Electric vehicles still shed tyre particles into the air, and no one yet knows how to stop them. As combustion engines disappear, non-exhaust sources already account for at least half of airborne particulate matter from low-emission-zone cars. Tyre wear will become the dominant pollution source for electric vehicles, since regenerative braking reduces brake dust. Yet the physical mechanisms that generate these particles remain poorly understood. Around 10% of tyre particulates become airborne; the rest stay on the road surface. Laboratory studies struggle to reproduce realistic particles without a proper road surface. Current research has focused on measuring tyre pollution, not on understanding its health effects. Imminent legislation will need metrics to limit these particles, but the knowledge to choose the right metrics does not exist. Without it, policy risks repeating the mistake of promoting diesel over petrol based on the wrong measure. For example, carbon black reduces tyre wear but harms lung health when inhaled—a trade-off between toxicity and quantity that remains unquantified. This network will bring together engineers, materials scientists, environmental scientists, and medics to define the key research questions. It will produce a white paper and a roadmap for predicting tyre pollution across scales, from a single tyre to a whole city. Success would give regulators the evidence to set limits that actually improve urban air quality and save lives.
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Transport will continue to produce particulate matter (PM) even as internal combustion systems are phased out, with current research identifying that at least half of airborne PM emissions originate from non-engine sources in low emission zone compliant cars. These particulate emissions have been identified to have significant health impacts, and with no scope to displace non-tailpipe emissions future urban air quality will be impacted by these sources. As electric cars can use regenerative braking, tyre PM will become the main pollution source from the operation of future electric vehicles, however the physical mechanisms which generate this PM are not sufficiently well understood to enable engineers to design tyres to mitigate their health effects. In addition, the mechanisms by which these particulates enter the environment are complex: around 10% of tyre particulates become airborne, with the rest remaining on the road surface. Finally, generating tyre particulates in a laboratory environment is challenging, due to the need to use a realistic road surface to correctly generate representative particles. Because of the complexities involved, current discipline-specific research has focused on quantifying tyre particulate pollution, rather than quantifying the effects of this pollution. With imminent legislation looking to limit the quantity of these particulates, there is a desperate need for knowledge that can be used to select the correct metrics and design appropriate quantification approaches. Without this knowledge, transport policy has the potential to repeat previous disastrous mistakes of promoting one technology (diesel) over another (petrol) due to using the wrong metric to evaluate environmental and health impacts. A similar event could occur with tyres: current fillers used in tyres (such as carbon black) reduce tyre wear but are known to impact lung health when inhaled, so knowledge of these sorts of trade-offs between toxicity and quantity are needed to inform future policy decisions. The vision for this network is to bring together researchers working in disciplines with the potential to address the knowledge gap between tyre pollution creation and its effects on environment and health. The network will define key research questions that need to be solved before tyre pollution effects can be predicted. This network will consider the pollution challenge over a range of scales, from an individual tyre level up to city-wide. Through a series of workshops, network participants will define key challenges within and between the range of disciplines involved: disciplines which will include environmental sciences and medicine in addition to engineers and materials scientists working on rubber friction in tyres. The network will output a white paper detailing the research challenges that need solutions before in-use tyre pollution can be predicted, and a roadmap for reaching this end goal. The knowledge developed through this network will inform future research that will minimise tyre PM pollution, thus improving the air quality in urban areas and minimising the environmental impact of future transport systems. Ultimately, improving urban air quality will save lives.
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