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Scientists tracked down a mass killer of salmon
- Scoundreller 6y agotldr: “ The killer was the 6PPD-quinone from the tires in the roadway runoff.” 6PPD is an antioxidant added to tires, and the -quinone is the oxidized form (not sure if it oxidizes before/during/after manufacturing or after escaping the tire).
- Grazester 6y agoAn article I read last week said from micro plastic from tire wear entering the water as runoff from the land.
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoSame thing? Its the chemical leaching from the rubber particles in the river.
- Grazester 6y agoYes its chemical leaching. "The researchers determined that the chemical is formed when a preservative known as 6PPD reacts with ozone. 6PPD is designed to extend the lifespan of tires by reacting with ozone in the surrounding air before it has a chance to interact with the rubber and weaken it, Kolodziej said." https://www.popsci.com/story/environment/coho-salmon-toxic-chemical-car-tires/ https://www.popsci.com/story/environment/coho-salmon-toxic-c...
- dschuler 6y agoBased on the Wikipedia entry [0], it looks like 6PPD binds to the extra oxygen atom in ozone to convert it to regular O2, so it would be used during the life of the tire to prevent cracking. I just read that ozone will cause cracks in regular rubber bands over time, I never knew that was the cause [1]. Interesting. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6PPD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6PPD [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_cracking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_cracking
- JKCalhoun 6y agoI wonder how long the industry has been adding 6PPD to tires? For better or worse we got along without adding this to tires in the past. Cracked tires: dangerous? Cosmetic? Or early warning that tires are getting old?
- canada_dry 6y agoGood question. Of course, like many things, the answer usually is: the moment they discovered the 6PPD was a cheap substitute for xyz.
- themaninthedark 6y agoYour tire is a pressure vessel. Cracks in in will be weak points. Your tire is thinner on the sides then the working face. Ozone in the atmosphere react with the tire compound and weakens it, leading to cracks forming which exposes more and more area deeper in the tire body to ozone. increased area increases chance of reaction. A tire that has recently been inflated to the upper limit of it's pressure range making stiff is traveling at 70 miles an hour, suddenly there is a spike in pressure as if hits a bump. The sidewall is weak.... How will this failure end? Tire are not a fixed technology, the companies are always having to create and reformulate to drive the price lower, last longer, have better traction.
- loraa 6y agospoiler: it's a bear.
- chefkoch 6y agoIt would be interesting why this hasn't been observerd at other places. I guess there are many places where road dirt is swept Info rivers.
- WhoIsSatoshi 6y agoI'd theorize it has, but nobody has been able to coordinate such a focused investigation.
- 238475235243 6y agoIt rains a lot there, not in other places.
- shellfishgene 6y agoThe paper also has data for Los Angeles, with concentrations begin similar.
- shellfishgene 6y agoIt's surprising they did not check toxicity on other salmon species. Either it's specific to the coho salmon, which is maybe unlikely, or other salmon species are not stocked in streams near cities?
- mattbk1 6y agoThey have to start somewhere. I'm sure we'll see more papers in the future.
- jandrese 6y agoFish in general have been undergoing a mass extinction event in recent decades. We normally blame it on overfishing, but effects like this could have been right under nose the entire time and simply missed because nobody was looking for it.
- std_badalloc 6y agoI've seen studies where they tracked wild Norwegian salmon, and found that 90% died before spawning. As far as I understood it, this was interpreted as "natural death", but it's the same figure as the one in the article. It seems like a very plausible explanation that those deaths also largely occurred due to the same poisoning from tires.
- gmueckl 6y agoI hope that the industry puts the required changes in place really soon and that it has the expected effect on Puget Sound. Are there any guesses whether a healthier salmon population would help the local Orcas as well?
- MrBuddyCasino 6y agoGreat that they were able to identify a clear candidate. This type of testing of course can't be done on humans to eg identify hormone disruptors. Are there other methods to verify such damaging chemicals, or are we condemned to live with permanent small-scale damage?
