Road dust and its effect on human health: a literature review (2018)
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
> "Yu et al. [14] found that PAH-contaminated road dust in urban areas was associated with an elevated risk of cancer. They determined that the source of PAHs was a combination of biofuel and coal combustion and traffic engine emissions. Soltani et al. [12] reported high PAH concentrations in road dust near high-traffic roads. They concluded that both adults and children are vulnerable to the potential carcinogenic risk of road dust. In a meta-analysis, evidence was found of an association between PAHs and lung cancer [55]. Ramesh et al. [56] found PAHs to be related to colon cancer and breast cancer in humans, and to show high mutagenicity in laboratory animals."
By far the largest source of PAHs is diesel fuel combustion, meaning the trucking industry (which should be the primary target for replacement by EVs). See:
"Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in Flames, in Diesel Fuels, and in Diesel Emissions" (2005), NIST, @ sci-hub.se
> "Diesel fuels are composed of thousands of hydrocarbon species mainly including straight-chain paraffins, naphthenes, monocyclic and polycyclic aromatic species, most with carbon numbers from 10 to 22, and some sulfur-bearing compounds. The actual distribution of species among these classes depends strongly on the refining process that is controlled in part by regional environmental regulations. The PAH species in diesel fuels represent about 1 to 3% by mass of the total hydrocarbon content. Of the numerous compounds present in diesel fuels only the PAH species are considered herein because of their direct participation in particle formation and their widely documented adverse health effects."
> The big sources of pollution that your average ice car emits now are from the tires and to a lesser extent the brakes.
I'm not sure in what sense these are the "big" sources, but it's not by mass. An ICE car emits like 30kg of carbon per 100 miles while an entire car tire weighs only 12kg.
> At the end of the day the pattern of everyone taking a 5000lb vehicle that you replace every couple years to go anywhere at all is the thing that isn't sustainable, not as much the particular energy source for that vehicle.
Of course, most people don't replace their vehicle every couple of years, which suggests that we can decouple the "replace every couple of years" from the "vehicle" bit. In other words, driving (even when citing the weight of the vehicle, as though it has any bearing on the sustainability) is plenty sustainable, but what isn't sustainable is the same thing that plagues every aspect of American (and to a lesser degree, "western") life: consumerism, throw-away culture, importing cheap plastic garbage from China/etc, etc. Nothing special about driving in this regard.
Big in impact. Carbon in the form of carbon dioxide is naturally occurring within human's lungs and is well tolerated in relatively large amounts. You emit a kilogram of your own carbon dioxide through your lungs this way every day. A kilogram of tire material in your lungs would be a much larger impact on your health.
Carbon dioxide is likewise, by weight, not a very bad pollutant compared to some of the other gasses that were released by cars before catalysts. CO2 is not great to emit, for sure, but it's quite mild compared to NOx, CO, raw hydrocarbons, etc.
https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1135856_bigger-batterie...
Not trying to make a case against electric cars, but just wanted to explain that it's not just the 12kg of your tires that are the issue.
> The big sources of pollution that your average ice car emits now are from the tires and to a lesser extent the brakes.
I find it totally plausible that EVs emit more tire particles than ICE (although less for brakes, since most EVs have regenerative brakes to my knowledge, and I wouldn't expect those to emit much).
An entier 18 gallon gas tank weighs ~113 pounds and it can take you ~500 miles.
>30kg of carbon per 100 miles
Also, note that there is 113 pounds of fuel per 500 miles of travel.
So take 113 * 0.2 * 0.85 / 0.27 and you get 71 lbs of CO2 per 100mi of travel.
This 'fly ash' and 'bottom ash' are both so toxic that regulations don't allow putting them in landfill.
So instead we mix them in with concrete and asphalt in roads. I'm sure it sounded like a good plan to whoever was going to have to pay to deal with the toxic waste otherwise...
