
Pollution from tire wear is worse than exhaust emissions? - clouddrover
https://www.emissionsanalytics.com/news/pollution-tyre-wear-worse-exhaust-emissions
======
ratel
Hold on:

The claim is this:

> "Using a popular family hatchback running on brand new, correctly inflated
> tyres, we found that the car emitted 5.8 grams per kilometer of particles."

It does not seem to be a mistake:

> "Compared with regulated exhaust emission limits of 4.5 milligrams per
> kilometer, the completely unregulated tyre wear emission is higher by a
> factor of over 1,000."

A tire might way up to 15 kilograms for a 20 inch type. Lets assume 10
kilograms for a normal tire which is on the high side. 4 tires is 40
kilograms. Even if we assume half of the particals are not coming from the
tire (but from where?). That still leaves 40,000 / 2.9 = 13793 kilometers for
the tires to be completly consumed (weighing nothing anymore). That is
definitely not happening.

So without an explanation on where the matter is coming from this does not
read right.

~~~
kungtotte
They're torn up from the road and rubbed off from the tyres themselves. The
majority is obviously coming from the road.

There's been studies done here in Sweden since we've banned studded winter
tyres in some areas of Stockholm in an effort to reduce road wear and improve
air quality. I don't know of any sources in English off the top of my head
though.

The last time I read an article about it though (2+ years ago, during Diesel-
gate), the findings was that the danger in the particles comes from their size
with smaller particles being more dangerous for humans. And that road
particles were something like an order of magnitude larger than exhaust fume
particles from diesel engines.

We've since banned diesel engines inside Stockholm as well so the whole thing
is moot here.

~~~
bigiain
>They're torn up from the road and rubbed off from the tyres themselves. The
majority is obviously coming from the road.

Not sure even that adds up to believable.

The Sydney Harbour Bridge is about 500m long between the pylons. It has "more
than 150,000 cars per day" on it (according to the snippet from a google
search). If all of that was from the road, that'd mean there's about 160 tons
of road getting torn up per year. It looks to be ~30m wide on Google Sat view,
and "google first hit" research indicates road base weighs 1.9tons per cubic
meter. It's be losing almost 6cm of depth along the whole span every year if
all those numbers hold, or 3cm per year if "only half" of that comes from the
road and the rest from the tires. They don't resurface it anything like often
enough for that to be true...

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Perhaps it’s mostly existing particles laying on the road that are thrown up
by the next vehicle’s tyres as it passes?

~~~
bigiain
That's a pretty long stretch from the claim: "we found that the car emitted
5.8 grams per kilometer of particles".

~~~
JangoSteve
But is it a long stretch from the claim: "Non-exhaust emissions (NEE) are
particles released into the air from brake wear, tyre wear, road surface wear
and resuspension of road dust during on-road vehicle usage."

Resuspension of road dust is literally one of the 4 things they defined as the
NEE they're measuring.

~~~
bigiain
OK, I missed that bit.

But counting "resuspended road dust" as "emissions" seems pretty far fetched
to me. Especially if that's a significant portion of the "5.8 grams per
kilometer of particles", and you then push out a press release with the
hyperbolic headline claim "Pollution from tire wear 1000 times worse than
exhaust emissions."

And they then have the audacity to claim: "Emissions Analytics seeks to bring
transparency to a confused market sector."

Pretty sure I know who's funding them now, without even bothering to google
it...

~~~
clouddrover
Who's funding them? Radical balloonists? Big Rail? Maybe it's the Hovercraft
Lobby! I never did trust them.

~~~
bigiain
Fossil fuel industry.

(But if it _is_ the Hovercraft Lobby, I'm _totally_ in!)

------
_Microft
Maybe offtopic but a surprising bit of extra information regarding wear and
vehicles:

Road wear scales with the _fourth_ power of axle load, so heavier vehicles do
much more damage than one might expect.

Take a 40t truck with 5 axles vs. a small car with a weight of 1t and two
axles (e.g. VW Polo, maybe an older VW Golf might only weigh 1t as well):

(8t axle load / 0.5t axle load) = 16^4, i.e. the truck puts 2^16 (65536) times
as much wear on the street as the car.

(8t axle load / 1t axle load (SUV)) = 8^4 = 2^12, even comparing it with an
SUV and an axle load of 1t each, the truck is still 4096 times worse.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road#Maintenance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road#Maintenance)

[https://books.google.de/books?id=7Yqxyefv-
VAC&pg=PA252&dq=4t...](https://books.google.de/books?id=7Yqxyefv-
VAC&pg=PA252&dq=4th+power+of+axle+weight&redir_esc=y&hl=de#v=onepage&q=4th%20power%20of%20axle%20weight&f=false)

~~~
amelius
> Road wear scales with the fourth power of axle load, so heavier vehicles do
> much more damage than one might expect.

