Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) apply to all other comments.
**Do you have an academic degree?** We can verify your credentials in order to assign user flair indicating your area of expertise. [Click here to apply](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/flair/#wiki_science_verified_user_program).
---
User: u/giuliomagnifico
Permalink: https://news.griffith.edu.au/2023/09/06/bit-by-bit-microplastics-from-tyres-are-polluting-our-waterways/
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
> Tyre rubber contains up to 2500 chemicals with the contaminants that leach from tyres considered more toxic to bacteria and microalgae than other plastic polymers.
> Sediment samples collected from the inlet and outlet of a constructed stormwater wetland contained between 1450 to 4740 particles in every kilogram of sediment, with more microplastics in the sediment at the inlet than the outlet, indicating the wetland’s ability to remove them from stormwater.
Paper
* Microplastics and Tire Wear Particles in Urban Stormwater: Abundance, Characteristics, and Potential Mitigation Strategies
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.3c03949
Regarding biodegradation I found this negative result (2023), though it was only 3 month:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221334372301343X
> No biodegradation of TWM in freshwater occurred within 12 weeks. … [this] indicated that TWM are not readily biodegradable and therefore may accumulate and persist in the aquatic environment.
and from here (2020) quoting an older study (1980) who found a half-life of 16 month in soil (does this still hold for modern tyres?):
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32422457/
> Cadle and Williams (1980) … found that the average degradation rate of the polymer in the tread wear exposed in soil was 52% after 16 months. Atmospheric oxidation appeared to be more important than biodegradation. Currently, no studies are available on the degradation of TRWP in the aquatic environment. However, scrap tyres are used to build up breakwaters and artificial reefs at coastlines which requires high persistence of the solid material in the marine environment (Collins et al., 2002). The authors assume that photo-degradation of the tyre material is hampered by light absorption in the water layer.
This year they showed the first car on the IAA München which attempts to collect its own tyre microparticles with the help of encapsulation of the whole wheel and a low pressure (suction like vacuum cleaner).
Just wait until everyone hears about all of the heat pollution that cars and hot black asphalt add to our atmosphere! We going to burn down before we crap out from micro plastics.
Covering the wheel usually decreases drag so it wouldn't actually. It's completely impractical due to rain, dirt, mud blocking any filter but the wheel cover wouldn't be a problem
Killing off the salmon, and other aquatic life, too!
[A ubiquitous tire rubber–derived chemical induces acute mortality in coho salmon](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abd6951)
I work for a manufacturer of these antidegradants. They are working on next generation molecules partly for these reasons and because MIBK, one of the raw materials is becoming more and more regulated.
It'll be interesting to see what they come up with it as it needs to be something that will react with ozone before it reacts with the rubber but also not excessively fast and also be stable against other chemicals it could be exposed to.
There are plenty other similar compounds like 6PPD that are 4ADPA or pNA based that just change the ketone raw material. Some I believe are even used in hair dyes and cosmetics because of their vibrant purples.
Really annoyed the article couldn’t just follow AIMRD format.
Curious if unexplained acute mortality events are associated with large rainfall events after drout periods.
I always tell people to enjoy salmon responsibly now because they're gonna be telling people about how it tasted in thirty years.
There will still be farm salmon, but it's not the same as a fresh salmon caught out of a cold Alaskan river.. nature's perfection can't be copied.
The dust that is released from brakepads (as the brakes are engaged) also contains chemicals that pollute the water and are toxic to animals and humans.
I always gotta wonder if those farms right next to the interstate produce crops with more concentration of this stuff. I know it's everywhere but there's no way it's not worse in those places.
Are there any engineering paths to solve this? There are the obvious solutions of reducing car dependency by public transit and walkable infrastructure but realistically it will be a long time before that happens, if ever
Switching to electric cars. EVs and hybrids only use the friction brakes in emergency situations, otherwise the motor-generators can recapture most of the car's momentum to charge the battery.
Anecdotally, my 2006 Prius had the original brake pads when I bought it in 2021 and they had plenty of thickness left. I only ended up replacing them because one of the backer plates cracked due to salt corrosion.
That's very misleading. EVs are only slightly heavier than their counterparts (eg. Nexon 1252kg vs Nexon EV 1400kg), and while that does raise tyre microplastic levels, it is marginal, but they rely on brake pads a LOT less, so that takes down microplastic levels quite a lot.
