About this Research Topic

Background

Every year, 1.7 billion new vehicle tires are produced worldwide, while at the same time >1 billion tires reach their end of life. During use, an average car tire loses about 1.5 kg in mass, forming millions of tire wear particles (TWPs). These emissions represent a pressing environmental challenge that cannot be counteracted by 'green' urbanization through e.g., the electrification of car, truck, and airplane fleets. In addition to TWPs, crumb rubber produced from end-of-life tires has been used as an infill on artificial grass on outdoor sports pitches, where it has become a popular low-cost substitute for natural grass, sand, or gravel, but is prone to runoff into the surrounding environment.

TWPs and crumb rubber consist mainly of synthetic styrene-butadiene rubber (SBR) in a size range of 10 nm to several millimeters, and thus constitute their own class of microplastics. The magnitude of emissions and the complex composition of SBR and additive chemicals make these particles problematic, with soils, waterways, and eventually coastal and marine systems acting as the main environmental sink compartments. Here, both rubber particles and their leachates may induce toxic effects across a range of exposed habitats, species, and functional groups, and need to be better characterized and understood.

This Research Topic will collect, integrate, and synthesize the latest scientific results on TWPs, crumb rubber granulates, and other SBR rubber products. The collection will give an overview of the latest findings on the chemical composition and environmental fate of the particles themselves and the chemicals released from them and discuss advances in toxicity and exposure studies.

The Research Topic welcomes studies on the following themes:

• Car tire particle emissions from field data in various environmental matrices, e.g., air, soil, freshwater, seawater, and sediment.
• Laboratory experiments on TWP, e.g. chemical analyses of car tire particles prior, during, and after degradation.
• Crumb rubber behavior and fate in different environmental compartments, e.g. atmospheric, transport, or sinking behavior in water.
• Transport models parameterized for SBR particles or leached compounds.
• Exposure and toxicity studies for terrestrial and aquatic organisms.
• Impacts of car tire particle emissions on ecosystem function and services to facilitate reliable risk assessments of car tire particles in terrestrial and aquatic environments.

Keywords: tire, microplastic, plastic, vector, contaminant, crumb rubber, tire wear particles, tyre, styrene-butadiene rubber, SBR, toxicity, exposure, transport model, risk assessment, particles, environmental fate, emissions, degradation

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