From the “where the rubber meets the road” department, comes this bombshell finding that flies in the face of claims about the universal boogeyman of “climate change” killing salmon due to it supposedly raising water temperature in streams where they spawn.
Just last year, PBS and Popular Science were screaming about “climate change” being the cause with headlines likeClimate Change is Killing Salmon in the Pacific Northwest and Climate change is cooking salmon in the Pacific Northwest
It seems they were wrong, dead wrong.
New University of Washington research published December 3rd in the journal Science, exonerates “climate change” in the salmon killing caper and finds a surprise villain; an additive to automobile tires, not “climate change.” In fact, the researchers specifically ruled out climate-driven temperature increase as a cause.
Basically, the process is like this: stormwater runoff carries tire wear rubber particles into streams from the nearby roads, where a chemical called 6PPD-quinone, a biproduct from the 6PPD preservative added on tires to prevent breakdown by ozone, leeches into the water. It has been determined that this chemical is highly toxic to salmon. Researchers say they identified 6PPD-quinone as the “smoking gun” behind salmon deaths in freshwater streams.
Here are some relevant quotes from the University of Washington press release, Tire-related chemical is largely responsible for adult coho salmon deaths in urban streams, bold mine:
“We had determined it couldn’t be explained by high temperatures, low dissolved oxygen or any known contaminant, such as high zinc levels,” said co-senior author Jenifer McIntyre, an assistant professor at WSU’s School of the Environment, based in Puyallup. “Then we found that urban stormwater runoff could recreate the symptoms and the acute mortality.
“[We]…found something called 6PPD, which is used to keep tires from breaking down too quickly.
“It’s like a preservative for tires,” Tian said. “Similar to how food preservatives keep food from spoiling too quickly, 6PPD helps tires last by protecting them from ground-level ozone.”“But when 6PPD reacts with ozone, the researchers found that it was transformed into multiple chemicals, including 6PPD-quinone (pronounced “kwih-known”), the toxic chemical that is responsible for killing the salmon.
This chemical is not limited to the Puget Sound region. The team also tested roadway runoff from Los Angeles and urban creeks near San Francisco, and 6PPD-quinone was present there as well. This finding is unsurprising, the researchers said, because 6PPD appears to be used in all tires and tire wear particles are likely present in creeks near busy roads across the world.”
The findings suggest this is a worldwide problem, and since this research focused only on salmon, who knows where else in nature this chemical might be causing trouble.
Historically, climate activists like to use “climate change” as an immediate go-to cause for anything that they can’t explain, which is why I refer to it as the “universal boogeyman”. Now that real science without a climate change agenda has been published on the salmon issue, we can move from a baseless blame-game to a solution.
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Part of the salmon problem is hatchery fish, not as strong genetically.
Here we go again, another alarm bell. What about low salmon runs in areas unaffected by tires? How about over fishing, increased populations of seals, sealions?
Marine Mammel Protection Act of 1972, sea lions/seals can eat all they want and man are they having a population explosion, the salmon not so much.
Hatchery fish were intended as mitigation to dams (as well as just creating more fish). Hatchery fish ARE regular old fish. There is no genetic difference between hatchery fish and “native fish” (but if there was, all a person would have to do is grab 100 non-hatchery fish to start over, and fix the local hatchery genetic deficiency … very simple, right?).
To get past this common sense practice it was then stated that it is the way that the hatchery fish are raised is what makes them less viable (remember that terminology). The hatchery fish are said to be less fearful of predators and less vigorous because they just hang out in the hatchery pool and do not need to swim around to survive. SO therefore, hatchery fish are a lessor fish.
BUT, if hatchery fish are less viable & inferior, why is it soo easy for them to out-compete the strong, vibrant, genetically superior non-hatchery fish? Sheer numbers …? If that’s the answer then the non-hatchery fish are getting skinny & starving while the inferior hatchery fish are eating up all the food; its a food availability thing. The research doesn’t go there though….
The desired solution has been determined before any investigation was made. What it really is: Dams must be removed, people are bad, non-natural solutions are bad (because humans are bad), and the guys that Hook and Release (over & over & over again) are hypocritical d-bags when they say that it not a taking.
Water temp as a pollutant parameter (in Oregon) is a joke.
Only one river in the entire state is characterized as not being too warm. All the rest of the waterways are said to be too warm … every one of them.
Anyone with any sense could recognize that temperature, as a problem, was exaggerated.
Tires, for the regulators, are the best place to find problems. Tires wastes are a problem that some one else can pay for. (Tire taxes can create a very nice fund for mitigation specific problems (like of salary stagnation & PERS debt).
Paint on the other hand, would not be a good place for the government find associated environmental problems, because it would be a problem to regulate. They would have to actually do something to themselves.