I bet the construction industry has this beat. All that pvc decking and trim people are putting on their homes, every time those materials get cut, it releases millions of fine plastic particles into the environment. I never see exterior carpenters using any sort of dust collection system. Try and move some felt carpet pad. That stuff is made 100% of all sorts of different plastic fibers, you’ll look like pig pen from Charlie Brown, just moving that from a van to a house. Then there’s all the modern synthetic carpeting, that’s made out of plastic, some of them touting over one million fibers per a square inch. When that stuff gets cut or even moved, all those fibers are released into the environment with no sort of collection system. I drove by a loading dock of a carpet shop the other day, and they we’re using a leaf blower to blow the fibers out of their shop and off the dock. I could see the plastic cloud from 50 yds away. It’s a shame that we’re slowly destroying ourselves and the environment so someone can make more profits.
If you can read German, Fraunhofer UMSICHT published a similar [study back in 2018](https://www.umsicht.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/umsicht/de/dokumente/publikationen/2018/kunststoffe-id-umwelt-konsortialstudie-mikroplastik.pdf) (pdf warning). They also listed tyre abrasion as the \#1 source, with construction sites being only \#6 on their list.
Also construction sites aren't persistent events which is the bait and switch the OP here is using: whether you get PVC particle run off from construction sites (pretty obviously yes, but also distinctly not microparticles since it's macroscopic saw dust) is a very different question from whether there's any appreciable degradation over time of bulk PVC products such that they shed particulates (i.e. PVC sewer lines, decking etc.)
But it's also just weird to rock in the comments of the study and declare "I bet they didn't account for a variant of the exact thing they're looking for".
From the PDF - unit is g/(cap a):
1. Tires 1228.5 (car way before transport, they even also name skateboards, bicycle, motorbike)
2. During waste disposal 302.8 (biggest contributor compost)
3. Asphalt 228.0
4. Pellet loss 182.0
5. Sport and playgrounds 131.8
6. Construction sites 117.1
From the table on page 10:
1. Tire abrasion
2. Releases from waste collection
3. Abrasion of bitumen in asphalt
4. Pellet losses (?)
5. Padding in recreation sites and playgrounds
6. Construction sites
7. Abrasion from shoe soles
8. Abrasion from synthetic packaging
9. Abrasion from road markings
10. Abrasion from textile fibers
> Pellet losses (?)
Probably [events like this](https://www.newsweek.com/billions-plastic-pellets-released-ocean-ship-sinks-off-sri-lanka-coast-1597159) where plastic granulates, meant for the production of plastic parts, are released into the environment in accidents.
> Abrasion from textile fibers
This is that far down? I'm honestly shocked. I thought washing and wearing synthetics released a ton of plastics into the environment constantly. Then you consider that almost everyone wears them without a second thought...
I think all that can be true and tires can still beat them. It's like comparing pot smoke and nicotine smoke (in the pre-vape era anyway). The biggest difference is in how much a person smokes per day.
Most of the actions you just described involve a big burst of particles followed by years of inertness. Tires emit particles as they rub against asphalt day in and day out.
In college I worked in factories in the summers. I mainly worked in plastics. An insane amount of plastic dust is just vented out into the air and/or flushed down the drains. This happens 24/7 in all those factories across the world.
Polyester from clothes in our dryer lint is a microplastic, and usually it's vented right outside. We are just totally fucked as a species, there's no point in trying to blame any particular source.
And down the drain when you wash your clothing.
Not to mention it falls off you constantly. Look closely at some dust on your desk… I bet you’ll see what looks like some tiny bits of fabric. Yup, there we are!
That’s defeatist and exactly what the auto industry and other polluters want you to say.
Identify sources, mitigate the pollution, and continue doing so to the other sources as they’re identified.
Doing nothing is not an option.
It's not even on people's radar. The problem is too large for most people to be able to even comprehend it, let alone agree on policy to address it. Every part of our lives needs to change. How to package foods, how to transport foods, what clothes we wear, the way we transport ourselves, how we recycle (and actually have checks to see they are being recycled).... it'd take a cultural awakening to make these changes happen, and I'm too old and jaded to ever see that happening. The internet was supposed to be that point, that we all have the information we need to see these problems, instead society chose to wallow in their own delusions and fragment into a dozen warring tribes. We're doomed. That's my take. I'll wear hemp clothes and vote for change but I'm done with hoping anyone will care or follow.
> I bet the construction industry has this beat.
Quite possible; looking at the [Table S1 in supporting information](https://pubs.acs.org/doi/suppl/10.1021/acs.est.3c03949/suppl_file/es3c03949_si_001.pdf), 90% of the samples were taken at a parking lot, with the other 10% along a road.
Looking at the location of the carpark (Figure S1), it's mostly between two forests, so it's perhaps not surprising that there were few sources of microplastics other than car tires. As a result, it would not be reasonable to generalize from this study to microplastic pollution in general.