Yes. Electric vehicles with their heavy batteries also make things worse.

~~~
ghouse
Except no. The heaviest Tesla Model 3 weighs 4,100 lbs. The heaviest Ford
F-150 (the most popular vehicle in the US) weighs 5,600 lbs.

~~~
nightski
Right but people buying F-150s are not buying Teslas. The use case is quite
different. My Subaru Outback (a rather large car in comparison to the Tesla)
is 3,600 lbs. But I doubt the increase in weight is a huge factor in
environmental concerns.

~~~
lkbm
> Right but people buying F-150s are not buying Teslas. The use case is quite
> different.

Have you been to a Texas city? They're full of F-150s driving around a single
person and an empty bed on paved roads.

Sure, farmers and contractors use trucks as trucks, but thousands of people
use them as commuter cars. Most pickup trucks are used as trucks once in a
blue moon.

------
labawi
They fitted brand new tires and called it a read world test, as if people get
new tires every week. Then they measured particulate weight and compared it to
ICE emission regulation as if weight was the deciding factor: 5800 ug of
rubber particles vs 4.5 ug of PM soot. The rubber could be 1x 5g chunk or
1000x 1ug or whatever. New cars produce mostly small soot, so 4.5 ug can be
about 10 000 000 particles¹.

I'm not saying non-exhaust emissions are irrelevant, but I am quite sure
exhaust is a much bigger issue, overly so in eastern EU, where people often
even remove DP filters and enforcement is lacking.

¹ PM count estimates:

coal density: 929 kg/m³

PM10 particle size: 10 um

PM10 volume: 4/3 * pi * (5um)^3 ~ 4 * (5e-6 m)^3 ~ 5e-16 m³

PM10 mass: 5e-16m³ * 1e3 kg/m³ = 5e-13 kg = 5e-7 ug = 0.5 pg

If exhaust PM was PM10, 4.5 ug would be about 4.5 ug / 5e-7 ug ~ 1e7 = 10M
particles, give or take an order of magnitude.

------
thinkcontext
> Using a popular family hatchback running on brand new, correctly inflated
> tyres, we found that the car emitted 5.8 grams per kilometer of particles.

So this is based on n=1, very suspicious.

If tires really were this big a source of PM emissions then how would levels
in US cities gone down through vehicle pollution control measures. Something
is not adding up here.

~~~
furtive808
At that rate you would burn through the whole set of tires in less than
50,000km, so how is it possible? Could it be those nubs on new tires are
accounting for a majority of the waste up front?

~~~
taneq
Do most people’s tyres last longer than 50k kms? Maybe I’m doing something
wrong...

~~~
o-__-o
Yes. A high UTQG rating will mean your tires will last forever at the expense
of traction, road noise, etc. The last set of tires I bought at Costco lasted
70k miles, but also increased wet stopping distance and introduced a roar to
cabin noise. My latest set have a UTQG near 0 and will only last about 10k
miles but they make no noise and have insane amounts of grip (think race car
tire)

~~~
Marsymars
If you drive less and have separate summer/winter tires, it has the odd side-
effect of making long-wear tires not worthwhile, as the life of the tread
depth will exceed the life of the rubber due to age.

~~~
o-__-o
I drive about 3.5k miles a year, the OEM tires would have given me 70k miles
but I would have never got there. the michelin pilot sport 4s where $5 more
per tire and would survive just about 7 years (i'm planning 3-4 with the
occasional track day). the tradeoff was DEFINITELY worth it, but now i'm
deathly afraid of potholes and road hazards lol!

(after 1000 miles on the MP4S you're already more than 1/16th worn and would
need to replace the entire set to keep the AWD system happy)

------
gpapilion
Having lived next to a freeway, I found everything in my apartment covered
with a sticky black dust that took hours to remove. I found embedded on books
and other items years later. So, I think this has been true for a long time.

What I didn’t find mentioned is these emissions were more or less localized to
a small distance from the road. For example when I moved it went away. That
said I’m sure it’s a nightmare for the watershed.

~~~
ajnin
How do you know if that soot came from exhaust, tyres, or something else ?

