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When Rubber Hits the Road, and Washes Away
- ncmncm 6y agoSeems like banning cadmium and lead in tires would be a good start, whatever else we do.
- gumby 6y agoIt's difficult as those are added to form tighter bonds in the rubber (Cd) and promote flexibility (Pb). Not sure the alternatives would be any less toxic.
- andromeduck 6y agoBanning shit prematurely is how we ended up with solder/bump-gate when Europe prematurely banned leader solder and flaky wires when Apple dropped PVC in favor due to Greenpeace handwringling.
- 0_____0 6y agoand somehow humans are still alive, and largely have no idea what the issues you mentioned are.
- andromeduck 6y agoAnd now you understand climate change denial.
- deeviant 6y agoWow, is somebody mad their candidate lost? Don't you have some baby seals you can go club to feel better, or something?
- 0_____0 6y agoIs there a massive issue with fatigue-related fracture failure of Pb-free solder joints that we need to fix to ensure the future of humanity?
- andromeduck 6y agoNo, but that argument is a bad for the same reason why it's bad when applied to climate change. No single lump of coal caused climate change, the problem is the avoidable harm in aggregate.
- 0_____0 6y agoIt's only a reasonable comparison if we're ignoring a large issue. I've spent the last 5 minutes looking for reports of failures due to tin whiskers, and mostly what I see is trade mag notes and essays from about 15 years ago that anticipate a coming plague of electronics failures from tin whiskers. If you have more info about the scale of the avoidable harm in aggregate, as you put it, I'd love to see it.
- gumby 6y agoSoldered connections don't last as long making products less repairable. Certain industries (e.g. aerospace) have wavers for these rules as connection failure could be fatal. I'm glad those ROHS rules are in place but the tradeoffs are real.
- 0_____0 6y agoSoldered Pb-Free connections don't last as long under what conditions? High-vibe? Large and frequent temperature excursions? High mechanical loading (high-mass components or bulky ones with leverage?) What solder are you using? I think there's been a learning process since the adoption of Pb-free processes. Solder alloys have improved, package sizes have conveniently shrunk, you have underfill for BGA if necessary. Also when designing for high-vibe or large ∆temp, there's lab testing (shaker table, env. chamber) work that gets done esp. for safety-related hardware Like, yes, Pb-free has considerations, but so does any other component of a system. I find that I usually don't have to give it much thought these days, and the fracture failures I've seen could have been mitigated by design changes rather than returning to Pb solder.
- analog31 6y agoIt's interesting that during the switch to Pb-free, other changes occurred in the electronics industry almost concurrently. Those were a switch to water based fluxes and cleaning processes, and a shift to production facilities in China, both of which involved a certain learning curve. I remember a year or two of boards with high failure rates, yet we looked and looked for things like solder whiskers to no avail.
- Gibbon1 6y agoThe funny thing is the claim that the switch to PB free was some sort of sudden thing imposed on the industry from the outside instead of a 15-20 year long process where the industry have heavily involved in decision making. First rumblings I remember about phasing out lead was around 1988 or so. Same time they also had to deal with switching to surface mount packages and the phase out of Freon. The electronics industry didn't want the liability of having to deal with lead solder, lead contaminated waste, and worker safety. Seriously in 30 years I've never heard any complaints from the PCB manufacturers about phase out of lead. Only from people with no attachment to the industry.
- AlotOfReading 6y agoRoHS was great. Sure, there were a couple years when we all got sketchy electronics, but the technology fixing that was only developed because of the legal force applied.
- andromeduck 6y agoCous have also ended up in the same place by just gradually internalizing the cost and higher for an effective ban - not unlike a carbon tax.
- AlotOfReading 6y agoOne of the criticisms of RoHS was that even the companies that had exemptions were unable to exercise them because factories found it uneconomical to maintain separate production lines. If the EU had simply raised the cost, it would have been added onto the price and nothing significant would have changed.
- tuatoru 6y agoA lesson for proponents of a carbon tax. perhaps?
- maxerickson 6y agoWhy? If the tax attaches at point of production, the incentive is to use the output that is cheaper including the tax, or the best mix possible, shifting to less consumptive processes over time even if they can't meet demand at the start.
