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by jvm___ 381 days ago
Is tire wear worse for aquatic life than brake dust?
2 comments

There is an additive called 6PPD added to tires to prevent them from degrading in the atmosphere, and it has been found that when this thing reacts with ozone in the air it forms another compound 6PPD-quinone which is highly toxic to some fishes. Weirdly enough it's highly toxic to some species of salmon but not to other salmon species.

Presumably there's work ongoing to find an less damaging replacement, but I haven't heard of any.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6PPD

Tire wear right now is worse, because tires contain an anti-oxidant that gets oxidized into a compound that is highly toxic to aquatic life.

The work is underway to standardize on a replacement. This time with even more tests.

I wonder if this will be like lead in av-gas. Lol.
Not really. There are plenty of possible replacements, the industry wants to make sure that _this_ time it won't hurt some Australian finches if tires are exposed to moonlight or something.