~~~
hinkley
We moved a young coworker into a first floor appt in downtown and there was
black soot on all the windowsills. I taught him about soap and vinegar and we
suggested an air filter and being judicious with opening the windows, or
finding a window fan with a prefilter.

It had just not occurred to me that the busses and trucks were pumping out
that much soot in the modern era.

~~~
pas
It's not always soot, a lot of it is also simply dust.

------
bryanmgreen
All these articles are important, but they end up missing the point of the
auto industries weightiest concern.

At the end of the day, it really comes down to the weight of the vehicles.
There is absolutely zero justification for any standard-use car to weigh more
than 3,200 pounds, and that's for a SUV.

More weight affects EVERYTHING.

Material logistics/sourcing/shipping/construction costs and emissions/waste-
disposal, end-product shipping/distribution/operating-costs and
emissions/repairs/waste-disposal, as well as infrastructure
construction/maintenance. That's just hard costs. I could go on in more
granular fashion and add soft costs like less traffic and less road noise as
well.

I drive a very loaded gasoline powered Fiesta hatchback. It's got cruise
control, a great entertainment system with car play, even stupid neon lighting
I didn't want. It weighs only 2,600 pounds and even though it isn't fast, I
don't have any issues getting up to speed. My mileage is consistently 29 in LA
traffic and 34 driving fast on long highway trips. It's nearly 2 feet (22
inches!!) shorter than a Camry and I can park it basically anywhere. Because
it weighs so little, tires last forever. It cost me less than $20,000 brand
new. My point is that a freaking heavy and large 3,400lb sedan, or 4,500lb SUV
is 100% supremely unnecessary.

Multiply hundreds or thousands of weight savings per-car over millions and
millions of new cars sold in the US alone would insanely positive and
tangential effects on the planet. Eventually those gains would reach the
economy and infrastructure too.

It just infuriates me that there is a relatively simple way to mitigate so
many issues and it's so blatantly ignored or not even known.

~~~
spaginal
Unnecessary for you and your usage, but there a lot of situations,
environments, and applications where a heavier, larger vehicle is necessary.
If you live rural you aren't driving a small Fiesta hatchback everywhere. If
you have a large family, an SUV is a basic requirement of modern living to
move the family around.

Conversely if you live in a city with tight quarters as a single person with
no kids, an SUV or pickup may not be necessary at all.

There is a reason we don't dictate choice or consumption with something as
necessary and basic as transportation because it isn't one size fits all.
People buy what they generally need.

~~~
WA
"Basic requirement for modern living" – what an absurd claim to justify a SUV.
I wonder how people in most non-US countries even get by, if the basic
necessities of life aren’t met. /s

------
gambiting
I also wonder about pollution from shoes with plastic soles - pretty much
every pair I have ever owned, the sole just wears out gradually until there's
nothing left. Where does this plastic go? It's just ground into fine powder
and stays on our pavements? Is then washed with rainwater and goes into our
soil? How come this isn't a problem yet? Or if it is - why isn't anyone
talking about it?

~~~
BenoitEssiambre
Because plastic is not a significant pollutant. What's next, we're going to
remove soil from the environment? Soil is full of, mold, bacteria, virus,
metals, minerals, fungi, urine, feces, decomposed insects, thousands of
chemicals like rust, alumina, silica, heavy metals, many carcinogens, lung
irritants etc. It can give you "Farmer ’s Lung" and it's _everywhere_ in
nature. Plastic is quite clean and tame by comparison.

~~~
computerphage
Can someone substantively reply instead of just downvoting this comment?

~~~
modwest
Look man anyone trying to convince you in 2020 that "plastic is not a
significant pollutant" is not arguing in good faith.

Please, for the love of god, learn about the climate and the impact of human
industry on it.

~~~
BenoitEssiambre
I honestly believe the anti-plastic movement as well as the recycling movement
are at best mass confusion and at worst a way for corporations to divert
environmentalists energy away from focus on reducing consumption, reducing
travel and reducing human sprawl which would have actual environmental
benefits but would hit business growth much more than "buying reusable
containers".

This whole, I travel thousands of miles every year but that's ok because I
bought a reusable bag shows a complete lack of proportion and perspective. On
top of this, the reusable bags take more resources to produce and often they
aren't machine washable so they're thrown out anyways once they're soiled, but
that doesn't matter because both carrying options have insignificant impact to
the environment compared to most forms of consumption.

------
annoyingnoob
The claims here seem dubious. They tested _one_ type of _brand new_ tire. Then
they conclude that "high-quality" tires are somehow better without providing
any evidence to support that claim. While tires may very well be a source of
pollution I have to wonder where the money for the work came from.

