This is certainly important, interesting information about carinogenic tyre toxins particularly from heavy electric vehicles.
I have also included below information regarding EV fires and how they are dealt with, if at all since it appears that in some circumstances, highly toxic EV fires are apparently left to burn-out under supervision.
Drivers of electric cars are unwittingly releasing more toxic tyre particles into the air than those driving petrol vehicles, experts have warned.
Scientists, analysts and regulators are growing increasingly concerned about the amount of potentially harmful tiny particles coming off tyres, especially those from heavier cars such as electric vehicles, due to the number of toxic petrochemicals that they are made from.
This comes as the Government is attempting to reduce carbon emissions under its “net zero” drive by encoruaging drivers to use electric cars. Motorists with older petrol vehicles in London also face fresh charges to enter Sadiq Khan’s Ultra-low emission zone (Ulez), which is expanding to cover all London boroughs from August.
However, experts have warned that non-exhaust pollution will rise when more electric cars are on the road.
Professor Roy M. Harrison, at the School of Geography, Earth & Environmental Sciences at the University of Birmingham, said: “The non-exhaust emissions from road traffic in developed countries now exceed the exhaust emissions, so that is a problem. And it's a problem that will get slightly worse as we go into a battery electric fleet and also as traffic volumes probably increase additionally.”
Modern tyres contain around 400 organic compounds, many of which are derived from crude oil. Some of these are highly toxic chemicals such as naphthalene, toluene, and isoprene, as well as heavy metals like zinc and lead.
Every time someone drives, tiny bits of their tyres break away, releasing a range of these toxic chemicals, both in larger pieces and nanoparticles. The bigger pieces will be carried off the road by rain into rivers and sewage, where they may seep into the earth or flow into the sea. The smaller particles will filter into the air and be breathed in by humans and animals, reaching deep into the lungs.
Nick Molden, chief executive at Emissions Analytics, which studies the pollution caused by tyres, said: “We’re going diametrically in the wrong direction at the moment by making our vehicles heavier.
“SUVs and electric cars are shedding an awful lot of tiny but nasty chemicals – some of which are highly carcinogenic – which we’re partly inhaling but are also getting into our water and food.”
Emissions Analytics conducted a test last year that concluded almost 2,000 times more particle pollution is produced by tyre wear than what is pumped out of the exhausts of modern cars.
“If you’re worried about burning fossil fuels in your car engine, you should be as worried about the wear from tyres”, Molden said. “Tailpipe emissions really only affect the air, whereas tyre wear affects air, soil and water.”
This is an issue for the UK and other nations as they move towards having more electric cars. The heavier a vehicle, the greater wear a tyre will face. Electric vehicles weigh an average of 200kg to 300kg more than a petrol car, due to the battery pack. They also need higher torque – the twisting power that launches a car from a standing start – than internal combustion engines, which also puts more pressure on the tyres.
The tyre manufacturer Michelin said conventional tyres wear out around 20pc faster in an electric vehicle, while Goodyear said they can wear out as much as 50pc faster.
In February, researchers at Imperial College London called for more research into the potentially harmful impact of toxic tyre particles on health and the environment. It said six million tonnes of tyre wear particles are released globally each year, and in London alone, 2.6 million vehicles emit around nine thousand tonnes of tyre wear particles annually.
The weight of electric vehicles is already causing concern from some engineers that they will put some multi-storey car parks built in the 1960s and 70s under such pressure they will be at the risk of collapse, The Telegraph reported in April. Government ministers have also urged councils to check how much weight bridges in their area can hold.
This may become even more of an issue in the future as electric cars are set to carry more weight. Rather than battery packs getting lighter as technology advances, electric car manufacturers like Tesla are actually opting for heavier iron-based batteries that do not use the expensive, scarce materials of nickel and cobalt.
It is not yet clear how harmful tyre particles may be to human health, especially as it can be hard to determine what has come from tyres alone. However, 6PPD, a chemical used almost only in tyres that is included to reduce cracking, has been found to have harmful effects on the environment.
Regulators are starting to acknowledge the issue. In 2025, new EU regulations will introduce a minimum standard for tyre emissions for the first time, while California is considering making tyre manufacturers find alternatives to 6PPD.
Gavin Whitmore, a spokesman for The Tyre Industry Project, an industry-backed research group that counts 11 major tyre makers as members, said: “We remain committed to understanding any potential impacts of tyre and road wear particles and to working with industry and other stakeholders to develop a holistic approach to better understand and promote action on mitigation.”
I appreciated Ross Clark’s commentary on the foregoing information.
How lovely and clean London’s air will be once that nice Sadiq Khan’s Ultra Low Emissions Zone (Ulez) has been extended across the entire city and the Government’s ban on petrol and diesel cars has taken effect. Well, not quite. In fact, was there ever such a misnomer as a “zero emission vehicle”? Far from cleaning the air there is evidence that in one respect the adoption of electric vehicles could make pollution worse.