- tuatoru 6y agoIt depends on the visibility of the tax to the final consumer, and its long run salience. Take water meters, a current topic in NZ. Some cities don't have them, some do. When I was last in the industry (over a decade ago) research had tended to show that after introduction of meters (usually with price rises) there was a reduction in per-household demand. But over the course of a few years this reduction vanished: households were back on their old water consumption trend. Water wasn't a big enough cost to matter either way. (Commercial consumers have always been metered, so there isn't a lot of evidence there. Those I looked at had good reasons for using as much water as they did.) If producers have to absorb the tax, things will probably work out as you say. If they can pass it along without losing much demand, maybe not.
- ars 6y agoI like that the article that least suggests a solution at the end, and not just "stop driving".
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoAnd the solutions weren't even the typical "implement a regressive tax to kick the poor off the roads" thinly veiled in environmentalism. 7/10, Expectations exceeded.
- worik 6y agoDrive less. Be happier....
- Shivetya 6y agoAnyone who has owned a car sporting summer tires can tell you how much some brands shed and it sticks to your car so you know a lot of it is ending up in the air. Which leads to the fact anyone driving a convertible can tell you the black grime you wipe off the interior of your car, much of it not noticeable until you wipe it down. Then top it all off with a healthy does of brake dust. Summer blend tires did not used to be so prevalent but many sports sedans started to put them on to give the road grip that people expected. Then some tires run a bit soft to dampen road noise. So besides changing road surfaces the costs can be passed onto tire blends that are designed to shed. A few dollars on a price of a summer tire isn't going to be noticed considered their upfront costs usually are much higher than standard tires
- frankus 6y agoWith an average car tire weighing in at 12 kg or so, I find it surprising that they can lose something like half a kilo per year and still be useable after a half dozen years. I suspect what’s going on is that heavy truck and bus tires are shedding the bulk of the mass. I’m not sure if there’s a takeaway other than a preference for rail when all else is equal.
- zaroth 6y ago> In the car-happy United States, the amount jumps to nearly five kilograms—or about the weight of a cat. 1.25 kg/tire/year is a totally unbelievable quantity for a passenger car tire to shed annually.
- maxerickson 6y agoA medium size tire has ~5 square feet of surface area, so 3 or 4 square feet of tread. A tenth of an inch of wear on that surface is at least close to a pound of rubber.
- zaroth 6y agoThis EPA study[1] (Pg 21) shows tire wear per mile has an inverse relationship to speed, but averages around 0.005g/km - 0.02g/km per tire. (NOTE: their table is per axle, front tires wear twice as fast) 20,000 km would be 100-400g per tire. EDIT: Sorry, the units in the table shift from km, mi, single tire, axle, whole car, and it took me several tries to get the right numbers. https://cfpub.epa.gov/si/si_public_file_download.cfm?p_download_id=525701 https://cfpub.epa.gov/si/si_public_file_download.cfm?p_downl...
- maxerickson 6y agoYeah, in any case the paper gives smaller values than my estimate. It does use small vehicles though, at least relative to the last decades of production in the US (paper uses 1990s European sedans).
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- mensetmanusman 6y agoDesign collection and filtration aspects into road design.
- jfk13 6y agoOr maybe into vehicles. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/science-environment-54980602 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/science-environment-54980602
- megablast 6y agoHa. As if roads don’t cost society enough.
- dredmorbius 6y agoAmid remaining uncertainty, one immediate low-tech alternative is rain gardens built at road runoff zones. Stormwater pools there, seeping into the earth, which filters out harmful particles before they can reach natural waterbodies. The SFEI team is sampling several rain gardens around San Francisco. One early test site shows a promising 90 percent reduction in particles, including tire fragments. From TFA.
- supertrope 6y agoOr build bikeways and rail.
- briefcomment 6y agoWe need hover cars. No more brake dust and rubber.