Nonsense. EVs and hybrids leverage regeneration for nearly all of their lifetime braking energy use. Its commonplace for EV brake pads to last the life of the vehicle today. Exceptions exist, but those are for particularly hard-braking drivers. Our Prius ran 200k miles on the factory brakes, for example.
During the processing of tire rubber to be used as playground mulch, it's cleaned, and most of the worst contaminates are removed. The worst thing in the recycled tires isn't heavy metals it's carbon black, and in both cases it shouldn't matter unless your children are eating the tire mulch.
https://www.cnn.com/2017/01/27/health/artificial-turf-cancer...
https://www.epa.gov/ingredients-used-pesticide-products/over...
Have you been to children playgrounds? This is exactly what they are going to do, at least once, at least try. On top of constantly touching it with they hands and then touch with everything else, falling on the ground, etc.
Calling it a toxic disaster and concentrating it in a area of play is plain insane.
In a few years we will find out why it made no sense and then they will have to tear them out.
The most recent wisdom on lead and other urban contaminants is that white vinegar removes as much and in some cases more surface contamination than so-called vegetable soap. Particularly in the case of lead which is soluble in acids. Additionally most lead in leafy greens are surface contamination, not bioaccumulation as widely reported.
White vinegar is excessively cheap, even in food grade forms, and is good for laundry as well (especially hard water, or in the PNW where mildew on clothes is a struggle). You can find half gallons for under $4.
where's all this lead coming from, given that leaded gas was banned decades ago? I know it's still used in GA, but outside of airports I'd expect those emissions to low.
My property tested high for lead. It’s not just paint, all that car exhaust is still in the dirt next to the road in high traffic areas, and in some cases might have picked up a little more from gas powered landscaping equipment.
Born & raised in the PNW and I can't say I ever found this to be an issue. Mildew and moss growing on my car, sure. Can you expand on that any? I'm curious.
I actually learned that trick in college, while commiserating about having to rewash clothes 2x to get the funk out.
I usually just wash them again with the same soap and they come out fine. Also front loaders are like 100x worse for mildew. My front loader, which was a super modern, brand new machine, everything would stink if you forget your clothes for a few hours. My 30 year old top loader... I gotta leave the clothes in there for about 2 days before it stinks. Forgetting them for a day is never a problem. At least not to my nose...
One theory is that the acid just cancels out hard water and makes the detergent more effective, but I don't buy that. Seattle water is so soft that home brewers have to add minerals to the water or the yeast won't multiply properly. In fact most of us are using way too much detergent in our laundry and our dishwashers because of it. I've also run out of vinegar enough times and have known this trick for enough years that I know for certain that washing 1x with vinegar always gets the mildew smell out, but 1x without it only works less than half the time.
I don’t understand. Should I wash my vegetables in white vinegar before eating?
I did significant research into relative pollutants and health outcomes in NYC, and found almost zero correlation. Lung cancer was a particular concern, but it seems occurrences aren't higher in the city by any statistically significant amount. I found that to be strange; cars are everywhere in the city and most individuals live within a dozen meters of a heavily trafficked road.
If anyone has competing evidence, I'd love to read it.
Moreover, our bodies did not evolve to eliminate combustion products and micron-sized scraps of rubber and asphalt. In this case where evidence is absent, it is more than prudent to assume the worst case: no amount of pollution is good for us. In the same vein, we know that poly-aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are carcinogenic, but does that mean we do not eat charbroiled steak? Of course not, but par for the course would be smoking a cigarette and introducing a shitload more carcinogens directly into our blood.
All of that is to say that we can probably tolerate and eliminate a low-level of exogenous pollutants entering our body, but sustained intake of pollution surely spells disaster. Then again, something's going to kill you, so pick your poison -- literally.
(Not exactly the damning evidence you're looking for, but the study below asserts causality between exogenous particulate matter infiltrating the CNS and neurological and behavioral disorders, including Alzheimer's-like symptoms and cognitive dysfunction in adults and children alike.)
Maybe also, the relative windiness of the city leads to less accumulation of road dust than you'd have in other areas? (Totally just conjecture).