Electric vehicles might reduce carbon emissions (though far from eliminating them – indeed their manufacture involves carbon emissions). They might not have exhaust pipes spewing out nitrogen oxides. But growing attention has been paid in recent years to pollution from tiny particulate matter, which can penetrate deep into human lungs. Long-term exposure has been linked to an increased risk of heart disease and lung cancer. Trouble is that a fair amount of these emissions from cars emanate from tyres, not engines, and electric vehicles could possibly emit more because their heavier weight causes greater tyre wear.
While huge attention has been paid to emissions from exhausts, which quite rightly have been cleaned up over the years thanks to progressively tougher regulations, rather less attention has been paid to tyres. The Euro 4 regulations for petrol engines and Euro 6 regulations for diesel engines – on which Ulez is based – take little account of emissions from tyres; they are based on emissions from exhausts. Yet it doesn’t take too much to wonder if a heavy electric car driven around the streets of London could be emitting more tyre pollution than a relatively light petrol car.
Everyone wants clean air – and air pollution has fallen dramatically in many respects over the past half century. But regulations which fixate on one form of pollution and ignore others ultimately help no-one. We had a similar thing 20 years ago when the EU, along with the Blair government, offered tax incentives to encourage diesel engines on the grounds that, mile for mile, they spewed out less carbon dioxide. So they did, but they also emitted more nitrogen dioxides.
There is no point in employing measures like Ulez to drive petrol and diesel engines off the road unless legislation is also going to tackle pollution from tyres. There must be ways in which this form of pollution could be reduced, such as by tweaking the chemical composition of tyres – which use synthetic rubber manufactured from oil. Why can’t we have tax incentives for harder-wearing tyres, or for lighter vehicles? That would rapidly encourage car manufacturers to find ways of reducing tyre emissions.
The trouble is that this is not how green politics works. Rather it is in the hands of student-like activists who will obsess about one narrow objective to the exclusion of all other concerns. The promotion of electric cars is a case in point. Their cheerleaders have turned them into a pin-up for the green movement – while ignoring the carbon emissions from their manufacture, the consumption of heavy metals in the making of their batteries, and the filthy pollution from their tyres.
There are of course other health and safety risks with electric vehicles.
Despite the fact that they are relatively uncommon, electric vehicle (EV) fires are notoriously challenging to put out when they do occur. So, how do you put out an electric vehicle fire?
The main reason for this is that the fire is usually the result of damage or a fault to the lithium-ion batteries. The fuel source for the entire EV, lithium ion-batteries deliver a far higher energy density than the batteries found in petrol or diesel cars. As such, should an electric vehicle catch fire, it can burn for several hours at a very high temperature. It also has the propensity to reignite hours, days or weeks after it first caught fire.
The problem with electric vehicle fires As outlined, the source of an electric vehicle fire is normally its lithium-ion battery pack. Located on the underside of the car, this battery pack is not only difficult to access, it also represents a shock hazard for emergency personnel attending the fire. What’s more, thanks to the electrolytes in lithium-ion batteries containing hydrocarbon solvents, electric vehicle fires can burn at temperatures exceeding 1,200°C. This only adds to the dangers of tackling electric vehicle fires.
How to put out an electric vehicle fire You may be surprised to discover that several electric vehicle manufacturers actually advise emergency personnel to oversee a controlled burn in the event of fire. This procedure involves trained firefighters protecting the area around the burning car and waiting for it to burn out over time i.e. for all the energy in the lithium-ion battery to be spent.
Deployment of an electric vehicle fire blanket Unfortunately, a controlled burn is not always an option, especially in confined or heavily populated spaces such as car parks, ferries, garages, road tunnels or petrol stations. The objective is this case is to minimise the combustion potential by depriving the fire of oxygen and the best way to do this is with a specialist electric vehicle fire blanket. Once the car fire blanket has been deployed, the fire brigade can focus on extinguishing the fire.
There is also the massive amounts of rare earth and other minerals required for the manufacturing of EVs using vast quantities of fossil fuels. The mining involves the rape and pillage of huge tracts of land to for rare earth and other minerals required to manufacture the huge heavy batteries for EVs.
via Chris Manuel on Facebook:
To replace all UK-based vehicles today with electric vehicles (not including the LGV and HGV fleets), assuming they use the most resource-frugal next-generation NMC 811 batteries, would take 207,900 tonnes cobalt, 264,600 tonnes of lithium carbonate (LCE), at least 7,200 tonnes of neodymium and dysprosium, in addition to 2,362,500 tonnes copper. This represents, just under two times the total annual world cobalt production, nearly the entire world production of neodymium, three quarters the world’s lithium production and 12% of the world’s copper production during 2018.
