.com/article/20180107/CANADA/18010983...](https://canada.autonews.com/article/20180107/CANADA/180109830/asbestos-
ban-affecting-brake-pads-now-planned-for-2019)

------
rconti
Tangentially related; I can't fathom why the US insists on stop signs and
traffic lights everywhere. A neighborhood I used to drive through on my way to
work had 4 way stops sprouting up constantly.

The massive waste of resources involved in hauling 2 tons of steel and glass
down from speed to 0, for _absolutely no reason 99% of the time_, accelerating
it back up to speed again, just to do the same, over and over, boggles the
mind. The noise pollution, the air pollution, the "trash" byproducts in the
form of brake dust and tire dust. Why on earth would you voluntarily do this
to your neighborhood? It doesn't stop speeding; it's a crappy form of traffic
control, and it makes every traffic-related measure of living near it worse.
Add to all that the time wasted. I feel the same way about traffic lights,
particularly the over-proliferation of red arrows everywhere, telling us that
we can't judge for ourselves when it's safe to go, and instead, we have to
create gridlock and extensive waits for minimal gain.

Most of these problems could be solved by keeping traffic at a moderate,
consistent level through the use of roundabouts, rather than the waste of
constant stop-and-go.

When I rule the world, there will be a ban on 4-way stops, red arrows, and
parking lots without walkways. I don't even have kids, and I find it
infuriating that parking lots force us to walk behind rows and rows of parked
cars, hoping that we don't get run over by someone backing out of a space in
one of the ever-increasingly-difficult-to-see-out-of cars we're bringing to
market in the name of 'safety'.

~~~
bonestamp2
> I can't fathom why the US insists on stop signs and traffic lights
> everywhere. A neighborhood I used to drive through on my way to work had 4
> way stops sprouting up constantly.

I don't mean to sound snarky or judgemental, so please understand that is not
my intention... Sometimes they do this to dissuade people from commuting to
work through neighborhoods. Again, I don't mean to judge, that might be the
best/safest/only/etc way for you to get to work and you may not be the target
of these stop signs.

There is a 4 way stop in my neighborhood that is going to be converted to a
traffic circle next year to keep traffic moving. Waze currently routes a lot
of traffic through our neighborhood when the freeway is backed up at rush
hour. I think the traffic circle might make it worse since the "pain" of the 4
way stops will be gone so the backup might be gone but the traffic volume
would be higher. I might be wrong, but I'm curious to see the final effect.
I'm also not sure which is worse for overall health and safety -- the higher
volume with no bottleneck or lower volume with a bottleneck.

~~~
takk309
I may be being a bit of a pedant but do you mean roundabout? Traffic circles
and roundabouts are different. A traffic circle, in the modern sense, does not
have much horizontal deflection on the entering legs. The diameter is also
smaller and there is not a truck apron. A roundabout on the other hand has
some form of horizontal deflection and a truck apron. Often times a traffic
circle can be installed by placing a round bit of curbing in the center of an
existing intersection. These are great in low volume low speed applications
such as neighborhoods. Traffic circles have a much lower capacity than a
roundabout due to the low travel speeds.

Again, sorry for being a pedant but I am a traffic engineer and the
distinction between these two traffic control devices matters. Here is a link
to roundabout specific information from the Federal Highways Administration
[https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/intersection/innovative/roundabo...](https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/intersection/innovative/roundabouts/)

~~~
souprock
Traffic circles and roundabouts don't exist. Those things are all called
rotaries. The tiny ones are inherently defective, especially for large
vehicles. The larger rotaries can be nice, especially when installed above a
freeway that intersects with low-volume roads, but they are too costly unless
the land is very cheap.

A decent use of a rotary is in Massachusetts where Drum Hill Road and Old
Westford Road meet US 4 (North Road) right over top of Interstate 3. It's a
6-way intersection, with the elevated rotary helping to deal with the high
speed of Interstate 3. The intersection used to be even nicer, free of traffic
lights and with a smooth elliptical shape, prior to Interstate 3 being
widened.

~~~
takk309
A rotary has higher speeds and entering traffic gets the right-of-way. They
are very different from a roundabout.

------
solids
"A scientific review of 52 studies recently concluded that humans on average
consume a credit card’s worth of microplastic each week."

Wow

~~~
gwbas1c
As shocking as that is, I'd like to see some confirmation of that number.

~~~
pembrook
I don't doubt the analogy, but I think we need to study if this is actually
harmful. Does the body expel it entirely as waste, or is some left behind,
etc.

~~~
bradlys
It must expel it to a high degree. I can't imagine any significant amount of
52 credit cards worth of plastic a year being retained by the body. That would
mean that I have approximately 1500 credit cards worth of plastic in my body
just layin' around after my 29 years of livin'.

I can tell ya - I'd notice 1500 credit cards worth of plastic hanging out in
my body. That's 5g * 1500 = 7.5kg (16.5lbs) of plastic.

------
reaperducer
Interesting, considering just a few decades ago bundling old tires and sinking
them into the ocean was considered an environmentally-friendly disposal
method.

It was believed that the tires would create reefs, encouraging sea life, and
at the same time take care of on ongoing tire disposal problem that
occasionally led to catastrophic fires.

I wonder what other modern "environmentally friendly" things we're doing now
that will turn out to be bas ackward 30 years from now.

~~~
Ericson2314
that could well be fine, because those tires aren't abraded into small
particles the same way?

~~~
bluGill
The problem is it often isn't fine: the tires are not stationary: as the waves
drag them around on the sea floor they do significant damage to sea floor
structures that can stand waves by not something more solid.

------
colordrops
I appreciate this new concern for microplastics. Since I can remember I've
always had a vague fears about using plastic Tupperware and plastic bottle but
wasn't sure if it was unfounded. Turns out my (and many others) intuitions
were correct.