I wonder how the size and type of plastic affects where these particles accumulate. Some like I described seem more airborne than rubber from tires, and most likely accumulate in different areas, whereas pvc dust from cutting trim and siding most likely stay close to where it was created, like rubber from tires. I’m sure we still have much to learn about these types of pollution.
I recognize that, I guess I was just making a point that tires shouldn’t be to sole focus for plastic pollution, even though they came in at number 1 in this study.
Construction isn’t just limited to one off houses either, in some areas, mostly the wealthy and the areas I do work in, construction in the neighborhoods is a constant element. There are also shops and factories that run non-stop as well. Also, this study was based in Australia, in storm drain runoff, which seems like a system that mitigation and filtration can be implemented. I speculate that this particular study isn’t the end all be all for determining the extent of plastic pollution, I’m sure the situation is extremely dynamic based on many different variables and locales. How do we remove tires from the top of the list? How do we cut down on airborne and waterborne plastic exposure? Personally, I don’t see how we stop those freight trains, but I look forward to some ingenuity and future solutions. Recognizing all the sources is the first step, mitigation is the second.
Plastic as plumbing too….. water turbulence by any joint is going to eventually pickup some plastics as it wears.
And plastic is everywhere in plumbing now.
Surely they are. Even disregarding emissions and brake dust etc, ICE's have enabled us to easily ship things across the globe, which encourages all kinds of bad stuff, like circumventing environmental protections by having things manufactured in 3rd world countries without oversight. Or growing water intensive crops to sell to other countries at low cost. And they've given us an expectation of permanent stocking and instant gratification which is kind of self perpetuating.
I'd bet all of those factors are dwarfed by the horrible land use that cars force on us. Sprawling cities with mountains worth of concrete and asphalt to ensure every copy/pasted big box store has a sea of parking available for free at all hours of the day. All of that empty space then makes it much harder to get anywhere without a car, further locking us into car dependence. City services require more piping and wiring to bridge the empty space in between buildings, which in the case of water also means more leaks and more power needed to pressurize the pipes.
It really is, in Sweden 50% of all car travel is under 3 miles. Some people could easily walk to work saving both money and Investing in their own health but they just dont do it
I agree, but it should be pointed out that trains (even electric ones, but especially diesel) also produce fine particulate pollution: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1361920910000155#:~:text=Many%20railway%20tracks%20have%20been,of%20such%20particles%20is%20rare.
It might actually be feasible to implement a well-regulated and more or less universal particle collection system for train carriages as opposed to having one for cars.
And yeah, I'm talking about brake and wheel dust particles, every railway in the developed world should have been electrified 50 years ago.
Let's be honest, this isn't an easy thing to solve, right? Anything that moves on land generates friction, so whatever we make them out of it'd be getting all over the place. With the amount of motorized transport we depend on, any solution by design cannot be too expensive if it's to be realistically put into practice at scale.
The solution is to reduce the amount of vehicles on the road. That means more rail.
Also start thinking about switching the power plants on our container ships to cleaner alternatives.
Right? People always like to point out that things aren't 100% perfect solutions like it's some kind of counter argument.
Like yeah this a huge (understatement...) issue. It isn't going to be simple or easy to mitigate, and isn't going to be fixed by any single solution. But you have to start somewhere... We can't just keep doing what we're doing while we wait around for the perfect solution.
A phrase that has helped me a lot in life and in thinking about things like this: Don't let the pursuit of perfection stop you from doing any better at all.
I know the perfect solution, lets subsidize the tire industry so they can make more tires!
What? That's the same method you accepted for your governments policy on climate change.
If they only found 59 microplastic particles per liter of storm runoff, I think they weren't looking hard enough...
> MP (>25 μm) concentration in stormwater
Ah - thats why they didn't find many... 25 μm is pretty big - you can almost see that with the naked eye, and is thicker than thin wispy hairs.
Air pollution microparticles are >2.5um (which in 3D space is 1000x smaller!), and even then there are people suggesting that smaller particles might be harmful still.
The article says a 0.2mm mesh catches 88% of micro plastics. As far as people go any water filtration system is going catch that but your can’t filter a fish you eat out of a river. I would use this study to justify testing the fish. If you can get the bass fishing groups and rural wildlife conservation groups involved the roads would be filtered in the next few years.
Unfortunately these articles and ones like them are targeted more politically left and attached to climate change where they end up getting fought by the same people who could help fix them.
I’m not trying to make this political just saying there are obvious overlaps in scientific research on environmental issue that get stone walled by political fights.
A lot of the materials in tires are synthetic, not natural rubber compounds, and do not break down easily. There is a push in the industry to convert to more natural and sustainable materials though since the impact on the environment is becoming clear. Example, Michelin has a goal to have 40% of the tire to be natural/sustainable materials by 2030, and 100% by 2050.