- pintxo 6y agoAnd a lot more accidents: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NDtClsHWy4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NDtClsHWy4
- sandworm101 6y agoWhat nobody talks about is the link between this rubber pollution and safety. Modern cars have huge oversized tires with massive friction potentials. In normal driving we never get anywhere near those friction limits. It all sits in reserve for that time we need to stop now. Our cars can stop on a dime in an emergency, far far shorter than current regulations mandate. Compare any new car today to a classic car from the 60s or 70s (on the old rubber). Our stopping distances today are half or even a third of previously accepted norms. The price for that ability: rubber on the road. It is a choice we have actively made, one i doubt many would reconsider. Who here would buy a non-polluting tire if it meant your car stopped even 25% slower?
- permo-w 6y agoI think you’re massively underestimating the impact of automatic braking
- permo-w 6y agoTo be clear, the commenter I’m replying to edited his comment, making mine look odd. Previously it commented on braking distances falling 40-50% between the 70s and now, and didn’t seem to be taking ABS into account
- dawnerd 6y ago> Who here would buy a non-polluting tire if it meant your car stopped even 25% slower? I wouldn’t. The regulations are outdated and for heavier cars like Evs you need all the stopping power you can get.
- spaceisballer 6y agoI always thought BEVs would be way heavier and I remember looking my model 3 up before I bought it and was surprised. Did a quick look again and here are the curb weights I found. Tesla Model 3: 3,686lbs Audi A4 2020: 3417-3627 2020 BMW 3-Series: 3582
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- Animats 6y agoTire rubber shedding has been much reduced as tire life has increased. Look at old highway pictures from the 1950s and 1960s. You can often see tire tracks on paved roads. Plus, of course, the industry standard oil leak in the center of the lane. Why would tires contain cadmium or lead? Here's a good tire recycling plant.[1] The process is straightforward. Chop up the tires, re-chop to smaller pieces, magnetically separate metal tire cords, grind up remaining rubber component, ship rubber to plant that makes rubber products, ship steel to steel mill. Many videos of tire recycling plants on Youtube show inefficient operations. Big piles of partially chopped up tires, no reduction to a usable powder, no metal separation, not enough throughput. Serious operations have a front-end loader putting tires into the input hopper. Ones that look like subsidized demo plants have someone putting one tire at a time onto a conveyor. (They also tend to have names involving "Eco" and "Green". The serious players talk about tons per hour and the value of the product that comes out.) [1] https://youtu.be/UWyLzXHqJSs https://youtu.be/UWyLzXHqJSs
- schoen 6y ago> Why would tires contain cadmium or lead? I guess because of the chemical additives used in the rubber manufacturing process to improve the rubber's material properties. E.g. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1021949816301259 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S102194981... (a random article warning about heavy metal contamination of rubber stoppers used in drug manufacturing). I remember 1493 talking about how natural rubber, while it has many otherwise useful properties, responds poorly to heat and cold. So vulcanization and other chemical transformations helped improve that and make rubber appropriate for a much wider range of applications. It looks like some of the vulcanization processes use metal oxides, including lead oxides, as an additive. The examples on the Wikipedia page using lead oxides are for neoprene (which is unlikely to be in tires, I guess) but it seems that butadiene, which is in tires, is made with "metal oxide catalysts" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butadiene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butadiene I wonder if the catalysts contaminate the resulting product or something. (Clearly the butadiene itself isn't supposed to contain metals and the catalyst, being a catalyst, isn't supposed to be absorbed into the reaction.) Could there be rubber manufacturers who just throw some heavy metal oxides directly into their rubber because they're cheap and they help make the end product more durable, even though there are in principle better and safer ways to achieve the same results? Maybe they're thinking "this particular rubber isn't going to be eaten or come in contact with food, and it's not going to come in contact with skin very much, so it doesn't really matter if it's a bit toxic". I've seen Prop 65 warnings for lead on all sorts of electrical cables -- maybe it was used to manufacture the rubbers and vinyls in the insulators?
- 0max 6y agoI wonder how much human powered bicycles contribute to the microplastics generated?
- asdff 6y agoSurely microplastic generation is quite a bit lower with total weight being an order of magnitude lower
- bicepjai 6y agoSolution: Students create device to capture car tyre microplastic debris https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25246857 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25246857