~~~
Spooky23
Shitty tires start with the same tread depth, but wear out in 25-35k miles.
High quality tires usually go 50-60k.

~~~
selectodude
The $400/corner tires on a sports car usually last about 5-8000 miles. They’re
about as high quality as it gets.

~~~
blattimwind
Tyres are designed on a performance - life continuum. High performance means
softer rubber, with better grip, but thus lower life. Long life means harder
rubber, with less grip, thusly reduced performance.

------
the8472
Headline

> Pollution From Tyre Wear [is] 1,000 Times Worse Than Exhaust Emissions

Article

> But tyre wear pollution is unregulated and _can be_ 1,000 times worse

~~~
benkuhn
It's true that they weakened the wording in that section of the body, but the
description of the actual research does make it sound like the factor of 1,000
was a typical case, not the worst case:

> Using a popular family hatchback running on brand new, correctly inflated
> tyres, we found that the car emitted 5.8 grams per kilometer of particles. >
> > Compared with regulated exhaust emission limits of 4.5 milligrams per
> kilometer, the completely unregulated tyre wear emission is higher by a
> factor of over 1,000.

Of course, this assumes that the tyre particles captured by their methodology
are (on average) equally bad as exhaust particles, and maybe brand-new tyres
wear especially quickly or something. It does seem hard to square the factor
of 1000 from this study with the estimate that non-exhaust emissions account
for a mere 60% (rather than 99.9%) of PM2.5 emissions.

Would be curious to hear from anyone who understands emissions testing better.

~~~
vinw
5.8 grams per kilometer would mean in only 10,000 KM your tyres lose 58 Kg.
Seems way off.

~~~
abainbridge
Yep.

Life of car tyre is ~40e3 km. 5.8g * 40e3km = 232 kg. Or 58 kg per tyre. A new
tyre weighs about 8kg. I guess it might loose 3kg. So I think they've over
estimated by about 20x.

~~~
justsomedood
Keep in mind too that a tire that has no usable tread life left is still quite
heavy compared to the full tread life, new, version because there is so much
left for the sidewall and the steel belts inside of the tire. They must be
getting this number from measuring something else in addition to the tire

------
helsinkiandrew
Presumably they meant 5.8 milligrams/km rather than grams - thats 290 grams
over 50,000km.

The following literature review(2014) mentions an estimate of 0.1-10% tyre
wear becoming airborne - because the majority is relatively large particles:

[https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/J...](https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/JRC89231/jrc89231-online%20final%20version%202.pdf)

~~~
adrianmonk
They must have meant grams because that is the basis of their 1000X statistic.
The other number is also single digit but is in milligrams.

That doesn't mean they're right, but it's the only way I can interpret what
they're saying.

~~~
helsinkiandrew
But 4.5g/km implies 225kg after 50000 km which doesn’t seem possible.
Something definitely smells fishy.

~~~
hef19898
That seems to be some heavy tyres, that's for sure.

------
perlgeek
Worse for what? For the humans nearby? For climate change?

It would be nice if such articles stated their premises.

~~~
diamondo25
A higher number is, in terms of emission, worse.

~~~
adrianmonk
Of course higher numbers are worse in an apples-to-apples comparison. The
question is whether this is that.

For example, maybe tail pipe emissions make climate change worse, but kicking
up dust on the road gives people lung disease.

------
scythe
> Using a popular family hatchback running on brand new, correctly inflated
> tyres, we found that the car emitted 5.8 grams per kilometer of particles.

>Compared with regulated exhaust emission limits of 4.5 milligrams per
kilometer, the completely unregulated tyre wear emission is higher by a factor
of over 1,000.

This is approximately as reasonable as declaring that a crossbow is more
dangerous than a gun because it fires a heavier projectile. How large are the
particles? What's their expected lifetime in the atmosphere? What proportion
are smaller than 10 micron? 2.5 micron?

------
thesilversurfer
Considering a mazda with tyre size of 215/45 R18 with 1/4inch useable tread
depth, that lasts 30K miles:

The mm^3 of rubber lost over lifetime (circumference * how wide the tire is *
tyre tread depth) is approximately 2375922.431

Considering density of rubber at 650kg/m3, the weight lost over 30,000 miles
is 1.54kg, which equates to 31mg/km and nowhere near 5g/km as claimed in the
article. What am I missing?

------
ip26
Testing only a brand new tire seems like a serious limitation. What if, for
example, tires shed particles in a bathtub curve, or exponential decay?

I find myself slightly suspicious they knew a new tire to shed the most and
were going for that shocking headline.

------
0ldblu3
So to visualize this I'm thinking of a rectangle 2.5 feet long, 8 inches wide,
and a half-inch thick times 4. That is what comes off my tires every 5 years
so that I have to replace them. Every set of tires sold is to replace that.

