I was just talking to my wife about playgrounds using shredded tires as the "mulch". I don't know where the rubber comes from, if and how it is cleaned, or what particulate material it carries, but it seems dubious at best.
[1] https://www.hna.de/lokales/kreis-kassel/kreis-kassel-eu-verb...
[2] https://playground-landscape.com/de/article/2033-gesundheits...
I wouldn't be surprised to learn that inhaled microplastics were causing an increase in lung cancers. We know they end up deep in the lungs.
Not really unless the car comes with HEPA filters [1], which most don't.
[1] https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/resources/documents/car-bus-exposure-...
Both of this is compounded by the fact that people living next to major roads tend to be poorer, so there is a socio-economic issue present as well.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/25/living-n...
[2] https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/presse/pressemitteilungen/ver...
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2. Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) •Purpose: Byproducts from extender oils and carbon black. •Danger: Known carcinogens, mutagens, and endocrine disruptors. Persist in the environment and can leach from tire wear particles. •Status: Regulated in the EU; linked to air and soil contamination.
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3. Benzothiazoles (e.g., 2-mercaptobenzothiazole) •Purpose: Vulcanization accelerators. •Danger: Toxic to aquatic organisms, possibly carcinogenic, and bioaccumulative. •Status: Found in tire leachate and considered a contaminant of emerging concern.
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Nothing definitive about harm to human welfare yet, as far as I know.
https://theconversation.com/one-of-the-biggest-microplastic-...
And it links to this further article on 'tire toxicity':
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/toxic-tires-6ppdq-auto-pollutio...
"When tires wear on pavement, 6PPD is released. It reacts with ozone to become a different chemical, 6PPD-q, which can be extremely toxic — so much so that it has been linked to repeated fish kills in Washington state.... Testing by a British company, Emissions Analytics, found that a car's tires emit 1 trillion ultrafine particles per kilometer driven — from 5 to 9 pounds of rubber per internal combustion car per year....
a team of researchers, led by scientists at Washington State University and the University of Washington, who were trying to determine why coho salmon returning to Seattle-area creeks to spawn were dying in large numbers.... in 2020 they announced they'd found the culprit: 6PPD....
Tests by Emissions Analytics have found that tires produce up to 2,000 times as much particle pollution by mass as tailpipes."
also, they would periodocially dump "more dirt" onto the field, once every year or so. Not sure if they vacuumed the old stuff up or just dumped more on top, but sometimes you would go out there and there would be a huge pile of rubber in the middle, which I guess got spread out later
A number of schools, and public facilities, near me have switched to plastic pitches for this reason. I'm not advocating for them but there is a rationale.
BTW it's not just that being very muddy makes it difficult to play on but that using the pitch in that state trashes the grass.