Contribution of Road Vehicle Tyre Wear to Microplastics and Ambient Air Pollution

Barouch Giechaskiel (), Theodoros Grigoratos, Marcel Mathissen, Joris Quik, Peter Tromp, Mats Gustafsson, Vicente Franco and Panagiota Dilara
Additional contact information
Barouch Giechaskiel: Joint Research Centre (JRC), European Commission, 21027 Ispra, Italy
Theodoros Grigoratos: Joint Research Centre (JRC), European Commission, 21027 Ispra, Italy
Marcel Mathissen: Ford-Werke GmbH, 52072 Aachen, Germany
Joris Quik: Centre for Sustainability, Environment and Health (DMG), RIVM, 3720 BA Bilthoven, The Netherlands
Peter Tromp: Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO), 3584 CB Utrecht, The Netherlands
Mats Gustafsson: Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute (VTI), 581 95 Linköping, Sweden
Vicente Franco: Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (DG-GROW), European Commission, 1040 Brussels, Belgium
Panagiota Dilara: Directorate-General for Environment (DG-ENV), European Commission, 1040 Brussels, Belgium

Sustainability, 2024, vol. 16, issue 2, 1-31

Abstract: Tyre particles are generated by shear forces between the tread and the road or by volatilisation. Tyre abrasion (wear) contributes from one-third to half of microplastics unintentionally released into the environment. The major part ends up in the soil, a considerable amount is released into the aquatic environment, and a small percentage becomes airborne. Nevertheless, tyre abrasion contributes to 5–30% of road transport particulate matter (PM) emissions. This corresponds to approximately 5% of total ambient PM emissions. The particle mass size distribution peak at around 20 to 100 μm, with a second peak in the 2–10 μm range. A nucleation mode has been reported in some studies. The absolute abrasion levels depend on the tyre, vehicle, and road characteristics, but also on environmental conditions and driving style. Most tyre particle emission factors in the literature are based on data prior to the year 2000. We aggregated recent studies and found a mean abrasion of 110 mg/km per vehicle or 68 mg/km/t for passenger cars (based on approximately 300 measurements). Based on a limited number of studies, the PM 10 emissions were 1.4–2.2 mg/km per tyre. On the other hand, the particle number emissions were in the order of 10 10 #/km per tyre. The ratio of PM 10 to total abrasion was found to be 2.5% on average. Finally, the ratio of PM 2.5 to PM 10 was calculated to be around 40%. Various mitigation measures for tyre particle pollution could be envisaged; the most direct is the limitation of the tyre abrasion rate, as proposed by the European Commission for the Euro 7 regulation. Other regulatory initiatives are also discussed.

Keywords: microplastics; air pollution; PM; tyres; abrasion rate; emission factors; chemical composition; tyre wear; TRWP; TWP (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/2/522/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/2/522/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:16:y:2024:i:2:p:522-:d:1314708

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().