Could also be formaldehyde is the most studied for causing cancer. No one wants to fund a longitudinal tire dust study :/
https://earth.org/tyre-pollution/
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.estlett.4c00792
Here's a call for more studies:
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/243333/prioritise-tackling-t...
https://www.ceh.ac.uk/news-and-media/news/new-method-measure...
I wish we cared about the rivers and oceans, but as a group we seem to mostly hope that enough bacteria will evolve to eat that stuff. Getting people to do something about the air we breathe is a lot easier (and even then change is slow and with a lot of opposition)
I think we're behaving like a room full of monkeys that are just throwing shit around and hoping that not too much ends up on ourselves. We can't continue to do that forever.
This is the sort of thing that can be alleviated with software, but that won't be satisfying to the people who like the sensation of being pressed into the back of their seat the instant the light turns green. At least with an EV it isn't accompanied by noise pollution.
> More weight and faster acceleration cause EV tires to wear out 20 to 50% faster than conventional car tyres, and even more sustainable tyres designed for EVs wear 26% faster than gasoline models.
Most braking is done by recuperation, i.e. turning the motors into generators, braking electromagnetically, so to speak.
Deeper than even cigarettes used to be (in North America). There was a time when people couldn't imagine a day without a cigarette. Now think about a future state where living without a personal motor vehicle is both a sane and practical choice.
It will similarly take a long time to combat vested interests and change consumers' habits.
People who are driving there are likely doing so in a way that allows them to either absorb costs or pass them on to others.
Kansas City, for example, does not have a workable public transit system. If you charge a congestion tax to reduce traffic on interstates, it means real pain because there is no alternative.
There are far more Kansas Cities in the US than there are New York Cities.
You say this as if you have a highly compelling argument against the claim: what is it?
Transit lines are massive new capital costs that are hard to build. We live in an era where people are still fighting cell towers.
For the commuter, there’s a few options in most places: take a bus if available and save money at the cost of time, wfh, complain and get the company to move, move to a closer locale, or pay. Making a fast convenient transit system is not happening in 2025, and most of the field of dreams thinking about bike lanes isn’t working.
In NYC, it’s a scheme to prop up the MTA, whose labor contracts consume all oxygen — the organization is broke after imposing a regional sales tax that affects people living as far north as Poughkeepsie. And frankly, as awesome as NYC is, it’s fucked long term - it’s no longer a diversified economy, and the biggest industry is slowly attriting away. You need transit, and everyone is priced out of areas that are transit accessible. Many buildings in Manhattan are essentially vacant today.
In my city, a $6M budget hole prompted a sudden concern for child safety. We lowered the speed limit to 25, 20 in school zones, and setup a network of cameras. The busiest corridor attracted 15,000 tickets in a week. Guess what else happened? People in that corridor made alternate choices, and three busy retailers in the strip announced they were closing.
The difference is elasticity - the marginal cost and hassle of getting a toll/ticket will lead me to another CVS. My office Christmas party can be outside of the city line. But my employer is more sticky.
I interpret this to mean "a future state in the US", since there are many places all over the world, where it is already sane and practical to live without a car or motorbike or similar vehicle.
We should be careful not to let perfect be the enemy of good, such as mandates to reduce tire wear[1] and elimination / substitution of the most harmful tire additives.[2][3]
[1] https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/about/news-room/press-releases-...
[2] https://e360.yale.edu/features/tire-pollution-toxic-chemical...
[3] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041202...
It'd make more sense and be less ethical to expose people to either formaldehyde or tire dust in a confined area, but that study is definitely not getting funded
My older house might leak conditioned air like a sieve, but it's also venting away the various VOCs from whatever cheap crap I have recently brought inside.