Ask your friendly DOT water quality enforcer how many of thousands of gallons of paint and glue(reflectors) are applied to all of the roadways in your state every year. After they spend a few months researching it and they get back to you, ask them where the old paint went.
+10
ALL:
A Blast From The Past!!!
Most of you will not remember this, sooo……
Set the Wayback Machine to 1970!!!
The big Environmental Movement was getting up to speed, notably with the rise of Greenpeace and many other such groups. The big environmental fear, or bogey man, if you will, was “Chemicals”. College campuses across the US and the world were obsessed with the notion of “Chemicals in the Environment”. Now, I grant you that “Chemicals” makes about as much sense as “carbon-free sugar”, but there it was.
Anyway, one of the big scare stories thrown out there was “Chemicals” from tires. Specifically, those “Chemicals” which come from wear particles and were put in the rubber as a preservative. The big “Concern” was that these rubber preservatives were getting into streams and rivers causing “Chemical Pollution”. Specifically,they were killing salmon in the pacific NW of the US.
Does any of this sound familiar???
This paper could have been, and was, written 50 years ago. Recycling at it’s finest!
I have scanned the comments and noted that several of the commenters seem to have no idea that this claim is just a recycled fright story from the “Chemicals in the Environment” scare of the 1970s and early 1980s.
I thought a walk down memory lane might be interesting.
The old tiresome argument.
Or is that sometire?
It’s time 4u2 retire.
One wonders why statements like this: ““We had determined it couldn’t be explained by high temperatures, low dissolved oxygen or any known contaminant, such as high zinc levels,” don’t make it into the abstract. 😉
6PPD is a suicide anti-oxidant. It reacts with ozone (or O2) and is irreversibly converted into the quinone. The quinone is the oxidation product. However, 6PPD is also a phenylenediamine, a class of chemicals long known to be toxic.
Phenylenediamines are planar molecules. They can intercalate into DNA strands. Their oxidation product — the quinone — is also planar but more reactive. If it intercalates into DNA, it can react with the nucleotide base and cause a mutation. Most mutations will be silent. But chronic exposure means millions of mutations. A dangerous mutation becomes more likely (apart from taxing the liver).
Looking at the structure of 6PPD, a possible solution to the toxicity problem is to incorporate the molecule into a polymer. It would do the same job with ozone, but be unavailable for biological uptake.
The result would probably be slightly more expensive tires, but perhaps less expensive salmon. 🙂
I wonder how much of the cost of material for the tire is 6PPD? If it’s a small fraction then doing as you suggest might not have much of an impact on price.
They should be encouraged to find a less toxic alternative. Who knows? Maybe they’ll find something that works better and is even cheaper.
Not such a small fraction, used up to two parts per hundred parts of rubber. Considering the millions of tons of rubber ground off tires and into the streams, this is not a small source.
In https://www.researchgate.net/publication/297889793_Non-exhaust_PM_emissions_from_electric_vehicles
The abstract states that electric vehicles will not reduce particulates much due to their increased weight increasing the output from tires and brakes….
“Particulate matter (PM) exposure has been linked to adverse health effects by numerous studies. Therefore, governments have been heavily incentivising the market to switch to electric passenger cars in order to reduce air pollution. However, this literature review suggests that electric vehicles may not reduce levels of PM as much as expected, because of their relatively high weight. By analysing the existing literature on non-exhaust emissions of different vehicle categories, this review found that there is a positive relationship between weight and non-exhaust PM emission factors. In addition, electric vehicles (EVs) were found to be 24% heavier than equivalent internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs). As a result, total PM10 emissions from EVs were found to be equal to those of modern ICEVs. PM2.5 emissions were only 1-3% lower for EVs compared to modern ICEVs. Therefore, it could be concluded that the increased popularity of electric vehicles will likely not have a great effect on PM levels. Non-exhaust emissions already account for over 90% of PM10 and 85% of PM2.5 emissions from traffic. These proportions will continue to increase as exhaust standards improve and average vehicle weight increases. Future policy should consequently focus on setting standards for non-exhaust emissions and encouraging weight reduction of all vehicles to significantly reduce PM emissions from traffic.”
Also a finding that tires are up to 1000 times worse as polluters than the fuel used in an ICE.
See here: https://www.emissionsanalytics.com/news/pollution-tyre-wear-worse-exhaust-emissions
Here is a good graph illustrating the fall in tailpipe emissions from 2020 to now.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-7236155/Electric-cars-WONT-end-air-pollution-release-brake-tyre-particulates.html
When did they start using this chemical in tires?
Here where I live, it seemed that Coho returns dropped off two years after the state wardens stopped enforcing the indian fishery. If you tell a game warden that nets are being strung shore-to-shore on days that were agreed to be net-free, they will tell you “contact the tribal police — we don’t enforce that anymore”.