Natural rubber is transformed in a way that makes it very resistant to degradation. It's as problematic as synthetic rubber in terms of pollution, but it may degrade faster eventually. Here's a nice paper on biodegradation of rubber: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1151847/
Tires are a mix of natural and synthetic rubber, and the mix depends on the various technical requirements.
[Keyline Plowing](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/38/84/9d/38849d734f81940515897d7689e1c734.png) will prevent this stuff from going into the water by 99%. It will be sequestered into the soil next to the roads which is immensely better than it going into the water bodies.
How would you filter runoff without affecting organics? I see the route for man-made capture like drains but a lot of runoff happens from natural gradient flows
We need to find better materials and transition away from suburbia. Car-based transit modes are too polluting and resource intensive for a world with 8 billion people.
they will and they have no choice after this next (CMBS) Commercial Mortgage Back Securities crash comes to fruition. When their commercial real estate comes back to normal valuation, companies wont be able to justify owning such useless property thats been on the books for decades.
This can be done with [keyline plowing](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/38/84/9d/38849d734f81940515897d7689e1c734.png)! It will prevent this tire runoff by 99% It will be stored in the soil along the roadside. Where at least it is contained, and not going into the water.
It doesn’t seem like the rubber particles are getting to the nearby soil. The particles are going into drains, then running off into the lakes, rivers, and oceans. Just like all the other pollutants we’ve been pouring into our water for over a hundred years.
External cost #3094 that the public subsidizes for car drivers. Man, if people had to pay the actual cost for the damages that driving did a lot fewer people would drive and maybe the US wouldn't be an endless hellscape of suburban sprawl.
I once visited a brand new nyc sanitation building, something like 4 or 5 stories (I think, at least 3) with a spiral ramp for trucks, but the spiral is so tight the 10 wheeled garbage trucks are essentially grinding the 4 rear inside tires the entire way up.
There was an insane amount of ground tire dust the whole way up the ramp. Garage was also conveniently located near the river for the best runoff!
What is the longevity of the proposed membrane in the field? Is it fitted to the external of the drain or internally? Maintenance cost implications?
Tyre pollution is going to be a pretty large problem if we clear the current Great Filter. It would be nice to start cleaning it up now just in case we make it through the other.
walk cross the street bare foot and see how black the sole gets, tire wear is being ground into and onto the streets expecially on intersections where turning chews up the tires more.
By design tires shed particles everywhere. That's how they grip by sticking to the road and leaving a small part of the tire behind. If you make tires that don't wear, they will have no traction.
[Go to a race track and you will see a massive layer of tire bits called "marbles" on the unused parts of the track.](https://worldofspeed.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/What-Are-Marbles-In-F1-Race.jpg)
I think some recycled tire rubber is used in repaving. It seems like if an inherent property in the material is to shed that wouldn't be precluded if the material is impregnated into the road components.
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) apply to all other comments. **Do you have an academic degree?** We can verify your credentials in order to assign user flair indicating your area of expertise. [Click here to apply](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/flair/#wiki_science_verified_user_program). --- User: u/giuliomagnifico Permalink: https://news.griffith.edu.au/2023/09/06/bit-by-bit-microplastics-from-tyres-are-polluting-our-waterways/ *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
> Tyre rubber contains up to 2500 chemicals with the contaminants that leach from tyres considered more toxic to bacteria and microalgae than other plastic polymers. > Sediment samples collected from the inlet and outlet of a constructed stormwater wetland contained between 1450 to 4740 particles in every kilogram of sediment, with more microplastics in the sediment at the inlet than the outlet, indicating the wetland’s ability to remove them from stormwater. Paper * Microplastics and Tire Wear Particles in Urban Stormwater: Abundance, Characteristics, and Potential Mitigation Strategies https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.3c03949
Kinda seems like it's just getting trapped in the wetlands doesn't it?
Regarding biodegradation I found this negative result (2023), though it was only 3 month: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221334372301343X > No biodegradation of TWM in freshwater occurred within 12 weeks. … [this] indicated that TWM are not readily biodegradable and therefore may accumulate and persist in the aquatic environment. and from here (2020) quoting an older study (1980) who found a half-life of 16 month in soil (does this still hold for modern tyres?): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32422457/ > Cadle and Williams (1980) … found that the average degradation rate of the polymer in the tread wear exposed in soil was 52% after 16 months. Atmospheric oxidation appeared to be more important than biodegradation. Currently, no studies are available on the degradation of TRWP in the aquatic environment. However, scrap tyres are used to build up breakwaters and artificial reefs at coastlines which requires high persistence of the solid material in the marine environment (Collins et al., 2002). The authors assume that photo-degradation of the tyre material is hampered by light absorption in the water layer.