Edit, found an article (Norwegian): https://www.nrk.no/trondelag/slik-loste-trondheim-problemene...
Basically they solved the issue with: washing the streets, reduce amount cars with spiked tires during winter, reduce speed of the road, switch to a more durable asphalt type, avoid using sand during winter.
https://www.epa.gov/mo/town-flood-and-superfund-looking-back...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Times_Beach,_Missouri#Crisis_a...
>The Idle was completed in 2018, after Battista worked for years to convince city, state and national officials to OK the project. Even before it opened, it became a punchline on NPR's "Wait, Wait ... Don't Tell Me" when a segment asked a caller to guess whether The Idle, a Karen Pence towel charm museum or a women's prisoner talent show were real. The caller didn't choose "The Idle."
Is a park in a city overlooking a freeway really that weird?
The joke on the Wait Wait... segment is which of these 3 ridiculous sounds things is actually real.
All that's left is tire wear, potentially a little higher due to increased typical weight of EVs and faster acceleration.
Ignores that the rest of the car tends to be light weighted, etc
Also ignores that EVs universally use low rolling resistance tires, which dissipate less energy in rolling friction and thus less energy to produce tire particulates. (Rubber is also not nearly as bad as these PAHs.)
How much difference can be made by changing the road surface? Do the quieter types of road surface also reduce the amount of tire dust?
EV drivers typically brake a little more gradually to maximize regeneration compared to conventional braking. Having each wheel be driven by electric motors with careful traction control can minimize tire wear as well.
If tire wear is the problem we’re trying to address, it might be a good idea to include a specific fee to address it. Related to tire composition and regular annual inspection of tires. That way wear can be minimized in an effective way. Or we develop tire tread whose wear particulates are not a major problem.
Which brings up a point: we have little to no evidence that tire particulates DO pose an actual problem, unlike PAHs, which we do have evidence for. Rubber is somewhat biodegradable already. And the wear particles may be of a size distribution that isn’t so problematic. Detection or extrapolation of existence is not evidence for a problem.
We are multiple levels removed from EVs theoretically having higher weight to actual known health problems here, and likely due to better control and lower rolling resistance, it’s likely EVs are superior.
If you're worried about people dodging the tax by over-wearing the tires (I doubt this would be a significant thing), you could arrange for taxes that lead to refunding less money when people recycle tires that have less tread left.
Tire pressure makes quite a bit of difference too.
Of course then they get washed away and end up in rivers and oceans, and we should do something about that. Probably there are a lot of low hanging fruit for that left, simply because historically nobody cared about it, apart from the inconvenience of needing to buy new tires.
EVs are a massive, massive improvement, and while I like improving stuff (or using alternatives) to reduce further downsides, I don’t think we should look a gift horse in the mouth, here.
To be honest even this is a bit of an overstatement. An MIT study found that a huge chunk of the lifetime emissions of a vehicle is in the production alone. EVs, mostly due to their batteries, have much much higher production emissions.
And given how dirty our current energy production is (and the added costs and inefficiencies of storing and transporting electricity) we won't feel the benefits of EVs offsetting the initial added costs for many many years
Also given how notoriously unreliable certain brands like Tesla have been (27th of 28 in Consumer Reports reliability index) it's possible that the added maintenance costs will push this break even point even further down the road
But as of right now all we've really managed to do is push these emissions from the first world (combustion emissions) to the third world (production emissions)
EDIT: link to MIT study: https://energy.mit.edu/research/mobilityofthefuture/
Around 40% of an EVs lifetime emissions are from production alone. Tesla's tend to be even higher because of the larger batteries and less efficient production
Electric vehicles have almost half the lifetime emissions. That's huge, no matter how you spin it.
Also one thing missing from this analysis is maintenance. The three factors taken into account are initial production (much higher for EVs), cost of fuel production (also much higher for EVs), and emissions from fuel combustion (0 for EVs). However batteries don't last forever and it still remains to be seen that EVs can reach the maintenance costs of combustion engine vehicles (with Tesla being a notable argument against EVs potential)
The batteries last longer than the 150,000km these studies assume. My 2013 Model S is at 209,000 kilometers and going strong with little (10% or less) range reduction.
