>> The concentrations of the tire additives in leafy vegetables are low overall and are, for example, 238 ng/kg for benzothiazole (BTZ), or 0.4 ng/kg for 6PPD, a substance whose transformation product 6PPD quinone is known to be highly toxic for aquatic species like coho salmon. Depending on the diet, this leads to a daily intake per person of 12 to 1,296 ng for BTZ, or 0.06 to 2.6 ng for 6PPD. This is comparable in magnitude to drug residues, which also enter the food chain. According to Thilo Hofmann, the study shows clear results: "While the concentrations and daily intake are fortunately relatively low, additives from car tires are still found in food. That's not where they belong." According to Hofmann, the next steps should now be to investigate the environmental and human health aspects.
With regards to the finding, IMHO we're missing an opportunity to price persistence into chemical production/use.
There should be direct costs to a company choosing to use indefinitely-persistent chemical in their products, as opposed to something with shorter environmental degradation.
Maybe there are use cases where that's worth paying! E.g. tires. But we should financially incentivize the global outcomes we want.
The samples of leafy vegetables were from Israel, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland. I have a bad feeling the numbers are much worse in urban and suburban United States, where car culture utterly dominates in close proximity to many farms and home gardens.
Possibly, but most US produce comes from low-density areas. By definition, otherwise nobody could afford massive acreage.
That means the less populous parts of California, Arizona, and Florida.
It'd be interesting to do an upstream drainage trace though, as many rivers do flow through urban areas. Although less so in California? Given they're mostly mountains-to-sea, so would hit fields before major coastal population centers?
Not to be a wet blanket, but people have talked about pricing externalities into manufacturing for years now and as far as I can tell literally nobody at the policy making level is even breathing a word of it.
One can argue that mined metals are not going anywhere. They stay on the planet. If anything, they become easier for future generations to access via recycling. It would be different if the metals were being exported outside the planet.
LOL. There is no "pricing" of this persistence. It just accumulates and accumulates. It is incompatible with life. It has to be banned completely except perhaps for extremely rare whitelisted use cases such as in laboratories for calibrating detection equipment.
How can one calculate the cost of hurting someone else? How much should X pay a country's government to lower everyone's life expectancy worldwide by 10%? There is absolutely no objectivity to be had here, only bribery. It is so silly that it's not even funny.
Moreover, money is an inflationary national currency, which itself is subject to heavy dilution. What good is a fixed rate going to do when it accomplishes the most damage in the decades ahead? Or how is it going to benefit animals and people of other countries that are not affiliated?
We already have a system for regulating extremely toxic agents like deadly viruses, explosives, radioactive materials, and other very hazardous materials. It works.
In truth there is no moral right that one has to emit pollution that hurts others.
That's a grossly misleading argument. Chemicals exist in groups. If sufficiently safety information isn't available about a chemical, the safety of its group can be relied upon, and this is sufficient for initial regulation. In contrast, grandfathering is erroneous, dangerous, and heinous. Additionally, safety often is a function of chain length as well. Besides, we have AI and quantum chemistry too to formulate great estimates until perfect information becomes available.
I have heard enough Ayn Rand style nonsense to know that it's nonsense. Her cult members will sell their wife and mother for money for a price, and they cannot be entrusted with environmental safety.
Good thing we’re moving to PHEVs and other cars that have more axle pressure and generates more tire and brake dust. Wait, that’s not a good thing at all.
Not to detract for your overall statement as you make an excellent point...
> ... brake dust ...
I would hope/assume that EVs would primarily use regenerative braking and only use friction brakes for emergency stops, thereby dramatically reducing brake pad wear
I bet most cars are used most times in traffic, hence the traffic. Although you can try to get through it avoiding the brakes, ’round here if you leave any kind of gap ahead of you, you’re gonna be slamming on the brakes instead of gradually braking every other minute. Also the extra weight in stop/start conditions can’t be ignored; it takes a lot of energy to get moving from a stop.
Fair point but I was talking about cars in general, which are all increasing in weight. EVs just helped make it palatable to have 2000+ kg tanks for personal use. Not singlehanded but certainly contributed.
Brake dust? I know the misinformation campaign is in full swing about battery vehicles, but are they really claiming they cause more brake dust with a straight face? That’s famously where regenerative braking causes less wear.
