If cars are causing microplastic pollution, Im sure bikes and trains are too.

Im seems using rubber/plastic compounds for tyres and brakes is always going to cause this issue on any vehicle.

The amount of damage to tires is proportional to the fourth power of the weight per axel. That means that for the same journey, a bike sheds (3000 kg / 80 kg)ˆ4 so about 20 million times less. Assuming that the rubber is the same—and not that it has proprietary chemistry that may or may not contain carcinogens. Eight orders of magnitude of difference feels relevant.

Almost every train I know use metal wheels. We can look at the few that don’t, but something tells me people who raise that argument don’t want to look at alternative wheel composition, but rather hope to seed doubt and, in private, lobby replace one metro with thousands of cars, and I’m not sure that’s a good idea.

So, please, don’t come in here with that bullshit.

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alt227 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Lovely tone, you sound like a really nice person.

I never mentioned train wheels at all. Their brake pads are made from things like carbon, ceramic, and resin compounds. These wear down like any brake pads and so cause the same dust pollution. Remember that some trains in the world are over a mile long and have over 1000 wheels.

I dont see anybody claiming that bikes or trains cause anywhere near the same level as cars, but it is important to remember that they still do cause some and so they are not a silver bullet. Solutions still need advancing in order to completely remove these pollutants from human transportation systems.

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dijit 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

'Bikes cause it too' is technically true in the way that a dripping tap and a burst dam both cause flooding. The effect of this framing (intentional or not) is to suggest we shouldn't prioritise the thing that causes 99.99% of the problem until we've solved the thing that causes 0.01%. That's not a serious position, you're just protecting your comfort.

	▲	alt227 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Have you ever seen the damage a dripping tap can do? I have seen houses completely wrecked by it. Stop protecting your argument by trying to say something small doesnt matter. It all matters, regardless of size. If the argument is that microplastics are harmful to health, surely we should be looking at all sources of them instead of just the biggest? My argument is 'Lets try to make all vehicle tyres and brakes from something that doesnt pollute the earth and harm animal life on it.' Yours seems to be 'Lets ignore the plastic pollution from other transport because cars cause the most, so thats all we need to worry about.'

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bertil 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Im sure bikes and trains are too. > … for tyres and brakes

You are welcome to edit your comment to clarify.

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alt227 2 hours ago | parent [-]

No need, it is correct.

Bikes have tyre pollution, and trains have brake pollution. Seems like a pretty simple statement to me.

Interesting that you have moved from arguing the point into semantics now without addressing anything else. You are welcome to remove your downvotes.

People seem to get very upset when others point out that transport like bikes and trains still cause the same pollution as cars. yes it is much less, possibly orders of magnitude so, but they still cause it. Perhaps instead of getting the pitchforks out we could work together to find better wheel and brake solutions for all transpotation methods which dont cause so much toxic dust.

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dijit 2 hours ago | parent [-]

You can't downvote direct replies.

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alt227 an hour ago | parent [-]

My original downvoted post wasnt a reply to Bertil, but thanks for chiming in with some random criticism on other peoples threads anyway.

	▲	bertil 35 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		You really don’t like factual replies, do you?

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scotty79 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

With cars there are higher energies involved, and things like that tend to grow with square or cube of the energy. I wouldn't be surprised if car was causing orders of magnitude more plastic pollution than a bike per person per mile.

	▲	Gigachad 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It’s quite intuitive to think about. The entire tread of the tire becomes ground up plastic dust. Cars burn through significantly more KGs of tires in a year than a bicycle.
	▲	alt227 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Thats obvious and goes without saying, but then I didnt state any specific metrics, only that they both casue the same thing even in different amounts