~~~
pjsg
The numbers don't seem to add up. If an average set of tires lasts (roughly)
50,000km to 100,000km, and the average tire weights around 10kg, and you have
4 tires, then the (totally unrealistic) maximum loss per km is 4 * 10 * 1000 /
75,000 gms/km. This is 0.5g/km (and it assumed that there was _no_ tire left).
While these numbers are rough, I don't see any way to get to 5.8gm/km as
quoted in the article. The brake pads aren't going to contribute all the rest
(they aren't that heavy to start with).

What about the road surface? Maybe you can erode 1cm of surface over 10 years
with 2,000 vehicles per hour (average down to 20,000 per day. Volume eroded
(per km) in cc is 400 (width) * 1 * 100,000 (length) = 4e7 cc. Density is
around 2.5 gm/cc. Mass eroded is 1e8 gms. Cars is 20,000 * 10 * 365 = 73e6.
Amount eroded by each car is around 1.3gm/km.

Maybe someone could check my assumptions (and my math), but I still don't
believe the numbers in the linked article.

~~~
mokus
To look at it the other direction, 5.8 g/km times 75,000 km means they have to
somehow produce 435 kg of pollution per set of tires.

Without some more explanation (are they building some kind of model to
extrapolate to the entire supply chain?) that seems more than a little
implausible. It seems most likely from the context that they are measuring
shedding of brand new tires and trying to pass that off as a representative
value.

I guess the idea is that it’s a contributor to the acute dose in the car’s
immediate vicinity, but without that context it seems like another misleading
detail.

~~~
magicalhippo
As quoted by another poster:

> Using a popular family hatchback running on brand new, correctly inflated
> tyres, we found that the car emitted 5.8 grams per kilometer of particles.

Could it be that tire wear drops off? Initially it's shedding a lot, I dunno,
due to surface layer being porous or something, and then the wear drops off to
the normal rate?

------
toss1
Yes, the tires wear, and the wear can be easily measured by the mass
difference between a new tire, worn tire, divided by the distance. Plausible
that the total wear is 1-3 orders of magnitude total mass greater than modern
tailpipe emissions.

A huge question that is never answered is how much of those worn particles
actually become airborne, how many stay airborne for how long, and what is
their effect on organisms breathing them.

While the Precautionary Principle says we should assume harm, this entire
article seems to assume that every microgram is automatically the most harmful
possible pollutant, which is likely untrue, unnecessarily alarmist, and
undermines their thesis.

~~~
sjg007
It will be dose dependent.

~~~
toss1
Exactly.

Question is, what is the dosing level that would cause harm, and what are the
routes that this material takes that might rise to such a level, vs how much
is, e.g., stuck on the pavement and washed into the ditch with every rain?

~~~
labawi
> stuck on the pavement and washed into the ditch with every rain?

This is also an important problem - there is a lot of synthetic rubber
particulate in waterways and oceans - a notable fraction of all microplastics.

~~~
toss1
Exactly, so while the authors are ringing alarms about the particles from a
health POV, they might be a irrelevant to that threat, but a major threat to
certain ecosystems, or nothing at all.

Certainly bears good investigation, but far too soon for conclusions (an I'm
usually biased towards acting based on Precautionary Principle, but this just
seems far too indirect to even make assumptions, let alone conclusions).

------
kieranmaine
For those people wondering about what percentage of PM2.5 and PM10 are caused
by non-exhaust emissions.

"NEEs are currently believed to constitute the majority of primary particulate
matter from road transport, 60 percent of PM2.5 and 73 percent of PM10 – and
in its 2019 report ‘Non-Exhaust Emissions from Road Traffic’ by the UK
Government’s Air Quality Expert Group (AQEG), it recommended that NEE are
immediately recognised as a source of ambient concentrations of airborne
particulate matter, even for vehicles with zero exhaust emissions of particles
– such as EVs."