~~~
onlyrealcuzzo
Is there evidence that Tupperware breaks down and gets into food that you
store inside it?

~~~
bpodgursky
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3222987/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3222987/)

> Most Plastic Products Release Estrogenic Chemicals: A Potential Health
> Problem That Can Be Solved

> Results: Almost all commercially available plastic products we
> sampled—independent of the type of resin, product, or retail source—leached
> chemicals having reliably detectable EA, including those advertised as BPA
> free. In some cases, BPA-free products released chemicals having more EA
> than did BPA-containing products.

~~~
hinkley
I was just floored when the BPA problems arose and all these people I knew
were trading in one plastic bottle for a different one. I'm switching to glass
and stainless and everyone else is _buying more plastic_.

Just... don't understand why we learn so slow.

~~~
simias
Plastics are just pretty damn convenient materials. They're solid, cheap, can
be made flexible or hard, don't rust, are easy to clean etc... Glass is heavy
and breaks when dropped, metal is less heavy and only dents but it's more
expensive than plastic. A lot of metal containers have an internal plastic
lining simply so that food (and especially acidic food) doesn't react with the
metal through direct contact.

~~~
hinkley
Yep.

Once in a while I'll see something about the history of food preservation and
it's always funny because the more optimistic folks will point to a particular
date and inventor as the birth of pasteurized canning. And then a more
curmudgeonly person will sometimes point out that the tin from those cans
would leach in and turn the food black.

Not quite the victory people make it out to be. It was a bit later before they
got the process to store food that people would eat.

~~~
logn
This is a tangent but I liked this video on beverage cans,
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUhisi2FBuw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUhisi2FBuw)

------
liveoneggs
in atlanta soil near roads tends to have a lot of lead. A daycare near me had
to shutdown their playground/garden because it was testing really high in
lead.

~~~
sp332
Why does it have lead?

~~~
jumpingmice
Because of leaded fuel and the principle of conservation of species and mass.
Every atom of lead that ever passed through an American gas pump is currently
laying around on American soil.

------
Uhuhreally
all I can think about now is the total surface area of plastic in the world
rubbing against something and being ground into microplastic dust

------
rudolph9
What are the negative effects of microplastics?

------
fulvous
Are tires made of plastic?

~~~
supercanuck
From the article:

>Rubber is also considered plastic, both natural (isoprene) and synthetic
(styrene butadiene).

~~~
grosswait
Definitely not what comes to mind when I think of plastics. I usually hear
Bakelite quoted as the first invented plastic.

~~~
pmahoney
Think "polymer" or "synthetic polymer" since these will be the things bacteria
and other parts of nature have not evolved around.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymer#Common_examples](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymer#Common_examples)

------
GWSchulz
Didn’t I just see a post on HN that blamed ships for the plastic?

~~~
beatgammit
That's true for the ocean at large, this is about California's coastal areas.

------
mtw
Are there tires that are not made of plastic?

~~~
hinkley
I dunno about no plastic but there may be _less_ plastic tires. Maybe.

When I last bought new tires, I found out that tires lose a ton of their
performance even at 50% wear rating. I thought I was doing well picking better
tires than factory for my vehicles but it turns out any new tire would have
had better handling because it was new.

As is common, people don't talk about the problems with their product until
they have a solution. Michelin was experimenting with tire construction and
formulas that were both greener and retained more of their behavior at 50% (or
was that 70%?) wear level. Part of the rubber compound was derived from seed
oils.

Of course, any woodworker knows about boiled linseed oil. When exposed to air
it undergoes an exothermic reaction with oxygen that polymerizes it.
Bioplastic. I'm not entirely sure nature makes a distinction between that
substance and synthetic plastics.

So I'm a little skeptical of Michelin's woo woo about natural materials, since
I'm no chemist and who knows what happens to those oils during the
manufacturing process. I bought the tires but only patted myself on the back
for having a safer car, not saving the planet via consumption.

~~~
kube-system
There are also significant decreases in performance due to wear isn't due to
the material itself, but also the change in geometry. For instance, when rain
grooves wear down, they're not able to channel away as much water.

~~~
hinkley
Yeah that was another of their tricks. Bury sipes into the rubber so that new
ones open as the old ones wear out.

------
linusnext
This does not in anyway apply to Tesla right?

~~~
sxates
Teslas use regenerative brakes for 90% of braking, so brake pad dust is
greatly reduced, but tire wear is no different, if not somewhat higher. It's
not just the weight of the cars, but the high torque on acceleration tends to
wear tires faster.

------
jumpingmice
Imagine all the problems that would be solved if someone invented a car with
metal wheels, maybe one that can hold hundreds of people, goes really fast, is
quiet and efficient....

~~~
billions
Trains are less efficient than cars on a per mile basis.

[https://www.theprch.com/this-vs-that/fuel-efficiency-
planes-...](https://www.theprch.com/this-vs-that/fuel-efficiency-planes-vs-
train-bus-car/)

~~~
manigandham
From the article: _" In the US: Cars are generally more efficient than trains
when there are 2 or more people traveling."_

That's rare. The vast majority of traffic is 1 person per car, which
completely changes the results here to make it worse than the rest.

~~~
chicagobob
The blended 2017 US average is 1.54 people per car, source:
[https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1040-july...](https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1040-july-30-2018-average-
vehicle-occupancy-remains-unchanged-2009-2017)

------
excalibur
On the front page of HN at the exact same time, we have two different articles
on this topic. One says that most ocean plastic comes from ships, the other
says car tires. Clearly they're both accurate.

~~~
bcrosby95
Of course they can both be accurate. There's a difference between California's
coastal waters and the ocean in general.

