[FRIAM] materials science

[Steve Smith]

I read a report in the 90s that as LA was getting a grip on their air 
pollution they discovered that the two greatest contributers to 
particulates were tire-dust and unburned charcoal lighter fluid!

When I drive long distances (dumb idea in it's own right) one of the 
mental calculations I have done to pass the time is "how many gallons of 
auto-fuel have I burned in my lifetime?"   I do this by remembering each 
vehicle (and I have had many) I owned and roughly how many miles i put 
on it's clock during my tenure (usually 50-150k per vehicle) and the 
average fuel economy (worst was 15 for fullsize pickups, best was 60 for 
my honda insight before going EV).   I don't know how many gallons (or 
liters for the metrics here) a tanker truck carries, but rough 
volumetric comparison to the 55 gallon drums I know gave me a decent 
guess that I had probably burned through *several* of them in my 
lifetime.   Another ideation is *how many lugnuts* are there on the 
highway at any given time (post-apocalyptic slingshot ammo?). It is like 
counting sheep by counting their feet and dividing by 4, only bigger 
factors, esp with 18 wheelers.

I had not done the same calculation with tire-dust but I *do* have a 
sense of the number of miles I get from any given set of tires, the 
depth of tread turned to dust or ground into macadam, and the 
circumference/width of the tires.  It is not a small number.   I don't 
know how much bonds into the macadam, how much flutters up into the air 
as particulates and how much runs off into our waterways.  I guess the 
answer is "too much"?  But that is kindof lame.

I busted out my trusty windbreaker I hardly ever use (had it for 20 
years, used it 3 times?) to take on this trip to the EU.   When I 
unrolled it in the early morning slog-through-rain in Reykjavik I 
discovered that the lining was decomposing so as I donned and doffed and 
redonned that I was now covered in plastic dandruff averaging 1cm in 
size and was trailing the same.   Once out of the weather, I rolled it 
back up lining inside and dusted the dander off my clothes and luggage 
and the chair I had sat in.   It felt bad.   Later in Dublin I needed it 
again to walk a few blocks to pick up some food at an odd time (jet lag) 
and thought i was smart to shake it good (outside) and then wear it 
inside out so the "dander" would fall "harmlessly" to the street.   I 
rolled it back up and have only worn my dress overshirts to keep 
warm/dryish since.  The damn windbreaker *still* sheds.   Throwing it in 
a bin only makes it someone else's problem.  I suppose rolling it and 
wrapping it and sending it to the landfill is as good as it is going to 
get for me?  And where DID all that Teflon(tm) coating on my favorite 
omelette pan back home go as it went from pristine to heavily scratched 
(down to the Alzheimer's-implicated Aluminum?).   Quick! Throw it into 
someone else's backyard.

I've been reading for *years* about the problem with "degradeable 
plastics" and the threat of microparticulate plastics in the environment 
and here I was *shedding* them all over the dublin street.   By the time 
I walked back I could see no evidence (reference Hansel and Gretel and 
bread crumbs) of them... where did they go?

At LANL there was a joking truism in the environmental restoration 
groups (huge funding with only increasing budgets) of "the solution to 
pollution is dilution".   I can see how this was a real thing when/if/as 
biosystems can actually metabolize whatever it is you are "diluting" at 
a rate that keeps up with your dumping.   The traditional pollutants of 
humans (e.g. faeces) can be managed this way  it seems (animals do it by 
necessity) but the question is what is the threshold of dilution and how 
do we concentrate our selves and activities without turning our streets 
(as medieval cities did) into open sewers?   With non-biological 
pollutants (especially radionuclides with half-lives of centuries or 
millenia) this really sucks as a solution.   Similarly with heavy metals 
(anyone here worry about mercury poisoning from seafood?).

We have noticed that in Europe (and UK) most food service disposables 
are more appropriately *decomposable*... paper and wood and the only 
thing they seem to bother to encourage recycling for is plastic bottles 
(everywhere).   Glass and decomposables seem to go to a landfill which 
is actually pretty reasonable... Glass is *roughly* just fancy chunky 
sand and the cellulose products will decompose roughly as well as 
forest/prarie biomass does anyway, producing CO2 at best and Methane at 
worst.   I burn all my combustables in my woodstove, even in the summer 
but composting is probably as good, especially aerobic composting. We 
haven't seen any metal refuse here which was not aluminum (the ONE 
recyclable with significant material value as-returned).  At least the 
piles of steel cans dumped in the arroyos in Northern NM are slowly 
becoming iron oxide, perhaps innocuous in most contexts.

- Bumble

On 6/3/22 3:44 PM, glen wrote:
> Car tyres produce vastly more particle pollution than exhausts, tests 
> show
> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/03/car-tyres-produce-more-particle-pollution-than-exhausts-tests-show 
>
>
> I think it was SteveS who mentioned recently that when we talk of 
> high-tech, innovation, and generally geeky stuff, materials science 
> produces some of the coolest ... [ahem] ... content. I tend to choose 
> the hardest, highest mileage for car tires and softer, more grippy, 
> ones for the motorcycle. The pickup is a dance between the two 
> depending on what kind of terrain I spend most time on. Lately I'm all 
> street with the truck so hard tires (with 4WD) works well even in 
> risky situations like icy roads. But I've never given even a single 
> thought to how they produce grippy vs high wear tires ... one more 
> rabbit hole I probably won't map out.
>
> Oh, and I'd be remiss if I didn't vent a bit on those morons who keep 
> their studded tires on too much of the year ... or driving around the 
> damned city where they plow anyway. Those people make me angrier than 
> tail gaiters. How solipsist can you be? >8^|
>
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