What comes out of the tailpipe has been the focus of concerns about vehicle pollution for years. Today, according to experts and regulators, we must pay more attention to toxic tire emissions as we drive down the road.
A substance called 6PPD is at the top of the list of concerns, which is added to rubber wheels to make them last longer. When rubber wear on asphalt, 6PPD is released. It reacts with ozone to create a different chemical called 6PPD- q, which can be really toxic, so much so that it has been linked to numerous fish deaths in Washington state.
The trouble with tires does n’t stop there. Tires are made mainly of natural plastic and synthetic plastic, but they contain hundreds of different ingredients, usually including metal and large metals such as copper, lead, cadmium, and zinc.
As car wheels wear, the plastic disappears in molecules, both pieces that can be seen with the naked eye and microparticles. Emissions Analytics, a British company, discovered that one car’s tires produce 1 trillion fine particles per mile driven, or 5 to 9 pounds of rubber per year in domestic combustion cars.
And what’s in those allergens is a secret, because shoe materials are amazing.
” You’ve got a chemical cocktail in these wheels that no one really understands and is kept very classified by the wheel makers”, said Nick Molden, CEO of Emissions Analytics. We have a hard time coming up with the idea of another client product that is so common and used by almost everyone, despite the fact that so little is known about what ingredients are in them.
Authorities have just begun to address the dangerous rubber issue, despite some activity on 6PPD.
A team of researchers led by researchers from Washington State University and the University of Washington, who were looking for clues as to why coho herring returning to Seattle-area rivers where they spawn were dying in large quantities.
Working for the Washington Stormwater Center, the researchers tested some 2, 000 ingredients to decide which one was causing the perish- downs, and in 2020 they announced they’d found the blame: 6PPD.
The Yurok Tribe in Northern California and two additional Native American tribes on the West Coast have filed petitions with the company to forbid the substance. The EPA stated that it is considering new chemistry regulations. ” We could not sit idle while 6PPD kills the bass that sustain us”, said Joseph L. James, president of the Yurok Tribe, in a statement. ” This lethal chemical has no position in any herring- containing boundary”.
California began regulating the substance, last month grading wheels that had it as a “priority product” and requiring manufacturers to look for and analyze substitutes.
“6PPD plays a vital role in the protection of tires on California’s roads and, presently, there are no commonly available safer alternatives”, said Karl Palmer, a deputy director at the state’s Department of Toxic Substances Control. ” Our framework is ideally suited to find alternatives to 6PPD that ensure the continued safety of tires on California’s roads while safeguarding California’s fish populations and the communities that rely on them,” states our statement.
A consortium of 16 tire manufacturers has been reportedly mobilized by the U.S. Tire Manufacturers Association to conduct an analysis of possible solutions. According to Anne Forristall Luke, president and CEO of USTMA, the study will “provide the most efficient and thorough analysis possible of whether a safer alternative to 6PPD in tires currently exists.”
Molden, however, said there is a catch. ” If they do n’t investigate, they are n’t allowed to sell in the state of California”, he said. ” If they investigate and do n’t find an alternative, they can go on selling. They do n’t have to find a substitute. And there is n’t any other option available right now.
California is also looking into a request from the California Stormwater Quality Association to require manufacturers to look for an alternative to tires that contain the heavy metal zinc. In order to increase the rubber’s strength, zinc is used in the vulcanization process.
When it comes to tire particles, though, there has n’t been any action, even as the problem worsens with the proliferation of electric cars. Electric vehicles wear out their tires more quickly and produce an estimated 20 % more tire particles than the average gas-powered car due to their quicker acceleration and greater torque.
A , recent study  , in Southern California found tire and brake emissions in Anaheim accounted for 30 % of PM2.5, a small- particulate air pollutant, while exhaust emissions accounted for 19 %. Up to 2, 000 times as much particle pollution in terms of mass as tailpipes, according to studies by Emissions Analytics.
These particles frequently get in the way of ingested water and air. Even smaller than PM2.5, trafficine particles can be inhaled and delivered directly to the brain from tires.  , New research , suggests tire microparticles should be classified as a pollutant of “high concern”.
In a , report issued last year, researchers at Imperial College London said the particles could affect the heart, lungs, and reproductive organs and cause cancer.
People who live or work along roadways, often low- income, are exposed to more of the toxic substances.
Tires are also a major source of microplastics. More than three-quarters of the microplastics that enter the ocean come from the synthetic rubber in tires, according to a report from the Pew Charitable Trusts and the British company Systemiq.
And tire emissions remain a great deal unknown, which can be particularly challenging to analyze because heat and pressure can cause them to morph into other compounds.
One outstanding research question is whether 6PPD- q affects people, and what health problems, if any, it could cause. A recent study published in Environmental Science & Technology Letters found that pregnant women had the highest levels of the chemical in urine samples from a region of South China.
According to Molden, the discovery of 6PPD-q has sparked new research into tires ‘ effects on health and the environment, and he anticipates a lot of new research in the coming years. ” The jigsaw pieces are coming together”, he said. ” But it’s a thousand- piece jigsaw, not a 200- piece jigsaw”.
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