Fuck Cars

Meanwhile car culture: BIGGER CARS, MORE WEIGHT, WIDER TIRES, MORE RUBBER, MORE ACCELERATION

Tbf regenerative braking is likely helping reduce the rate at which microparticles are shed by tires when slowing a vehicle, but the absolutely insane torque on modern cars, as well as the weight of carrying around the battery capacity to pull off that one road trip you'll do once a year is likely offsetting the tiny benefits of that one improvement.

Why be efficient when you can ensure your own safety in an accident at the expense of the people you plow through?

Meanwhile, brain-dead bosses: "It's time to return to the office and look busy from 9-5."

I used to live in a farming area with some roads that were basically semi truck conveyors. You could see the dirt next to those roads was caked in oil and rubber dust

@ajsadauskas

Wrong. Each person is not responsible for 1kg,

Someone living in rural Tanzania is responsible for close to zero kg, and some people are probably responsible for dozens of kg.

I really hate when people say "each person" implying that everyone use about the same amount, rather than an actual tonnage. Feel free to add distribution across nations, life styles and other categorizations after that.

<crawls-back-under-the-rock_without-tires/>
@fuck_cars

"Microplastics are of increasing concern in the environment [1, 2]. Tire wear is estimated to be one of the largest sources of microplastics entering the aquatic environment [3,4,5,6,7]. The mechanical abrasion of car tires by the road surface forms tire wear particles (TWP) [8] and/or tire and road wear particles (TRWP), consisting of a complex mixture of rubber, with both embedded asphalt and minerals from the pavement [9]."

https://microplastics.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s43591-021-00008-w

You quoted the introduction, not even their conclusions. That's not how scientific papers work.

Your post amounts to mostly baseless fear mongering while ignoring the real data you actually link to:

(TWP = tire wear microplastic particles)

Results indicate that TWP occur in relatively high concentrations compared to microplastics in general and that the corresponding risk of TWP is above threshold levels. Because TWP exists both as anthropogenic particulates and as a source of a suite of chemicals, providing a risk assessment is challenging. This study provides a first risk assessment posed by particle effects (TWPMP) as well as risks posed by chemical effects (organic micropollutants). Additional research is required to further address the risks of TWP, e.g. toxicity testing for environmentally realistic TWP material and aligning exposure and effect data.

I interpret that as there are clear signs of it being an issue but further research is required to actually find out how big the issue actually is.

I tried to read the paper for more details but I'm not very well versed in risk assessment of substances, so I barely understood it.

i remember about a decade ago when GM announced they had developed tires made out of mushrooms. but of course nothing came from it and i cant find anything online. anyone else remember?

@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars This is the elephant in the room that most environmentally conscious organization do not want to think about.

"But our results are still worrying, particularly as the time in which the animals were exposed to the particles was short. The observed decrease in bivalve feeding and burrowing at low concentrations suggests exposure to tyre wear microplastics in the wild will significantly impact this species."

The members of those orgs all use cars.

Depressing.

It occurred to me last week, humanity has always feared nuclear weapons. People warned of the extinction of humanity should they see widespread use. But all this time we've been happily consuming and discarding something more subtle, but poisonous to life. And it's literally everywhere.

Globally, each person is responsible for around 1kg of microplastic pollution from tyre wear released into the environment on average each year

Not me. I ride a bicycle. My tires don't even weigh a kilogram.

@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars tires wear down - where do you think all that material goes? Waterways, soil, your respiratory system, skin, clothing, crops, livestock feed etc.