> his 11 electric Nissan Leaf taxis typically have a brake pad lifespan of 80,000 to 100,000 miles, with discs typically being changed because of warping rather than wear.
> Those brake pad and disc lifespans are four times and two times those of the brakes on his diesel taxis, respectively, and that’s on a type of vehicle that is known to be driven with little thought given to brake wear or efficiency.
Not only are EVs going up in weight, all cars are. That does increase brake dust. I also don’t think it’s even close to offsetting the road damage and tire dust caused by increased axle pressure, which is famously a cubic relationship.
One of the problems I want to solve during my lifetime is sustainable organic agriculture that anybody can grow in their backyards and basements. We’re so disconnected from the costs of poor health and nutrition that nobody seems interested in throwing gobs of money at the problem. Yet. Glad these studies reveal what is already assumed.
It's a already solved. It's called the farming industry.
All these small permaculture farms neglect to mention that it's way more labor intensive to maintain than regular farming (the one with big tractors and pesticides). Farming is hard physical work - so if you are in poor health, then what? Just starve, I guess.
Try this next year as an experiment - grow 25% of your yearly calories worth of potatoes. Doesn't even have to include your family (if you have one). Just for 1 adult person. See how "sustainable" that is for you in terms of labor.
Also not sure what this has to do with tire microplastic pollution. The 2 are kind of orthogonal.
Traditional farming should be for non-human ingestion. There’s too much “bad” in it through normal conventions. And this isn’t even talking about our dependence on fertilizers and the growing threat of a next dust bowl.
It is labor intensive but not that much. When I tried before the pandemic the routine was very dialed in and mostly starting the seed then harvest. Using targeted water and feeding schedules, it was mostly set it and forget it with ample excess.
Finally, the more control we have of the process and the inputs, the ability we will have to eliminate microplastics from the end product. Specifically, my butter and romaine lettuce growing hydroponically in my basement would not have shown traces of microplastics. If it did, I would’ve quickly altered the necessary piece of the puzzle.
We already use shade clothes for certain times of the year and plants. It’s foreseeable to use mesh screens to filter the air if that’s necessary. Although more likely to have a closed greenhouse using filtered air to control for other pests and pathogens. Rain would be similar. Cistern capture and filter before applying. You’d also use that to add fertilizer for targeted feeding.
I think it's clear. Tires. Tires are what's killing everyone. Or at least contributing more than we'd like to admit. Rise in cancer among young people, microplastics in the ocean, among a litany of other health issues on the rise. A hundred years of tire wear and industry is making itself known.
Honestly, tire companies would love to sell you tires once a year or more, if they were actually safer for the environment, and safe to eat or whatever. I'd happily make that trade-off, if there was legitimate science to back it up.
I think about this every time I drive through the morgan hill / gilroy / watsonville area on the way to a camping trip. You have some of the most expensive crops in the nation (berries, leafy greens, cherries, etc.) growing here in california, and it's surrounded by roads that somehow seem like they are always at capacity, depositing tire dust, particulate matter from diesel engines, and who knows what else all over the soil and the plants themselves.
This stuff should be just as regulated as if we were spraying it on our crops, because we are.
> growing evidence that car tires are a considerable source of pollution
Not surprised. In Honolulu I mop up what I thought was black soot from our Lanai. Then I was told it was actually mostly tire particles. So switching to electric is not enough.
The curb weight of most EVs in North America can be surprising when people look up their specs compared to past and present ICE or Hybrid vehicles. That weight has a lot of side-effects, or externalities, including higher relative tire wear, suspension wear, momentum in collisions, etc.
The difference is mostly from the battery. North American EVs tend to have larger batteries than their international market peers too because of product range targets and marketability; unfortunately, vehicles in the Nissan Leaf / BMW i3 / Volkswagen eGolf or ID3 size are a very small portion of North American EVs.
* The typical Tesla Model 3 weighs around 4,000 lbs (~1,800kg). Models Y, S, X (4,400 lbs, 4,700lbs, 5,200lbs / 2,000 kg, 2,100 kg, 2,400 kg) respectively.
* A 2024 Toyota Prius weighs around 3,100 lbs (~1,400kg). A 2010-era Toyota Prius weighs around 3,000 lbs (~1,400kg).
* A Tesla Cybertruck (Dual-motor, lightest config) weighs around 6,600 lbs (3,000kg).