- im3w1l 6y agoBlack box modelling by trying different thing on humans is hopeless. We will have to figure out the mechanisms.
- londons_explore 6y agoBig datasets matching health outcomes to blood sample spectroscopy seems like a good candidate for identifying chemicals which detrimentally affect human health by small amounts. Obviously you won't be able to separate cause and effect, but in my view if "X chemical in people's blood leads to a higher likelihood of dropping out of school", thats a good enough reason to restrict the use of X, even if it sometimes turns out there is no causal effect.
- robocat 6y agoIt is a statistical nightmare to do what you suggest. 1. False correlations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_dredging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_dredging 2. True correlations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confounding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confounding 3. The number of normal compounds in our body from cell processes or digestion is large. Measuring tiny amounts of unknown compounds is extremely hard in that environment. A better way is to proscribe more in-depth testing of compounds on animals. Removing all other factors gives statistical power to observations.
- quotemstr 6y agoBut this type of testing can be done on near-human primates
- xiphias2 6y ago
- degenerate 6y agoNon-paywall link: https://archive.is/VvOTH https://archive.is/VvOTH
- remote_phone 6y agoThey use shredded tires in children’s playgrounds as artificial turf. A few years ago a soccer coach made the connection between that turf and children getting weird cancers and has been campaigning against them ever since. It looks like tires are much more toxic than we thought and we should reconsider their composition quickly.
- reachtarunhere 6y agoDo you have a link for this?
- andrevoget 6y agohttps://www.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-health-turf-idUSKCN0VL2KX https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-health-turf-idUSKCN0V...
- artvark11 6y agoAs a kid, I remember playing at playgrounds made entirely of old tires. Shedded tires on the ground, big farm tractor tires to climb on. Car tires stacked up to form towers. I wonder what impact that had on the thousands of kids that passed through there.
- abacadaba 6y agoand we were so proud of using all that recycled material too.
- dwaltrip 6y agoSeems the problem is not the recycling, but the composition of the items being recycled.
- sjg007 6y agoI feel like the best option is to recycle the tires into tarmac and reuse as much into new tires as well. The other thing is to live far away from major roads.
- jeffrallen 6y agoWonder if we need to rethink tyres from first principles. Maybe Elon Musk can do it. Instead of tweeting.
- leesec 6y agoLol? Maybe you could do it instead of posting? I don't understand.
- 14 6y agoTo the person [1] who said tires don’t matter I guess we can have this discussion again? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23613705 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23613705
- sradman 6y agoThe paper A ubiquitous tire rubber–derived chemical induces acute mortality in coho salmon [1]: > In U.S. Pacific Northwest coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch), stormwater exposure annually causes unexplained acute mortality when adult salmon migrate to urban creeks to reproduce. By investigating this phenomenon, we identified a highly toxic quinone transformation product of N-(1,3-dimethylbutyl)-N'-phenyl-p-phenylenediamine) (6PPD), a globally ubiquitous tire rubber antioxidant. [1] https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/12/09/science.abd6951.abstract https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/12/09/scie...
- ur-whale 6y agohttps://archive.is/VvOTH https://archive.is/VvOTH
- Tepix 6y agoSo, are there any tire manufacturers that advertise their tires as being 6ppd free? I'd buy them.
- ars 6y agoIt's probably too early since this just came out. But I suspect they can find an alternative to 6ppd and we just need a bit of publicity, and then maybe a year to reformulate tires.
- rini17 6y agoIt will end up like "BPA-free" beverage cans. Manufacturers just slightly change the chemical structure or use another plastic with not yet known adverse effects.
- m_eiman 6y agoWhich is why it's a tragedy that the EU chemical regulations weren't allowed to be based on a "you can use it if you can show it's safe" instead of "you can use it until someone else shows it's unsafe" principle. That would have been good.
