Vehicle tire wear creating air pollution

Every tire lost ten to twenty percent of its weight during its four to five years lifetime. So it's important to understand the health implications of this less understood traffic-related air pollution. As the tire goes over the road, a mixture of pavement, road dust, pieces that were on the ground, plus the tire is all getting airborne. So what we try to do and understand is that in one conditions, how much tire wear particles is being emitted and how is it linked to different pavements, different environmental conditions, and different driving behavior. And the Smart Road is providing us with the unique opportunity to try this in a safe place that we can try highway, we can try surface street, and we can try rural areas and see how much and in what conditions tire emissions is happening. If we successfully finish our work, this might help the government to implement some regulation in this sector. And one of the main objectives of our work is to develop a model which can specifically tell us how much tire particle is emitting from a city. So that's something I believe would be very valuable. So that really interests me. The emission of these tire wear particles has not been part of the design of the tire, and especially they become more and more important as electric vehicles that are generally heavier emerge and heavier vehicles means more pressure to the tire and potentially more generation of tire ware particles. So we are hoping this factor goes into the design of the tire and we design tires that are essentially cleaner.