If millions of tires have been worn down on the roads then where does all that worn off rubber go?
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Airborne, stuck on the asphalt and in waterways. And it is pretty toxic material for us and other alive things.
Swept away into waterways and then wherever those waterways lead, usually the ocean.
Yes, it’s bad for the environment.
It becomes particulate matter in the air. It’s actually not totally known how much of automotive PM emissions are from tire wear vs exhaust gases.
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The tiny particles of rubbers and plastics get deposited in nature and in the oceans. It’s commonly referred to as “microplastics,” particles from fairly big chunks of about 5mm down to particles just a few nanometers in size, smaller than you can see without a microscope.
Car tires are estimated to be the source of as much as 28% of ocean microplastics, making it the second largest single source, beaten out by synthetic fabrics that are estimated to contribute 35%.
Microplastics are so widespread that they have been found in wildlife, in tap water and in human blood.
This report explores various sources of ocean microplastics.
https://portals.iucn.org/library/node/46622
Lots of it floats in the air and it is breathed in, the rest settles on the ground where it gets moved around by rainfall and mixes into the soil or washes into streams, rivers, lakes, and the ocean.
breaks down to tiny particles that picked up by storm water.
Its why most commercial sites require some sort of filtration process for stormwater collected from roadways. Typically it is a Bioretention which is filled with granular stone or engineer soil fill. The water is directed into this artificial pond, and filtered through the stone and engineered soil to pull pollutants from the water, many of which come from tires, collected and redirected towards the city stormwater network.
First, it lands on the side of the road as micro-plastic and then that gets pushed into many different places.
For the most part it just builds up until a good rain happens and gets washed into the sewers.
Everything ends up in one of three places eventually:
– Air
– Water
– You (organisms)
Everything that comes out of a smokestack or tailpipe. Everything that drips out of a car or drainpipe.
Everything you discard in the trash.
Sometimes it happens instantly, sometimes it takes hundreds or thousands of years. But matter can be neither created nor destroyed. Best case scenario is to neutralize, dilute, or avoid.
I recommend Randall Munroe’ book “What If..2” where, among many other interesting (and useless) trivia, he calculates that in average a car tyre leaves a 1 atom thick track behind wherever you drive. A bit more when you break, obviously (sometimes even a visible trace), and I reckon a bit less on very smooth surfaces (think: ice!) but in average it is about 1 atom thick and as wide as the wheel.
It is just that atoms are so incredibly small that after tens of thousands of kilometres it only takes off about a centimetre of tyre. Then you’ll need a new one… (sooner if you like to break hard a lot!)
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