* A General Motors Hummer H2 (2002-2009) from the early 2000s-era weighs around 6,400 lbs (3,000kg)
* The Nissan Leaf / BMW i3 / VW ID3 size EVs, with their largest battery options (30-40kWh) tend to weigh around 3,000-3,500 lbs (1,300-1,600 kg)
* The typical North American EV weighs as much, if not more than, midsize and full-size pickup trucks from 20 years ago. The Hummer H2 weight is quoted above, not because it was a typical pickup/SUV, but because it was often considered to be a gaudy example of wastefulness during its time.
How a person defines "popular" and "comparable" will be significant here.
The examples given above aren't about Teslas, but Teslas are named as examples because for many they are often considered defacto synonymous with "EVs" in North America.
Vehicles a person might cross-shop could be considered "comparable" for some, yet not everyone will agree that those vehicles are actually "comparable" (e.g. Tesla Model 3 versus BMW 3-series or similar cars in the BMW 3-series' segment.
Should "comparable" be by specification? Cabin comfort? By product segment? By functional purpose? 0-60 acceleration times? By curb weight?
For alternative definitions of "popular" let's select some of the best-selling (i.e. units sold annually) automotive vehicles in North America. Best-selling 'overall' rather than by "product segment":
* 2024 Toyota RAV4 (3,800lbs / 1,700kg). The spans multiple configurations and trims, from ICE AWD to Hybrid AWD.
* 2024 Honda CRV (3,400-3900lbs / 1550-1,800 kg). This spans multiple configurations and trims, from ICE 2WD/AWD to Hybrid.
* 2024 Ford F150 XLT (5,000lbs / 2,300kg). There are many-many variants of F150 spanning powertrains, cab+bed configurations, trims. The curb weight example listed is for a SuperCrew Cab, 4x4, V6-Ecoboost Engine 6.5-ft bed configuration.
* Chevy Bolt EV/EUV (~3,600lbs / ~1650kg). The Bolt turns out to be an outlier amongst most of the North American EVs, and really better matches the Leaf/i3/ID.3 group of EVs.
* Fiat 500e (2024) (~2950lbs / ~1,350kg). Another outlier, classified as a "minicompact" car.
Generally, the most-common EVs being sold in North America outweigh the most-common ICE or Hybrid EVs being sold in North America. In terms of weight, the most-common EVs, regardless of bodystyle are more comparable to the light to medium duty pickup trucks and SUVs of the last few decades.
* This is interesting too because US States like California and Washington have road wear and maintenance funding issues because their revenue collection system was generally designed through gasoline consumption sales taxes which do not apply to EVs. Additionally, in California regular pickup trucks are classified and taxed, via vehicle registration and weight penalty fees, as commercial vehicles rather than personal vehicles (For individuals, this results in registration fees that are 2x+ the non-commercial rate).
Yeah, not sure what growing evidence was needed. The black stuff I can wipe off my windows every other week or so living next to an arterial city road was quite enough evidence.
The problem with tires is the weight of cars grinding tires into the ground. Unless you weight 2 tons, I don't think you need to worry about sneaker particles.
well, the rubber compounds used are very different too. You would not enjoy riding a bicycle on the hard rubber used for a semi-truck tire.
The 4th-power rule is more applicable when it comes to road damage.
If you want a comparative analysis of tire wear and environmental impact, you have to consider the average mileage before a tire is worn out, the volume/mass of material that's lost, etc.
This article[0] suggests 150,000 miles for steer tires, and 300-500k for drive tires. If a tire starts out at 1/2" (16/32") and is worn down to 3/32", a delta of 13/32" or ~10mm. Radius of a typical 22.5" tire is 500mm and tread width 250mm, so you have (π500^2-π490^2)*250mm = 7.5L of rubber material deposited all over the world for each tire.
Over 1M miles, this is 12 steer tires, and 24 drive tires, so ~200L of tire rubber over a typical semi truck lifetime.
I just replaced a pair of worn-out bike tires. They certainly wore out by the rubber going somewhere. The amount of rubber lost was maybe a couple mm thick, by 15 mm wide. The tires had probably about 8000 miles on them. I don't know if that info helps with doing the math on where rubber particles primarily come from.
Where do they belong? When we set forever chemical loose in the environment, it is expected that a quantity of them will reach the ones in the top of the food chain, which humans are. Where are forever chemicals supposed to end up when we decide it is less costly economic-wise to use them?