------
muro
Weigh used tires, compare to new, divide by distance used for. Wash them
thoroughly if you want to be extra precise.

------
seemslegit
This talks specifically about particle pollution ( not CO2 emissions ) which
has already been largely regulated out, "up to" 1000x of a very small amount
can still be quite insignificant.

Given the misleading nature of the press release title I think I'll avoid
reading the actual result and mentally mark "Emission analytics" as one of
those companies.

------
gentleman11
This is the perfect opportunity to link people to Robert Heineken’s story: the
Roads Must Roll. In it, there are a series of road towns, where roads are more
like moving sidewalks. Very neat stuff, I read it as a teenager and then re-
listened to a great audiobook version recently too (bundled with the man who
sold the moon, which is the prophecy foretelling of Elon musk)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Roads_Must_Roll](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Roads_Must_Roll)

~~~
kwhitefoot
> Robert Heineken’s story: the Roads Must Roll.

One beer too many? Or an illiterate autocorrector?

Should be Robert Heinlein.

:-)

------
agoodthrowaway
I used to live about 4 blocks from CA-17 (a 6 lane freeway) and when we’d
leave the windows open a layer of black soot would form on the window sill
after a few hours. I always thought that this soot was a combination of rubber
from tires and diesel soot. When we moved away, we can leave our windows open
and there’s no black soot. I’ve always felt like living near the freeway was
like living next door to a heavily polluting factory.

------
6510
OT: I was thinking: Imagine how easy self driving trains are to make. Then I
naively pondered if air filled tires are all that efficient. I cant imagine
bending the rubber gives back a lot of energy? I just looked it up: "An
average truck gets around 150 ton-miles per gallon of diesel. Trains get
around 600 ton-miles per gallon."

------
ThinkingGuy
Cecil Adams of "The Straight Dope" had a column about this issue back in 2006:

[https://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2661/when-the-
rubb...](https://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2661/when-the-rubber-meets-
the-road-where-does-it-go/)

------
ori_b
Non-exhaust, _particulate_ pollution.

------
superpermutat0r
I live next to a very busy road (6-lane). When I moved in, the closets were
filled with black stains. My brother-in-law cleaned it and said he never saw
that kind of dirt. The closets are dirty again.

As time passed I also never encountered that amount of dust. The dust was also
extremely different from the dust when I lived in the forest, dark colored and
plentiful.

It accumulates very quickly, it gets abandoned-house-dusty in a week.

My breathing also got worse compared to the forest, especially during nights.
So there's definitely something dusty around the road.

It was also quite interesting to see that the bathroom gets dusty as quickly
too, despite being closed most of the time. It's like the whole ventilation
system of the building naturally permeates dust.

~~~
londons_explore
If you have a central air heating system like most houses do, you should add a
filter near the fan. You won't catch all the dust, but you'll collect a lot of
it, making your air healthier to live in

~~~
sjg007
I would run a couple standalone couple hepa aircleaners as well.

------
kevingadd
When I first moved to the SF bay area I didn't have AC in my apartment so I
had to leave the windows open during the summer. After a year of leaving them
open there was a thick coat of tire dust all along the windowsill since my
window faced a road. :x

~~~
hanniabu
How do you know it was tire dust and not just regular dust?

~~~
pshc
I had the same experience, in SF too. Second floor corner apartment on Fell
St, a wide and busy road along the park. The windowsills on that side
accumulated black dust unlike the other side of the corner.

------
mrich
The German Post designed the Streetscooter a while back which is an electric
delivery van. They also claim "zero fine dust driving". But how does that
work? It is quite hard to have a fully closed system so no particles can
escape. Well, their solution is quite clever: They are filtering the air in
general, so can also consume particles emitted from other cars, even when the
vehicle is not moving. So they could even get to net negative fine dust
emissions :)

[https://www.dekra-solutions.com/2018/01/fine-dust-free-
drivi...](https://www.dekra-solutions.com/2018/01/fine-dust-free-
driving/?lang=en)

~~~
blattimwind
Streetscooter is in the process of being shut down.

