4 ms·

Sorry, but most car pollution is from the tires/tyres, not the exhaust. Electric cars don't solve that, and may even make it worse because they're heavier. htt

by ipqk 2y ago

Sorry, but most car pollution is from the tires/tyres, not the exhaust. Electric cars don't solve that, and may even make it worse because they're heavier. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/03/car-tyres-produce-more-particle-pollution-than-exhausts-tests-show https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/03/car-tyre...

phatfish 2y ago
The parent was worried about "noxious gas", not rubber particles. Cars with an ICE have tires as well, unfortunately.
- ipqk 2y ago
  Tires are only about 25% natural rubber; the rest is synthetic rubber, heavy metals, plastics, and additives. These get emitted as fine particulates that stick around in the air. They may not technically be a gas, but we breathe it in just the same.
  - jiggawatts 2y ago
    I very much doubt that heavy metals such as mercury or lead are used to make tyres. I've only ever heard of steel belted tyres. It used to be that wheels were balanced with small lead weights, but the use of lead for this has been banned in pretty much every western country, and wasn't contributing to road dust even when they were allowed.
    - ipqk 2y ago
      "Hundreds of other ingredients, including steel, fillers, and heavy metals — including copper, cadmium, lead, and zinc — make up the rest, many of them added to enhance performance, improve durability, and reduce the possibility of fires." https://e360.yale.edu/features/tire-pollution-toxic-chemicals https://e360.yale.edu/features/tire-pollution-toxic-chemical...
      - jiggawatts 2y ago
        They didn't reference a source, and the claim is rather outlandish. Cadmium and Lead are both quite toxic, and I'd be absolutely shocked if any tyre company in the western world used either of them anywhere near their products, let alone mixed into the rubber, which is insane. "Tire fragments soaked in solutions with pH ranging from 3 to 8 did not leach measurable amounts of cadmium over a period of six week" from: https://www.echocommunity.org/en/resources/b1d9d1eb-afcb-4729-ae31-950e13872d1d https://www.echocommunity.org/en/resources/b1d9d1eb-afcb-472... "Cadmium and lead concentrations were negligible." from: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9085433/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9085433/ "The low cadmium levels in their tyres was due to the efficacy of the zinc oxide purification process. In the nearly 50 years since the David and Williams study, Zn, S, and Cd refining has improved and this may contribute to low levels of cadmium being detected" from: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412023003203 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041202... So... it looks like tyres contain some Zinc, which many decades ago wasn't purified very well, which resulted in Cadmium and Lead being included as impurities in the Zinc. The industrial processes have improved and this is no longer a problem, but people are quoting tyre compound issues from the 1950s like they're still issues today. Whoever wrote the article you linked couldn't be bothered to run a quick Google search to see if the problem still exists. That's unfathomably lazy. PS: Not to mention that the lead added to fuel was a vastly bigger problem than any trace lead impurities that got into tyres.
hristov 2y ago
Your link does not say what you purport it to say. It limits things to particle pollution. It makes sense that tires will create more particle pollution, but gasoline creates a lot of gas pollution as well.
- ipqk 2y ago
  The tire & brake particulates go into the air. Sure, technically not gas, but we breathe it in just the same.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    Straw man. You said “most car pollution is from the tires/tyres.” That is unsubstantiated by your source.
    - itsoktocry 2y ago
      This is not some secret: https://e360.yale.edu/features/tire-pollution-toxic-chemicals#:~:text=Recent%20studies%20show%20that%20the,have%20significantly%20reduced%20those%20emissions https://e360.yale.edu/features/tire-pollution-toxic-chemical....
      - trehalose 2y ago
        Interesting. This article you linked states that tires emit not only more particulate emissions than tailpipes during driving, but also more VOC emissions! > Another area of research centers on the impacts of aromatic hydrocarbons — including benzene and naphthalene — off-gassed by synthetic rubber or emitted when discarded tires are burned in incinerators for energy recovery. Even at low concentrations, these compounds are toxic to humans. They also react with sunlight to form ozone, or ground-level smog, which causes respiratory harm. “We have shown that the amount of off-gassing volatile organic compounds is 100 times greater than that coming out of a modern tailpipe,” said Molden. “This is from the tire just sitting there.”
        2y ago

by ipqk 2y ago

phatfish 2y ago

The parent was worried about "noxious gas", not rubber particles. Cars with an ICE have tires as well, unfortunately.

