Hacker News Reader

Comment by pedalpete | Hacker News Reader

Have you got a source for this concern? Tires are rubber, not plastic as far as I know, and though many textiles are polyester, and fleece is mostly recycled plastics (if I recall) where is the mass use of plastic in the textile industry?

View on HN

>The estimated per capita emission ranges from 0.23 to 4.7 kg/year, with a global average of 0.81 kg/year. The emissions from car tires (100%) are substantially higher than those of other sources of microplastics, e.g., airplane tires (2%), artificial turf (12–50%), brake wear (8%), and road markings (5%). Emissions and pathways depend on local factors like road type or sewage systems. The relative contribution of tire wear and tear to the total global amount of plastics ending up in our oceans is estimated to be 5–10%. In air, 3–7% of the particulate matter (PM2.5) is estimated to consist of tire wear and tear, indicating that it may contribute to the global health burden of air pollution which has been projected by the World Health Organization (WHO) at 3 million deaths in 2012. Pollution from tire wear and tear also enters the food chain, but further research is needed to assess human health risks.[52]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microplastics

There's a lot more to tires than rubber:

https://www.ustires.org/whats-tire-0

Synthetic fibers include Rayon, Nylon, Polyester, Acrylic, and Spandex among the more widely used ones

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_fiber

These are the fibers in the reinforcing bands and rims, right? Those are buried under the rubber and if your tire is shedding material from those bands then your tire must be truly worn to nothing. I think the vast majority of material shed from tires must be the rubber itself.

Illustration of a tire cross section: https://www.michelintruck.com/img/tires/xze-zoomer.jpg

I think the point of the second part was that a lot of textiles are made of plastic fibers

Rubber is a plastic. As for polyester, what do you think PET plastic is?

I will add that a weathered component of tire rubber has recently been identified as causing mass death of salmon when it washes off into streams.

The fish-killing is caused by an added chemical that acts as a sunscreen. It increases the UV resistance of the rubber, thus prolonging tire life. It isn't the rubber itself that is the problem, at least in that example.

I think it's fair to charge the responsibility of the additive to the material that it's included in. It would not have been included if it didn't serve a purpose of enabling the use of that material.

> Tires are rubber,

> many textiles are polyester

Rubber can be natural or synthetic, and the synthetic rubber is a plastic polymer. Tyres use a mix of natural and synthetic rubber.

Polyester can be natural, but it's often synthetic. Synthetic polyester is not biodegradable. A lot of polyester clothing uses synthetic polyester.

I think you may be thinking of viscose/rayon. Pretty sure all polyesters used in manufacturing are synthetic.

They were originally natural rubber, but it's expensive and less resilient than synthetic variety, and not avaliable in quantities that would be needed for all the cars in the world.

here's a tire company admitting that tires are a major source of microplastics in the ocean

https://www.nokiantyres.com/company/sustainability/environme...

Polymers make up about 50% of textile fibers globally. They’re light, cheap, durable.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com