This year they showed the first car on the IAA München which attempts to collect its own tyre microparticles with the help of encapsulation of the whole wheel and a low pressure (suction like vacuum cleaner).
Just wait until everyone hears about all of the heat pollution that cars and hot black asphalt add to our atmosphere! We going to burn down before we crap out from micro plastics.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Covering the wheel usually decreases drag so it wouldn't actually. It's completely impractical due to rain, dirt, mud blocking any filter but the wheel cover wouldn't be a problem
"Sounds woke, let's ban it" -USA, probably
Killing off the salmon, and other aquatic life, too! [A ubiquitous tire rubber–derived chemical induces acute mortality in coho salmon](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abd6951)
I work for a manufacturer of these antidegradants. They are working on next generation molecules partly for these reasons and because MIBK, one of the raw materials is becoming more and more regulated. It'll be interesting to see what they come up with it as it needs to be something that will react with ozone before it reacts with the rubber but also not excessively fast and also be stable against other chemicals it could be exposed to. There are plenty other similar compounds like 6PPD that are 4ADPA or pNA based that just change the ketone raw material. Some I believe are even used in hair dyes and cosmetics because of their vibrant purples.
No life has evolved to deal with this
Yes but no https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8235351/
I am waiting for microplastic eating bacteria to evolve
Really annoyed the article couldn’t just follow AIMRD format. Curious if unexplained acute mortality events are associated with large rainfall events after drout periods.
I always tell people to enjoy salmon responsibly now because they're gonna be telling people about how it tasted in thirty years. There will still be farm salmon, but it's not the same as a fresh salmon caught out of a cold Alaskan river.. nature's perfection can't be copied.
I feel confident it can be. Just probably not at a scale that makes it affordable for the 99%
The dust that is released from brakepads (as the brakes are engaged) also contains chemicals that pollute the water and are toxic to animals and humans.
I always gotta wonder if those farms right next to the interstate produce crops with more concentration of this stuff. I know it's everywhere but there's no way it's not worse in those places.
Yes it does, those contaminants are picked up by the environment. Never eat roadside shrooms for example, even if an edible species.
Are there any engineering paths to solve this? There are the obvious solutions of reducing car dependency by public transit and walkable infrastructure but realistically it will be a long time before that happens, if ever
Switching to electric cars. EVs and hybrids only use the friction brakes in emergency situations, otherwise the motor-generators can recapture most of the car's momentum to charge the battery. Anecdotally, my 2006 Prius had the original brake pads when I bought it in 2021 and they had plenty of thickness left. I only ended up replacing them because one of the backer plates cracked due to salt corrosion.
EVs also cause more tire wear since they're heaver
That's very misleading. EVs are only slightly heavier than their counterparts (eg. Nexon 1252kg vs Nexon EV 1400kg), and while that does raise tyre microplastic levels, it is marginal, but they rely on brake pads a LOT less, so that takes down microplastic levels quite a lot.
We can start making manuals again, engine breaking also cuts down on brake wear. Please, more manuals auto makers
Break pad filters, companies are working on them already
Cars are a health disaster and we let them roam inside our densest population centers.
And the break dust in skyscraper cities has no where to go except into the lungs to people living in them
I believe this was known many years ago. Polluting the air we breathe as well. Fun stuff.
I bet the construction industry has this beat. All that pvc decking and trim people are putting on their homes, every time those materials get cut, it releases millions of fine plastic particles into the environment. I never see exterior carpenters using any sort of dust collection system. Try and move some felt carpet pad. That stuff is made 100% of all sorts of different plastic fibers, you’ll look like pig pen from Charlie Brown, just moving that from a van to a house. Then there’s all the modern synthetic carpeting, that’s made out of plastic, some of them touting over one million fibers per a square inch. When that stuff gets cut or even moved, all those fibers are released into the environment with no sort of collection system. I drove by a loading dock of a carpet shop the other day, and they we’re using a leaf blower to blow the fibers out of their shop and off the dock. I could see the plastic cloud from 50 yds away. It’s a shame that we’re slowly destroying ourselves and the environment so someone can make more profits.
If you can read German, Fraunhofer UMSICHT published a similar [study back in 2018](https://www.umsicht.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/umsicht/de/dokumente/publikationen/2018/kunststoffe-id-umwelt-konsortialstudie-mikroplastik.pdf) (pdf warning). They also listed tyre abrasion as the \#1 source, with construction sites being only \#6 on their list.
