SO WHATS NEXT?
EV cars hazards!
Like all cars, their tires are constantly rubbing against pavement, releasing particulates that float through the air and leach into waterways, damaging human health and wildlife. New EV models tend to be heavier and quicker—generating more particulates and deepening the danger. In other words, EVs have a tire-pollution problem, and one that is poised to get worse as America begins to adopt electric cars en masse. None of this is inevitable. EVs don’t need to be so massive and lightning-fast—these are choices that the auto industry has made. All of us will pay the price.
This pollution is the inevitable result of the tire wear that every car owner experiences over time. Composed of hundreds of ingredients that can include natural and artificial rubber, petroleum, nylon, and steel, tires constantly spit out tiny bits of material, much of it invisible to the naked eye. The rate at which your tires break down will depend on many factors, but the cumulative quantity of tire pollution, ranging from visible pieces of rubber to nanoparticles, is staggering: as much as 6 million metric tons annually worldwide, according to a report from Imperial College London. “We are generating an enormous amount of rubber wear that ends up in the atmosphere as very small particles or on the road surfaces as large particles that get washed away,” Marc Masen, a mechanical engineer at Imperial College and a co-author of that report, told me. Rougher surfaces tend to produce larger tire chunks that settle on the ground, while smoother roadways, such as freshly paved highways, generate minuscule ones that can float in the air for hundreds of feet.
Much about tire pollution is still unknown. Compared with tailpipe emissions, tire particles are more difficult to measure in a laboratory and to isolate in the real world, where various kinds of car pollution mix together, Masen said. Only in recent years has the toll started to come into view. As a form of microplastics, tire pollution hits wildlife hard: Compounds that settle on the ground gradually leach toxic chemicals into the soil and water. One study concluded that tires could be responsible for as much as 28 percent of the microplastics in global oceans; another found them to be among the largest sources of such pollutants in the San Francisco Bay. Microplastics can be consumed by tiny aquatic organisms, wreaking havoc as they travel up food chains. A University of Washington study in 2020 traced a collapse in Northwestern-coho-salmon populations to 6PPD, a chemical added to tires to slow their wearing down.
The smallest tire particles, measured in mere nanometers, can enter our lungs and spread to our organs. Various tire components have been linked to chronic conditions including respiratory problems, kidney damage, neurological damage, and birth defects—a particular concern in neighborhoods adjacent to highways, whose residents skew low-income and minority. Tire particles could also affect us through our food because their chemicals can work their way into the algae and grass consumed by fish and cows. In the U.S., tire emissions aren’t regulated at all; though more stringent rules have made cars cleaner, research reported in The Guardian last year found that in newer cars, pollution from tires is much greater than tailpipe emissions.
My knowledge of battery powered vehicles is the compound of tires is harder for better life of the battery. Haha harder chunks laying int the Ditches.