ipqk 2y ago
Tires are only about 25% natural rubber; the rest is synthetic rubber, heavy metals, plastics, and additives. These get emitted as fine particulates that stick around in the air. They may not technically be a gas, but we breathe it in just the same.
- jiggawatts 2y ago
  I very much doubt that heavy metals such as mercury or lead are used to make tyres. I've only ever heard of steel belted tyres. It used to be that wheels were balanced with small lead weights, but the use of lead for this has been banned in pretty much every western country, and wasn't contributing to road dust even when they were allowed.
  - ipqk 2y ago
    "Hundreds of other ingredients, including steel, fillers, and heavy metals — including copper, cadmium, lead, and zinc — make up the rest, many of them added to enhance performance, improve durability, and reduce the possibility of fires." https://e360.yale.edu/features/tire-pollution-toxic-chemicals https://e360.yale.edu/features/tire-pollution-toxic-chemical...
    - jiggawatts 2y ago
      They didn't reference a source, and the claim is rather outlandish. Cadmium and Lead are both quite toxic, and I'd be absolutely shocked if any tyre company in the western world used either of them anywhere near their products, let alone mixed into the rubber, which is insane. "Tire fragments soaked in solutions with pH ranging from 3 to 8 did not leach measurable amounts of cadmium over a period of six week" from: https://www.echocommunity.org/en/resources/b1d9d1eb-afcb-4729-ae31-950e13872d1d https://www.echocommunity.org/en/resources/b1d9d1eb-afcb-472... "Cadmium and lead concentrations were negligible." from: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9085433/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9085433/ "The low cadmium levels in their tyres was due to the efficacy of the zinc oxide purification process. In the nearly 50 years since the David and Williams study, Zn, S, and Cd refining has improved and this may contribute to low levels of cadmium being detected" from: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412023003203 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041202... So... it looks like tyres contain some Zinc, which many decades ago wasn't purified very well, which resulted in Cadmium and Lead being included as impurities in the Zinc. The industrial processes have improved and this is no longer a problem, but people are quoting tyre compound issues from the 1950s like they're still issues today. Whoever wrote the article you linked couldn't be bothered to run a quick Google search to see if the problem still exists. That's unfathomably lazy. PS: Not to mention that the lead added to fuel was a vastly bigger problem than any trace lead impurities that got into tyres.

hristov 2y ago

Your link does not say what you purport it to say. It limits things to particle pollution. It makes sense that tires will create more particle pollution, but gasoline creates a lot of gas pollution as well.

ipqk 2y ago
The tire & brake particulates go into the air. Sure, technically not gas, but we breathe it in just the same.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  Straw man. You said “most car pollution is from the tires/tyres.” That is unsubstantiated by your source.
  - itsoktocry 2y ago
    This is not some secret: https://e360.yale.edu/features/tire-pollution-toxic-chemicals#:~:text=Recent%20studies%20show%20that%20the,have%20significantly%20reduced%20those%20emissions https://e360.yale.edu/features/tire-pollution-toxic-chemical....
    - trehalose 2y ago
      Interesting. This article you linked states that tires emit not only more particulate emissions than tailpipes during driving, but also more VOC emissions! > Another area of research centers on the impacts of aromatic hydrocarbons — including benzene and naphthalene — off-gassed by synthetic rubber or emitted when discarded tires are burned in incinerators for energy recovery. Even at low concentrations, these compounds are toxic to humans. They also react with sunlight to form ozone, or ground-level smog, which causes respiratory harm. “We have shown that the amount of off-gassing volatile organic compounds is 100 times greater than that coming out of a modern tailpipe,” said Molden. “This is from the tire just sitting there.”
      - 2y ago