- Karunamon 6y agoAlso impossible. Proving something safe is like proving a negative - proving a lack of something (harm).
- hikerclimb 6y agoBad. I think salmon should die so we don’t have food
- Bermion 6y ago"The team is in conversations with the tire industry and hopes manufacturers will be willing to look for a replacement preservative" - Is this how it usually works? I'd think they should contact some regulator that makes sure tires containing this cannot be sold. Companies don't do things to be nice.
- hh3k0 6y agoI'm surprised, too. And the companies in question should be fined quite substantially, in my opinion. We need to create incentive for them to actually research the possible detrimental environmental impact of their products -- scientists shouldn't have to beg them to use substitutes and the matter shouldn't be settled with the companies responding something along the lines of "whoops, we didn't know that."
- voxic11 6y agoYeah, the tire companies deserve some fines, but I think the drivers who smeared these tires all over the roads are even more responsible for the environmental impact. The drivers should be allowed to get away with "whoops, we didn't know that.".
- hh3k0 6y agoI disagree with that sentiment. I do not consider the consumer to be the one responsible of researching the safety of a product, the responsible party is clearly the one that produced and marketed the product.
- Tagbert 6y agoI don't suppose that any products that you use have unexpected impacts? Have you done the research? It's silly to expect consumers to verify safety upfront. if products are shown to be toxic and alternatives exist, then you can start expecting consumers to choose the less toxic version.
- Iv 6y agoRight now, the question to answer is "how much would it cost to use a different chemical?" and the answer could be "Oh, we just have to use one of the 100 different ones from our catalog, that's barely a tenth of a cent of difference" or it could be "no can do, this is a crucial molecule that prevents tires from rotting in winter." Once you know that, you can approach regulators who will have to weight between the interests of the fish industry and the interests of the tires industry.
- stfp 6y agoOur whole understanding and approach with regards to risks from industrial chemicals is so completely off... We keep churning out new compounds (~2000 every year??!) or new use cases for existing ones at insane scale or speed because "most of them are safe". Except the ones that aren't cause a wide range of damage, take 15 years to identify as causes, 15 more years to ban, 15 more to leave the ecosystem if they do at all, and are often replaced by minor variations that haven't been yet proven dangerous. It seems to me these things should be considered unsafe by default, tested at small scale for years, proven to be bio-degradable and if used at scale introduced very slowly... which in many cases won't be possible, which will readjust our stance so we only use them when absolutely critical and necessary vs. eg. putting teflon or PFAS in literally everything because why not. The other thing is individual accountability: chemical engineers who facilitate this insanity should be held responsible. Putting lead in gasoline and CFCs in the atmosphere used to get you medals, now similar "inventions" should get you a jail term proportionate to the damage caused.
- doitLP 6y agoAgreed. The same thing happened with BPA — banned in toys and bottles after decades of harm to be replaced by at least 40 other chemicals that haven’t proven to be unsafe — yet.
- minikites 6y ago>It seems to me these things should be considered unsafe by default, tested at small scale for years, proven to be bio-degradable and if used at scale introduced very slowly That's no way to create shareholder value.
- WalterBright 6y agoSocialist countries (without capitalism) have a worse track record.
- minikites 6y agoOh? I'm sure you have evidence for that, I'd like to see it.
- throwawaysea 6y agoRunoff carries all sorts of things into waters, and I think the issue is particularly bad when you have large denser areas like Seattle, since the concentration of unwanted chemicals in local waters can be huge. For example opioids from Seattle’s street level drug abuse can be found in local marine life: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/05/25/614593382/traces-of-opioids-found-in-seattle-area-mussels https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/05/25/614593382...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- josephjrobison 6y agoTLDR; The killer was the 6PPD-quinone from the tires in the roadway runoff.
- marknutter 6y agoHumans. Was it humans?
- Iwan-Zotow 6y agoPutin?
- splicer 6y agoIt's ironic that the toxicologist's name is McIntyre!