Tiny flakes of plastic, generated by the wear and tear of normal driving, eventually accumulate in the soil, in rivers and lakes, and even in our food.
Lots of things contribute to this. Vehicle weight (extra stress on the tires), wheel alignment (toe-in/out causes scrubbing which causes more wear), unmaintained suspensions (worn out shocks, struts and bushings causing the above), burnouts (obviously, but, even in winter being the guy doing a burnout on summer tires while trying to get up an icy hill or across the intersection still counts), tire compound, road design, and driving style. If we had more cargo trains doing logi instead of long haul trucks we could probably cut down on a lot of pollution both in exhaust particles and tire particles.
Wow, now imagine what tractor tires are doing to the fields we grow our food in. Plus the exhaust and tires deposit heavy metals. I have been bitching about this for years. We need drone fleets in fields and to ban tires and exhaust in fields.
While there's no doubt tires are bad for the environment, a quarter of all microplastics seems a lot, especially since plastic is everywhere.
Gladly there's a source for that claim, a link to tireindustryproject's FAQ... Claiming that this number is a gross overestimation. What the fuck is this article? Is it supposed to be satire or something?
Vulcanized RUBBER tyres shed PLASTIC microparticles .... hmmmm something sounds very rubbery and not at all plasticky..... i truly wonder what it could be .....hmmmm......
Edit:
"Is rubber considered a plastic?
Although materials such as rubber, textiles, adhesives, and paint may in some cases meet this definition, they are not considered plastics."
Here is a Scientific study MIS-CONSTRUING Rubber as a Plastic AND MAKING ASSUMPTIONS WITHOUT PROPER EXPLANATIONS !!!!
This is the problem with Scientific studies, Media, Reporting and bunch of people running with studies that make a lot of FALSE ASSUMPTIONS WITHOUT TELLING YOU THE FULL FUCKING STORY.