from Hacker News

Tire-related chemical responsible for salmon deaths in urban streams (2020)

by deegles on 9/4/24, 8:42 PM with 37 comments

• by twojacobtwo on 9/7/24, 9:19 PM

  For those wondering what the chemical is and its purpose:

  >6PPD helps by reacting with ozone before it can react with the tire rubber, sparing the tires.

  >But when 6PPD reacts with ozone, the researchers found that it was transformed into multiple chemicals, including 6PPD-quinone (pronounced “kwih-known”), the toxic chemical that is responsible for killing the salmon.

• by cyberax on 9/8/24, 12:42 AM

  6PPD-quinone is alone not enough to explain the salmon decline, the concentrations of 6PPD-Q mostly peak near urban areas after the start of the rainy season.

  However, replacing 6PPD with a different anti-oxidant is a no-brainer. There are plenty of other alternatives, and this time the industry is making sure to pick something that won't be toxic to some form of bumblebee after exposure to nitrogen oxides.

  There's a report with the list of best alternatives so far: https://www.ustires.org/largest-global-tire-industry-consort...

• by aaronbrethorst on 9/7/24, 9:16 PM

      [2020]
  

  I was confused to see this pop up now as this feels like common knowledge in Seattle, but the 2020 date on the article definitely clarifies that.

• by clumsysmurf on 9/7/24, 10:20 PM

  I wonder if we are inhaling this.

  I live in Phoenix, and when I go out at night with a good flashlight, the amount of stuff in the air, visible in the beam, is crazy. I imagine some is dirt among other things, but wonder if the micropastics of the tires are airborne as well.

  Since it hardly ever rains here it probably just accumulates on the roads and gets kicked up with activity.

• by mattgrice on 9/8/24, 1:52 AM

  Its been 4 years since this was known, 8-10 since it was known that something in road runoff was fatal specifically to coho salmon. And basically nothing has been done. Sure tire companies or whatever are working on a fix. If I was "working on a fix" for 4+ years with no visible milestones I woudn't have a job. people love to complain about "overregulation" but 1) coho salmon fisheries are a multi billion dollar business and 2) those people are wrong, they've almost always been wrong, possibly even greedy and heartless. and if you happen to be religious they are complicit in destroying the gifts that God gave us.

• by at_a_remove on 9/8/24, 1:39 AM

  Someone with more examples and a greater understanding, not to mention eloquence, than I ought to come out with a book going over, in tremendous detail, how much of our chemical engineering "miracles of science!" were created to replace mechanical processes or reduce power requirements. Polish regularly? No, we will just manufacture a coating! Filtering? No, flocculating agents! More insulation on that refrigerator? No, here's this new refrigerant! Sugar cane makes the vats hard to clean ... but high fructose corn syrup, that's the ticket. And that while a non-trivial portion of these chemical replacements are effective at what they do, we just have not considered the escape of these miracles into air, water, and soil. It just wasn't on anyone's horizon.

  While I love science as much as anyone else does, I am wondering if a distant human future civilization (assuming we have one), will have switched to a "this new molecule is by default dangerous until proven otherwise, over decades." Chemical engineering would grind to a halt, but might perhaps be replaced by ever-finer mechanical processes for similar results.

• by ExMachina73 on 9/7/24, 11:48 PM

  I see articles like this about microplastics turning up in the environment and it doesn't surprise me at all. Almost a century of millions and millions of cars going through tires how could it not. In the future they'll ask what killed everyone? It was tires man. Tires.

• by carapace on 9/7/24, 10:28 PM

  Salmon bring a limiting factor to growth (phosphorous if I remember correctly) from the ocean to the land, then the bears and other animals eat them and distribute it throughout the forests through their dung. (The Native Americans around the PNW had a name for this but we just figured they were talking about nature spirits or something.)

  Cars -> tire dust -> dead salmon -> reduced phosphorous -> sick forest

• by 1-6 on 9/7/24, 10:42 PM

  That’s remarkable investigative work done by researchers. I hope schools keep fostering this type of education to improve communities and bring change to fast-moving industries.

• by matt123456789 on 9/7/24, 9:18 PM

  6PPD -> 6PPD-quinone

• by xyst on 9/8/24, 2:18 AM

  Yet another con against the growing trend of car centric transportation.