I looked at the study a bit, and they use Model S-sized battery size and efficiency assumptions (about 3mi/kWh) to compare to a Camry. More appropriate would be Model 3 assumptions (4mi/kWh). The emissions factors are from a white paper 5 years ago, itself using older data. They assume 525grams of CO2 per kWh for the reference case going down to 345 in 2050, but the US already has emissions of about 375gramsCO2/kWh and falling. Just terrible assumptions. A bunch of stuff like that in the study.
And it compounds! A factor of 1.33 bigger battery (3mi/kWh instead of 4mi/kWh) whose manufacturing emissions are 1.41 times as high (525grams of CO2 per kWh vs 372, if we optimistically assume electricity is the main energy input but pessimistically assume the energy needed to make a kWh of capacity remains the same) means a factor of 1.9 exaggeration in manufacturing emissions. Plus the operating emissions per mile are also exaggerated by a factor of 1.9…
Finally: Batteries in modern EVs last the life of the vehicle. 500,000km or so. Potentially longer with LFP cells.
No it's very much not. Please see chapter 4 of the linked MIT report:
Fuel production emissions are also
typically higher for BEVs (and FCEVs) because, on
average, generating and delivering a megajoule of
electricity or hydrogen to a vehicle battery or fuel
cell consumes much more energy than producing
and delivering a megajoule of gasoline to the fuel
tank of an ICE1. Emissions from initial production
2. Emissions from fuel production
3. Emissions from fuel consumption
For EVs, emissions from 1 and 2 are higher. But this is more than offset by having 0 emissions from the third category. So yes, the emissions per mile traveled is less in EVs. However the cost of fuel production per mile traveled is still significantly higher (around 192% higher)
PS you're the only one who used the word "cheaper". I only used it when directly quoting you. I presumed we were still measuring by emissions and not by dollar cost, but I see now that you were talking about something else
EDIT: check out figure 4.6 on page 68
> “cost of fuel production (also much higher for EVs)”
At this point, that's only true if you're living in the dirtiest power grid in the US, are a low milage driver, and you junk your EV within two years of purchasing it new.
Also, the ICE car in this comparison has to be over a decade old (< 10% of the original embodied CO2 averaged out over the years), has to have top-tier fuel efficiency and also be much smaller than the EV.
The union of concerned scientists has a calculator for this based on zip code, and the exact model of EV.
This is false and actually the opposite is true. They actually used Model S sedan figures (3mi/kWh) for efficiency to compare to Camry sized vehicle. The more appropriate comparison is to a Model 3, which gets 4mi/kWh.
People underestimate how efficient Tesla’s powertrains are compared to most competitors. Tesla tends to do much BETTER at efficiency than their peers, not worse.
The Model 3's (mid range 2020) MPGe-CO2 is a bit better than a BMW i3 (2018). The i3 is a little euro city car thing.
They carefully optimized the BMW for weight, and also have some funky custom ultra efficient tires. For example, the frame is made of (hemp - supposedly lighter) fiberglass and carbon fiber, and they didn't offer power seats. It has a tiny trunk / no front trunk. It only gets EPA 135 miles per charge.
The BMW and Tesla are both much better than a 2022 BMW i4, Nissan Leaf, or Polestar 2. They're a bit better than the most recent Fiat 500e, which is closer to the i3's size.
Tesla's energy efficiency vs. size is really impressive.
They're also just... bad at making them. A 2020 survey by JD Power found that Tesla ranked last of the 38 brands they looked at in initial quality. It's a measurement of how many problems new vehicles face in the first 90 days of owning them
This is consistent with Consumer Reports rankings of Tesla as second to last in reliability
This is what I'm talking about when I say "inefficient manufacturing". Not fuel usage
all we need to do is convert street parking into bike lanes, and build a few parking structures in the oldest neighborhoods that were built before onsite parking was common (this mitigates the biggest legitimate objection for getting rid of street parking).
