Tire particles from the world’s billions of cars, trucks, bikes, tractors, and other vehicles escape into air, soil, and water bodies.
Scientists are just beginning to understand the grave danger: In 2020, Washington State researchers determined that the presence of 6PPD-quinone, a byproduct of rubber-stabilizing chemical 6PPD, is playing a major factor in a mysterious long-term die-off of coho salmon in the U.S. Pacific Northwest.
When Washington’s fall rains herald spawning salmon’s return from sea to stream, the precipitation also washes car tire fragments and other plastic particles into these freshwater ecosystems.
Modern health researchers have yet to systematically search for it in people and comprehensively study how having plastic particles around us and in us at all times might be affecting human health.
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[Researcher Alvise] Vianello and Jes Vollertsen, a professor of environmental studies at Aalborg University, explained that they’ve brought their findings to researchers at their university’s hospital for future collaborative research, perhaps searching for plastic inside human cadavers.
“We now have enough evidence that we should start looking for microplastic inside human airways,” Vollertsen said. “Until then, it’s unclear whether or not we should be worried that we are breathing in plastic.”