The thing about climate change skepticism is that whether or not they are right we should all be opposed to swimming in our own poop so to speak. Instead of going the route of taking care of the environment we are turning the world into a toxic shithole.
I work for an environmental protection nonprofit and we have done research on which arguments work on people across the political spectrum.
People on the left are more easily convinced by scientific studies and by the idea that nature has a right to exist for more than human utility such at the values of wilderness and intact ecosystems.
People on the right are more easily convinced by fear that their environment has become toxic and impure and that they want their air, water and food to be natural and unadulterated.
That resonates with my impression too. The problem is that the two world views have a conflict in what are appropriate climate action policies. If you believe we should protect nature, that humanity is the bad thing, you want to ultimately remove humanity from some contexts (eg protected habitats), whereas if you believe that toxicity is the problem, you just want the toxicity out of /YOUR/ environment, and certainly don’t need to worry about protecting habitats.
Yes, this is exactly why climate is such a hard sell to conservatives. The carbon dioxide is not itself toxic (at least not for another century). I think the strongest conservative argument, and the one that I think has already taken root at the top, is the idea that famine is going to drive refugees across our borders (not to dissimilar to a fear of pollution). Of course, the response to that has been walls, not carbon regulation.
That's fine for your purposes as you just need the correlation and don't need to find the true cause. But in reality it doesn't tell you much about what the true nature of these people are. It just allows you to label them into groups. There could be plenty of confounding factors.
Can you say anything about the politically aligned response to GMOs? It seems like there are groups on both sides who feel very strongly about them.
My mild concerns relate to licensing and the economic pressure toward monoculture. It seems many are opposed to them in a sort of conspiracy theory panic.
So yeah, do you know what motivates opposition to them and how does motivations breakdown politically?
We don’t work on GMOs, so I haven’t seen any direct research on the topic. I’m guessing it mirrors antivax sentiment though where people on the political extremes are likely to agree with each other but for different reasons.
"We" can all be opposed to swimming in our own poop, but that doesn't mean "we" have any ability to change it. The problem IMO is that individuals do care about the environment, but corporations and governments really don't, and they are the ones in a position to make a difference.
Drilling further down, the individuals at companies and in government are in a position to make a difference, but they are not paid to help the environment; they're paid (or paid off in the case of government) to boost company profits. Until individuals are unwilling to help companies save money and boost profits by fucking the environment, fucking over consumers, etc., nothing is going to change.
It's about the same situation as lobbyists working for corporations to make sure corporations' interests are heard, whatever the costs. Do these lobbyists care about the environment? Maybe. Do they care enough to turn down the kind of money they're making? Nope. Let somebody else fix the environment, make sure consumers have rights, etc.
And before someone raises the vote card, IMO voting doesn't work at all. People are just voting for the most convincing / charismatic liar. Nothing says they have to actually do what they think you want them to, and what they say is important to them. And clearly, they don't, and it isn't.
When AOC came out with the New Green Deal it was ridiculed by climate change skeptics. Those same skeptics ought to have supported measures to detoxify the environment. Instead political theater was more important to them. People are selfish fools by and large.
“We’ll solve it later” is how we got to where we are now… maybe we’ll survive this one to create more problems to fix for ourselves, or maybe not. But hey why worry about it!
https://medienportal.univie.ac.at/en/media/recent-press-rele...
It has more informative content:
>> The concentrations of the tire additives in leafy vegetables are low overall and are, for example, 238 ng/kg for benzothiazole (BTZ), or 0.4 ng/kg for 6PPD, a substance whose transformation product 6PPD quinone is known to be highly toxic for aquatic species like coho salmon. Depending on the diet, this leads to a daily intake per person of 12 to 1,296 ng for BTZ, or 0.06 to 2.6 ng for 6PPD. This is comparable in magnitude to drug residues, which also enter the food chain. According to Thilo Hofmann, the study shows clear results: "While the concentrations and daily intake are fortunately relatively low, additives from car tires are still found in food. That's not where they belong." According to Hofmann, the next steps should now be to investigate the environmental and human health aspects.
With regards to the finding, IMHO we're missing an opportunity to price persistence into chemical production/use.
There should be direct costs to a company choosing to use indefinitely-persistent chemical in their products, as opposed to something with shorter environmental degradation.
Maybe there are use cases where that's worth paying! E.g. tires. But we should financially incentivize the global outcomes we want.