Anyone concerned about air pollution should take a look at the bottom of a vehicle.
The biggest source of pollution may not be the tailpipe.
Experts with the independent company Emissions Analytics say aging tires now typically spit out more particles than exhaust systems.
Nick Molden, founder and chief executive of U.K.-based Emissions Analytics, says newer vehicles do a much better job of limiting exhaust emissions.
His group had to look elsewhere for the source of continuing pollution.
"When you do some basic math and realize how much tire mass is being shed into the environment, in the United States, it’s about 200,000 tons every year, just from light-duty vehicles," Molden says. "And no one knows really where it goes or what it does. And we set about trying to understand that question."
He continues, "With the transition to battery electric vehicles, getting greater as the vehicles get heavier, we decided to look at that ratio between the two. And the result that came out was even higher than we expected. We concluded that there was about 1,850 times more particle mass from tires than the tailpipe. And that ratio is growing every day."
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