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Car tyres shed a quarter of all microplastics in the environment – urgent action is needed
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Car tyre wear accounts for approximately one quarter of all microplastics released into the environment, with tiny rubber and plastic fragments accumulating in soil, waterways, and food as vehicles drive normally. This source is largely invisible to consumers but represents one of the largest and most difficult-to-control contributors to the global microplastic burden, demanding urgent regulatory and engineering responses.
Tiny flakes of plastic, generated by the wear and tear of normal driving, eventually accumulate in the soil, in rivers and lakes, and even in our food.
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Check your tyres: you might be adding unnecessary microplastics to the environment
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Researchers highlight that properly inflating car tyres reduces tyre wear, which in turn lowers the amount of tyre rubber microplastics shed onto roads and washed into the environment, suggesting a simple habit change can have meaningful ecological benefits.
Tire-wear Particles as a Major Component of Microplastics in the Environment
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Researchers analyzed non-exhaust traffic particles along busy German roads using microscopy and SEM-EDX, finding that tire-wear particles dominate coarse airborne particulate matter and accumulate additional hazardous metals from brake and road abrasion, making them a major and chemically complex microplastic pollutant in aquatic environments.
One of the biggest microplastic pollution sources isn’t straws or grocery bags – it’s your tires
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This article explains how tire wear particles—tiny rubber and plastic fragments shed from tires during driving—are washed by rain into streams, lakes, and oceans, making tires one of the largest sources of environmental microplastic pollution. Understanding tire wear as a dominant microplastic source is essential for prioritizing mitigation strategies, from road design and urban runoff management to rethinking tire material composition.
How your car sheds microplastics into the ocean thousands of miles away
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Researchers found that roads act as conduits for microplastics shed from car tires and brake pads, transporting these particles through stormwater systems and rivers until they reach remote ocean habitats thousands of miles away, linking everyday driving to distant marine pollution.
Tyre wear particles: an abundant yet widely unreported microplastic?
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Researchers collected tire wear particles from roadside drains and natural environments near a major UK road, finding that these particles are abundant and widespread yet frequently undetected in environmental monitoring, suggesting tyre wear is a major but under-reported microplastic source.
Research digests by email
When a large batch of papers lands in the Atlas, we read through it and send a short write-up of what stood out.