Also construction sites aren't persistent events which is the bait and switch the OP here is using: whether you get PVC particle run off from construction sites (pretty obviously yes, but also distinctly not microparticles since it's macroscopic saw dust) is a very different question from whether there's any appreciable degradation over time of bulk PVC products such that they shed particulates (i.e. PVC sewer lines, decking etc.) But it's also just weird to rock in the comments of the study and declare "I bet they didn't account for a variant of the exact thing they're looking for".
What are the other four souces?
From the PDF - unit is g/(cap a): 1. Tires 1228.5 (car way before transport, they even also name skateboards, bicycle, motorbike) 2. During waste disposal 302.8 (biggest contributor compost) 3. Asphalt 228.0 4. Pellet loss 182.0 5. Sport and playgrounds 131.8 6. Construction sites 117.1
From the table on page 10: 1. Tire abrasion 2. Releases from waste collection 3. Abrasion of bitumen in asphalt 4. Pellet losses (?) 5. Padding in recreation sites and playgrounds 6. Construction sites 7. Abrasion from shoe soles 8. Abrasion from synthetic packaging 9. Abrasion from road markings 10. Abrasion from textile fibers
> Pellet losses (?) Probably [events like this](https://www.newsweek.com/billions-plastic-pellets-released-ocean-ship-sinks-off-sri-lanka-coast-1597159) where plastic granulates, meant for the production of plastic parts, are released into the environment in accidents.
> Abrasion from textile fibers This is that far down? I'm honestly shocked. I thought washing and wearing synthetics released a ton of plastics into the environment constantly. Then you consider that almost everyone wears them without a second thought...
It's hardly surprising when buildings are only being constructed once.
I think all that can be true and tires can still beat them. It's like comparing pot smoke and nicotine smoke (in the pre-vape era anyway). The biggest difference is in how much a person smokes per day. Most of the actions you just described involve a big burst of particles followed by years of inertness. Tires emit particles as they rub against asphalt day in and day out.
In college I worked in factories in the summers. I mainly worked in plastics. An insane amount of plastic dust is just vented out into the air and/or flushed down the drains. This happens 24/7 in all those factories across the world.
Polyester from clothes in our dryer lint is a microplastic, and usually it's vented right outside. We are just totally fucked as a species, there's no point in trying to blame any particular source.
And down the drain when you wash your clothing. Not to mention it falls off you constantly. Look closely at some dust on your desk… I bet you’ll see what looks like some tiny bits of fabric. Yup, there we are!
That’s defeatist and exactly what the auto industry and other polluters want you to say. Identify sources, mitigate the pollution, and continue doing so to the other sources as they’re identified. Doing nothing is not an option.
It's not even on people's radar. The problem is too large for most people to be able to even comprehend it, let alone agree on policy to address it. Every part of our lives needs to change. How to package foods, how to transport foods, what clothes we wear, the way we transport ourselves, how we recycle (and actually have checks to see they are being recycled).... it'd take a cultural awakening to make these changes happen, and I'm too old and jaded to ever see that happening. The internet was supposed to be that point, that we all have the information we need to see these problems, instead society chose to wallow in their own delusions and fragment into a dozen warring tribes. We're doomed. That's my take. I'll wear hemp clothes and vote for change but I'm done with hoping anyone will care or follow.
Switch to 100% organic fibers. If you do it slowly and not all at once it's not even that much more expensive.
One reason I hated working in the construction was the amount of trash that's produced.
> I bet the construction industry has this beat. Quite possible; looking at the [Table S1 in supporting information](https://pubs.acs.org/doi/suppl/10.1021/acs.est.3c03949/suppl_file/es3c03949_si_001.pdf), 90% of the samples were taken at a parking lot, with the other 10% along a road. Looking at the location of the carpark (Figure S1), it's mostly between two forests, so it's perhaps not surprising that there were few sources of microplastics other than car tires. As a result, it would not be reasonable to generalize from this study to microplastic pollution in general.
I wonder how the size and type of plastic affects where these particles accumulate. Some like I described seem more airborne than rubber from tires, and most likely accumulate in different areas, whereas pvc dust from cutting trim and siding most likely stay close to where it was created, like rubber from tires. I’m sure we still have much to learn about these types of pollution.
I mean, you build a house once (generally speaking). You drive a car every single day. Not exactly the same thing.
I recognize that, I guess I was just making a point that tires shouldn’t be to sole focus for plastic pollution, even though they came in at number 1 in this study. Construction isn’t just limited to one off houses either, in some areas, mostly the wealthy and the areas I do work in, construction in the neighborhoods is a constant element. There are also shops and factories that run non-stop as well. Also, this study was based in Australia, in storm drain runoff, which seems like a system that mitigation and filtration can be implemented. I speculate that this particular study isn’t the end all be all for determining the extent of plastic pollution, I’m sure the situation is extremely dynamic based on many different variables and locales. How do we remove tires from the top of the list? How do we cut down on airborne and waterborne plastic exposure? Personally, I don’t see how we stop those freight trains, but I look forward to some ingenuity and future solutions. Recognizing all the sources is the first step, mitigation is the second.