It will never happen of course, because the city council and most wings of local government are openly corrupt with regular FBI indictments.
The problem with electric cars is that they are still cars.
Sure, it's not a cure-all, and more pedestrian areas, better bicycle infrastructure, more medium-density housing with walkable neighborhoods, and heat-pumps instead of burning oil or gas are still important issues. But just switching from ICE to electric engines is a cheap win that I'm glad to get as well.
A 2022 Model Y (SUV) weighs 4400 pounds. A 2022 ICE Ford Explorer weighs 6100 pounds.
Maybe this is because Ford sucks at making reasonable-weight vehicles, right?
Well, a 2022 Ford Mustang Mach-E weighs 4700 pounds, which is a bit overweight vs. the Model Y, but still way lighter than their old flagship SUV.
I'm not sure how, but in the US, EVs are somehow lighter than comparable gas vehicles.
You are just using the wrong comparators. A Tesla Model Y is more comparable (for instance, it's a lot closer in dimensions) to the 3,700 lb Ford Escape SUV than the 4,400 Ford Explorer.
If you require everyone around you to to have the same priorities as you, then you may be happier in a smaller town.
The main issue with having cars (or not) is that infrastructure that costs many orders of magnitude more than the cars has to be rebuilt if you want to switch between car-dependent and walk/bike-everywhere.
May be you didn't pay attention? They were already protests in the 1970s to stop the non sense of building highways in the middle or urban centres. Jane Jacob was talking about it in the 1960s. It's not so much about environmentalists but urban designers have been talking of the negative impact of car culture on our society and way of life for decades.
Both things can be true. EVs are better than ICE cars. Not having your lifestyle and cities designed around cars for every single trip is better than EVs. And we can switch to EVs gradually while also making our dense communities more livable.
Not everything revolves around Elon Musk ideas, as much as he would like many to believe.
But, if the alternative to the BEV SUV is an ICE SUV then they'll still help a lot, saving lots of money and many lives.
In the US "capability" (even when we don't actually use it) is such a huge sell for many that I don't think were going to see a cultural shift to buying a smaller class of vehicle as you switch to EV. If anything Americans buy up as the operating costs go down.
EVs mean more power, more AWD, more cargo room than comparable ICE vehicles. More "capability", as you say. At the same time, the reduced range discourages going for a larger, bloated vehicle you don't need.
I can definitely imagine a lot of the families that have a crossover / smaller SUV now deciding to go with a sedan like the model 3. It has all the cargo storage they need and has the power / AWD they are used to.
I think you are right that some people on the margins may step down instead of staying flat or going up given features like frunk space (although model Y sales are beating 3 sales despite the reduced range and increased price), but AWD models of the 3 still weigh more than many AWD crossovers. Stepping down means a huge hit to total cargo volume and cargo height moving to a passthrough trunk vs a cargo area, and you also lose ground clearance that people think they will need for their yearly camping trip.
American car purchases have been trending bigger and bigger and I don't think a frunk and fast 0-60s is enough to buck that trend.
Even among those lower price points, the trend seems to be towards heavy SUVs/CUVs. Also, it's pretty clear that an equivalent car will be heavier as EV compared to it's ICE variant - the added weight of the batteries is a lot more than the weight saved by the electric engines. This is especially true for lighter engines with smaller displacement.
Now, of course there are some really small one or two seater EVs, but those also existed as ICEs and I don't think anything indicates that the majority of people will suddenly prefer smaller cars just because they buy an EV.
You got to try to zoom out and understand the pro/con of different options.
Good or bad, we have the society we have. I need to drive my kids to school. To do so safely, I need a large car. Would it be better to live in NYC and take the subway? Or have denser walkable communities? Sure. But in the meantime, the kids need to go to school.
