It’s always interesting when you have a highly effective chemical that vastly improves performance or lifespan of something and it turns out it gives everyone cancer or seriously damages the environment. Asbestos is an amazing insulator, CFCs are amazing refrigerants, TBT-based antifouling is like magic, but they all have devastating health or environmental consequences.<p>The other day I helped haul a boat out of the water that had illegally used TBT-based antifouling. Holy fucking shit, it was like magic. All the other boats I had hauled out had modern antifoulings and significant marine growth, which significantly impacts performance in the water. That boat was practically spotless. The difference was immediately obvious. Any boat owner knows the increase in speed and fuel economy from a clean hull is massive - and now you can’t get anything nearly as effective as TBT. In the US it’s a felony and a quarter million dollar fine and rightly so, it’s toxic to marine life.<p>Does anyone know how effective 6PPD is? Would tires without it be significantly worse?
Despite my normal skepticism of such things, this seems to be an example of most parties behaving well.<p>6PPD isn’t toxic to fish, but it transforms to something that is as the tires wear. This seems like an honest mistake on the part of the industry. Many manufacturers already voluntarily phased it out based on early scientific results. The replacements are used as food preservatives for human edible products, and are presumably mostly fine.<p>The regulators are swiftly banning 6PPD anyway (as they should).<p>Hopefully, moving forward, the regulators will further mandate that manufacturers measure the environmental impact of their newly proposed tire dust (instead of tire ingredients) moving forward.
When something is labeled "BPA Free!" it means that the BPA has been replaced by something even worse, like BPS.<p>Is there a mechanism to prevent something similar in this case?
I'm always skeptical of these types of things without a few decades of review. "It's safe" just means the cancer it causes take 30 years to be realized.
It’s time we rethought tires from first principles.<p>I have to think we can do better. Why live in fear of nails and spend a thousand dollars every 20-40k miles?