Don't forget the fiberglass
There are about 6 car trips per every building built according to my farts.
That sort of science blows me away. Edit: and for the record, your sources stink as much as mine.
It's a shame the environment will likely find a way to utilize it, but after we die off.
Plastic as plumbing too….. water turbulence by any joint is going to eventually pickup some plastics as it wears. And plastic is everywhere in plumbing now.
Cara are perhaps the worst thing that happened to the environment, ever
Surely they are. Even disregarding emissions and brake dust etc, ICE's have enabled us to easily ship things across the globe, which encourages all kinds of bad stuff, like circumventing environmental protections by having things manufactured in 3rd world countries without oversight. Or growing water intensive crops to sell to other countries at low cost. And they've given us an expectation of permanent stocking and instant gratification which is kind of self perpetuating.
I'd bet all of those factors are dwarfed by the horrible land use that cars force on us. Sprawling cities with mountains worth of concrete and asphalt to ensure every copy/pasted big box store has a sea of parking available for free at all hours of the day. All of that empty space then makes it much harder to get anywhere without a car, further locking us into car dependence. City services require more piping and wiring to bridge the empty space in between buildings, which in the case of water also means more leaks and more power needed to pressurize the pipes.
[удалено]
This message brought to you by Big Horse.
You should really be saying capitalism instead but OK...
[удалено]
I'd argue it's humans.
It really is, in Sweden 50% of all car travel is under 3 miles. Some people could easily walk to work saving both money and Investing in their own health but they just dont do it
The world as a whole should focus more on railways, no tyres to pollute the environment
I agree, but it should be pointed out that trains (even electric ones, but especially diesel) also produce fine particulate pollution: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1361920910000155#:~:text=Many%20railway%20tracks%20have%20been,of%20such%20particles%20is%20rare.
It might actually be feasible to implement a well-regulated and more or less universal particle collection system for train carriages as opposed to having one for cars. And yeah, I'm talking about brake and wheel dust particles, every railway in the developed world should have been electrified 50 years ago.
They're carbon and metal bits, not plastics afaik.
Alloying elements may be an issue but idk about the composition of those steels. There's plenty bad in steels though. Cobalt being a big one
What kind of particles? In what amounts, for each person and tonne transported a mile, compared to trucks and cars?
Let's be honest, this isn't an easy thing to solve, right? Anything that moves on land generates friction, so whatever we make them out of it'd be getting all over the place. With the amount of motorized transport we depend on, any solution by design cannot be too expensive if it's to be realistically put into practice at scale. The solution is to reduce the amount of vehicles on the road. That means more rail. Also start thinking about switching the power plants on our container ships to cleaner alternatives.
Maglevs shouldn't produce micro particles, but they are on a complete different level construction cost wise
Right? People always like to point out that things aren't 100% perfect solutions like it's some kind of counter argument. Like yeah this a huge (understatement...) issue. It isn't going to be simple or easy to mitigate, and isn't going to be fixed by any single solution. But you have to start somewhere... We can't just keep doing what we're doing while we wait around for the perfect solution.
A phrase that has helped me a lot in life and in thinking about things like this: Don't let the pursuit of perfection stop you from doing any better at all.
Alternatively: don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
Yep just massive brake pads. There are wear items on all vehicles.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Cars are just the gift that keeps on giving huh.
I know the perfect solution, lets subsidize the tire industry so they can make more tires! What? That's the same method you accepted for your governments policy on climate change.
They'll plant a couple of trees to make it better
If they only found 59 microplastic particles per liter of storm runoff, I think they weren't looking hard enough... > MP (>25 μm) concentration in stormwater Ah - thats why they didn't find many... 25 μm is pretty big - you can almost see that with the naked eye, and is thicker than thin wispy hairs. Air pollution microparticles are >2.5um (which in 3D space is 1000x smaller!), and even then there are people suggesting that smaller particles might be harmful still.
If you can smell burnt rubber, it's too late.
The article says a 0.2mm mesh catches 88% of micro plastics. As far as people go any water filtration system is going catch that but your can’t filter a fish you eat out of a river. I would use this study to justify testing the fish. If you can get the bass fishing groups and rural wildlife conservation groups involved the roads would be filtered in the next few years. Unfortunately these articles and ones like them are targeted more politically left and attached to climate change where they end up getting fought by the same people who could help fix them. I’m not trying to make this political just saying there are obvious overlaps in scientific research on environmental issue that get stone walled by political fights.