Why would you focus on that when the review is talking about studies showing health impacts and only mentions tires once, explaining that general environmental dust becomes "road dust" when kicked up by tires?
From the abstract:
"Road dust was found to have harmful effects on the human body, especially on the respiratory system."
The entire conclusion:
"This literature review found studies that reported the components of road dust particles to be associated with multiple health effects, in particular on the respiratory and cardiovascular system. The review also found a need for a complete risk assessment of the effects of road dust on human health. We recommend a thorough meta-analysis as well as a 4-step risk assessment process, including a multi-source epidemiological study on road dust particles to identify chronic health effects, with a particular focus on PM2.5 and the inclusion of sources in both urban and rural locations."
Which of those led you to claim "it found no evidence linking road dust to long-term adverse health affects"?
" lead and chromium compounds in road dust were present in human body fluids, indicating that exposure to road dust carries certain risks. Lead is known to be responsible for deficits in neurobehavioral and cognitive development in childhood"
"Franklin et al. established an association between PM2.5 and cardiovascular mortality."
"Bell et al. [25] found that elements of PM2.5 road dust particles such as aluminum and silicon were associated with low birth weight (LBW)"
"Long-term exposure to aluminum was found to be associated with Alzheimer disease . Aluminum was found to be associated with respiratory allergies such as asthma in aluminum industry workers. The accumulation of aluminum can cause cardiac hypertrophy leading to cardiac failure."
"the health risks of road dust and found that a higher risk was associated with the presence of lead, chromium, ... Chromium is known to be carcinogenic. In human subjects, chromium has been found to cause allergic reactions and respiratory distress after short-term exposure. Long-term exposure to chromium has been proven to be associated with lung cancer. "
Increased incidence of: cancer, cognitive development deficits, increased cardiovascular mortality, low birth weight, Alzheimer's, caridac failure, lung cancer - these are not long term enough for you? These are not adverse health effects?
There are so many more statements like this that I don't even care to list them all. Yet you claim others didn't read the article, then summarize it as having no "long-term" health risks.
What in the paper supports your claim of no long term adverse health effects, compare to the (partial) list of items I quoted? Have a quote?
> "They reported that insoluble lead compounds were associated with respiratory tract inflammation, which could lead to respiratory tract cancer"
This is speculation and not evidence. It is certainly possible that road dust containing lead increases the prevalence of respiratory tract cancer, but this is not evidence of it.
> What in the paper supports your claim of no long term adverse health effects, compare to the (partial) list of items I quoted? Have a quote?
Read the "Discussion" and "Possible future research" sections. I didn't claim that there was no link between road dust and long-term adverse health effects, only that the review did not identify such a link.
It was not proving anything - it was listing things in the literature, of which it listed a significant amount of studies that did conclude significant adverse long term effects.
No where did it claim those studies were invalid - and it went to great lengths to list all the problems I listed above and more.
A literature review doesn't get to the end and say "Eureka! We proved it!" It gets to the end and says "we have listed current research, and we recommend further stuff for the following reasons".
It's a literature review - not a meta study, not a new study, not a critique of the previous papers - so it's not the proof you want it to be. The evidence of the paper is in the papers it cited, with key points pulled into this one.
>Read the "Discussion" and "Possible future research" sections.
Yes, it starts with the phrase "Our literature review...." As does the conclusion section, which continued "This literature review found studies that reported the components of road dust particles to be associated with multiple health effects, in particular on the respiratory and cardiovascular system."
I guess we're done at this point. The conclusion clearly states it's a review, and that road dust particles are associated with multiple health effects (which effects? The ones I quoted above, quite serious), which you claim the article does not state.
Which of those studies did conclude "significant adverse long term effects"?
> A literature review doesn't get to the end and say "Eureka! We proved it!" It gets to the end and says "we have listed current research, and we recommend further stuff for the following reasons".
A literature review summarizes the scientific knowledge - it is not merely an index. And as I wrote in my first comment, this summary does not include a link between road dust and long-term adverse health effects.