------
hootbootscoot
PARTICULATE pollution. big difference. CO2 and methane and unburned
hydrocarbons are not particulates.

this article is playing fast and loose with terminology and math. (1000 times
worse, they claim...)

~~~
agoodthrowaway
Particulate pollution has a big impact on human health and children in
particular.

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adrianmonk
Assuming that this really is a problem (which other comments have thrown into
doubt), I see potential conflicts between vehicle safety and fixing this.

One obvious solution is harder tires that don't wear as much. But these tend
to have worse grip, which means worse braking performance (and cornering,
etc.).

They also mentioned that reducing the weight of cars would help, but one of
the reasons cars have gotten heavier over the last few decades is the addition
of a bunch of safety equipment.

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nvader
This article, and the whole website looks so suspicious. Quotes come mostly
from its own organization, "Emission Analytics", and there is no reference to
an existing or upcoming publication.

In addition, and I realize I'm nitpicking, the stock photo, the composition of
the copy and the general... feel of the website seems off.

The overall effect is to make me actively distrust their conclusions and want
to ask about their agenda and source of funding.

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unbalancedevh
If the idea is to focus on tires, then why not just look at how many tires are
manufactured each year? 100% of tires end up polluting something, somewhere.

Or, again if the focus is tire wear, there must be pretty good data about how
much of a tire gets worn off before replacement, and how often they're
replaced. It doesn't seem like it should be very complex to calculate how much
tire is being emitted due to road wear.

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elidourado
Fake news. Smaller particles from exhaust are way worse for you than larger
particles from tires. Within a category like PM2.5, mass is a terrible metric.
A given mass of fuel exhaust will contain orders of magnitude more particles
because they are tinier. Smaller particles can penetrate deeper into your
lungs and can go into your bloodstream.

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totalZero
Tires contain fossil fuel products like carbon black and synthetic rubber.

The roadway contains bitumen, another fossil fuel product.

The numbers in this experiment seem dubious and are probably not
representative, but they do reflect our over-dependence on refined petroleum.
We have to find new ways to make these things.

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dayaz36
Wow the hit pieces against EV adoption are getting more desperate and
creative. This blog is just comical.

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TheWoolRug
Here in Seattle folks are starting to look at salmon "pre spawn mortality"
suspecting chemicals from worn tires.

[https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.8b03287](https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.8b03287)

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nottorp
What I'd like to know is who this "leading authority" is. Release is a bit
vague.

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kazinator
What does "worse" mean?

Are tire particles, more than exhaust gases, contributing to the greenhouse
effect that causes global warming?

How about the total carbon? How many tankfuls of gas does a car incinerate in
between tire changes?

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hinkley
Last time I looked at tires, Michelin was advertising tires with natural oils
in them that somehow improved handling at 50% wear level.

I wonder if that even moved the needle on environmental footprint of their
tires?

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MobileVet
I can definitely believe tire wear is a significant contributor... but is
Emissions Analytics a reputable source?

It feels like someone grabbed a domain and wrote a post with minimal
experimental rigor.

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bborud
This is a press release. Is there a link to the underlying research this press
release is talking about? I can't really do anything with this.

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fouric
I wonder if the pollution from electric vehicles is worse because of their
torque curves...

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empath75
If someone had told you that this would be the case in the 1960s, they
probably would have jumped for joy. It’s more a positive signal for how much
emissions technology has advanced.

Obviously it’s something worth looking at and improving, still, but it’s
definitely not a sign that things are getting worse, but rather the opposite.

~~~
fjeifisjf
Challenge is, can we make tired that don’t wear or are made of friendly
materials.

~~~
tialaramex
No. When things roll very tiny pieces break off both the rolling thing and the
thing rolled over. If we want to travel by rolling (which seems like a yes)
along the ground then that's going to produce PM 2.5 air pollution.

Flying is definitely worse, for at least the medium term and perhaps forever,
and magnetic levitation is so expensive you're just not going to do it at
scale.

The effect from pushing a stroller will be greatly (much more than linearly)
smaller than from a goods delivery truck or a railway train, but it's there.
We just have to consider this when deciding what's a good idea.

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trekrich
Expect this in a Greta speech soon. We need to stop using Tyres on our cars!

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LargoLasskhyfv
We need more hovercrafts!

~~~
twic
Or walking draglines.

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lazyjones
This is, as it stands in the headline, classic "fake news" that is being
spread by people who want to exaggerate the problems with cars.

~~~
natch
We don't know who it is being promoted by. Possibly the oil industry or the
legacy gasoline car industry.