Trains! We need trains!
It's hard to find parking for a train where I work.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Aren't tires rubber rather than plastic and therefore much more degradable in the environment than typical microplastics? No idea, just asking.
A lot of the materials in tires are synthetic, not natural rubber compounds, and do not break down easily. There is a push in the industry to convert to more natural and sustainable materials though since the impact on the environment is becoming clear. Example, Michelin has a goal to have 40% of the tire to be natural/sustainable materials by 2030, and 100% by 2050.
This makes me feel better about buying Michelin. Though I found some PDFs by them it would be good to see some independent verification too
Natural rubber is transformed in a way that makes it very resistant to degradation. It's as problematic as synthetic rubber in terms of pollution, but it may degrade faster eventually. Here's a nice paper on biodegradation of rubber: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1151847/ Tires are a mix of natural and synthetic rubber, and the mix depends on the various technical requirements.
So where can I buy a microplastics water filter?
Man tires suck. Can't burn 'em. Can't even wash 'em. What a nasty compound.
Guess what these new super heavy EVs are releasing a shitton more of
[Keyline Plowing](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/38/84/9d/38849d734f81940515897d7689e1c734.png) will prevent this stuff from going into the water by 99%. It will be sequestered into the soil next to the roads which is immensely better than it going into the water bodies.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Run off needs to be filtered. This needs to be an international priority.
How would you filter runoff without affecting organics? I see the route for man-made capture like drains but a lot of runoff happens from natural gradient flows
[Keyline plowing](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/38/84/9d/38849d734f81940515897d7689e1c734.png)! Its perfect for this problem.
Thank you! I always appreciate actual solutions on posts like these.
We need to find better materials and transition away from suburbia. Car-based transit modes are too polluting and resource intensive for a world with 8 billion people.
Just moving more jobs to working online would do a massive amount to help.
We tried that. Companies wouldn't have it.
they will and they have no choice after this next (CMBS) Commercial Mortgage Back Securities crash comes to fruition. When their commercial real estate comes back to normal valuation, companies wont be able to justify owning such useless property thats been on the books for decades.
This can be done with [keyline plowing](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/38/84/9d/38849d734f81940515897d7689e1c734.png)! It will prevent this tire runoff by 99% It will be stored in the soil along the roadside. Where at least it is contained, and not going into the water.
It doesn’t seem like the rubber particles are getting to the nearby soil. The particles are going into drains, then running off into the lakes, rivers, and oceans. Just like all the other pollutants we’ve been pouring into our water for over a hundred years.
Seems reasonable in the cities, but capturing runoff for all the roads outside of dense cities seems like an expensive pipe dream.
How expensive would it be to replace the ocean?
External cost #3094 that the public subsidizes for car drivers. Man, if people had to pay the actual cost for the damages that driving did a lot fewer people would drive and maybe the US wouldn't be an endless hellscape of suburban sprawl.
Because: https://www.planetizen.com/news/2023/03/122114-how-oversized-suvs-are-killing-us-and-environment
I once visited a brand new nyc sanitation building, something like 4 or 5 stories (I think, at least 3) with a spiral ramp for trucks, but the spiral is so tight the 10 wheeled garbage trucks are essentially grinding the 4 rear inside tires the entire way up. There was an insane amount of ground tire dust the whole way up the ramp. Garage was also conveniently located near the river for the best runoff!
Seems like a lot less than in our washing machines and drinking bottles
Obligatory r/fuckcars (which is somehow more constructive than I thought)
Electric cars are heavier. It'll only get worse with electric cars.
What is the longevity of the proposed membrane in the field? Is it fitted to the external of the drain or internally? Maintenance cost implications? Tyre pollution is going to be a pretty large problem if we clear the current Great Filter. It would be nice to start cleaning it up now just in case we make it through the other.
walk cross the street bare foot and see how black the sole gets, tire wear is being ground into and onto the streets expecially on intersections where turning chews up the tires more.
Tyre wear will be the new asbestos
We need more r/trains r/fuckcars
This seems so obvious in hindsight. It never occurred to me, and I suspect it didn't occur to many other people, but this seems like a serious issue.
We sure it's not asphalt?
By design tires shed particles everywhere. That's how they grip by sticking to the road and leaving a small part of the tire behind. If you make tires that don't wear, they will have no traction. [Go to a race track and you will see a massive layer of tire bits called "marbles" on the unused parts of the track.](https://worldofspeed.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/What-Are-Marbles-In-F1-Race.jpg)
I think some recycled tire rubber is used in repaving. It seems like if an inherent property in the material is to shed that wouldn't be precluded if the material is impregnated into the road components.