People gave up on restoring Salmon to the Connecticut river years ago, despite all the clean up effort. They realized that salmon had an a version to the water of long island sound. The roads near by has as much truck traffic as anywhere. Lets see how this pans out
Hello salmon fans. Good News! NW Salmon are NOT going extinct. The alarmotroids have it all wrong. Check the Fish Passage data here:
https://www.fpc.org/fpc_homepage.html
and then query Adult Annual Counts. You will find that 15 of the largest 17 runs since 1938 have been in this century, 2001 and after, and that the largest run ever recorded since the Columbia River dams were built happened in 2014.
How about that! All the foofrah about salmon disappearing is bogus crapola! Please moderate your ignorance and quell the panic attacks.
It turns out, if you really dig into the data, that NW salmon runs vary with ocean temperatures, especially the PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation):
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/pacific-decadal-oscillation
During the cool phase (in the eastern Pacific) of the 30-year PDO, there are more salmon. It’s just a fact. It has NOTHING to do with tires! OMG, OMG, OMG!
Bombshell that!
Lookee here, all you Salmon Worrywarts. What I want to know is if you are going to take the tires off your Tesla and drive on the rims, OR if you are going to buzz-buzz down to your local fishmonger and buy some Terribly Endangered Salmon, grill ’em on the barbie, and EAT them?
Because if you’re one of the latter types, and you chomp down on so-called endangered species while wringing your hands and bleeding Liberally, then you are a Flaming Hypocrite!
People of Earth — Catch a Clue! I’m in real pain here, and it’s all your fault. Please staunch the stupid. I can’t take it any more.
The Europeans have been watching this chemical (CAS No. 793-24-8) for many years.
Here is a link to a review from about 15 years ago: 6ppd – ospar Commissionwww.ospar.org › documents
The document discusses many aspects of the chemical, including the acute toxicity of it and its degradation products, indicating lethal concentration (LC50) in the low parts per billion range.
The report also talks about alternative tire preservative chemicals. If WSU’s research is verified, which appears plausible, the tire industry’s chemists will need to find safer alternatives. Given that the chemical has been under watch for quite some time, the industry may already have options in the wings.
Of course, rather than just let them fix it, I expect we will see ambulance chasing lawyers and states attorneys general filing “Michelin Knew” lawsuits against the tire (tyre) industry.
“lethal concentration (LC50) in the low parts per billion range” Really ?
So, chewing on a bit of tire for a few minutes is a sure way to pass away ?
And all those guys working in tire factories or repair shops are in fact zombies ? Who knew ?
So, the Euros knew about this lethal chem 15 years ago? That would be 2005. Nothing was done about it, and since then salmon runs have done what? They have sky-rocketed up!
There has been no effect, but the researchers posit a cause. How can there be a cause when there is no effect?
The researchers say “urban stormwater runoff” is “the ‘smoking gun’ behind salmon deaths in freshwater streams”. Puyallup is a coastal city, as are all the large cities of the Pacific Northwest. The freshwater streams are hundreds of miles upstream in the mountains where there are few or no roads. The contention is that somehow 6PPD-quinone travels upstream, against the current, like a salmon, to poison waters way the heck and gone higher up.
This flies in the face of another theory, first proposed by Isaac Newton, that water flows downhill! Yet somehow, sometimes, it must flow uphill against gravity carrying a poison that depletes the salmon population, which is not depleted according to the actual data, but instead is burgeoning.
And it is “plausible” that this research will be “verified”? Maybe, when pigs fly. Of course, if CAGW is not to blame for this non-existent non-effect, then something utterly impossible must be true and let’s all celebrate the scientific breakthrough.
“Puyallup is a coastal city, as are all the large cities of the Pacific Northwest. The freshwater streams are hundreds of miles upstream in the mountains where there are few or no roads.”
Wouldn’t young Salmon have to swim downstream, through the 6PPD-quinone polluted waters, to the ocean? And adult Salmon have to swim upstream, through the 6PPD-quinone polluted waters, to spawn?
Conclusion, save the salmons, fly more, drive less.
Not really related but somehow interesting. There was a debate why regional (German) trains canceled their stops at minor stations. Reason, brake pads wear.
It seems that a regional train pulverizes in the air a cumulative mass of 0.5kg of brake pads at each stop. Increased maintenance costs ensue.
This said, to preserve clean air, smoking is regulated even at the open air train stations.
This alleged research smacks of gross assumptions and bogus models.
If “6PPD-quinone” is so toxic to salmon, then the entire populations of salmon must be destroyed; and one wonders why closely related steelhead, trout and char are not mentioned?
In that “6PPD-quinone” should have decimated salmon eggs and fry on their redds. Let alone killing the few survivors as they live in the streams and rivers on their way to thesea.
If
Once again we have to learn to read the articles and the research papers. (paywalled)
I see that this compound MAY be getting into the creeks and “We have a lot to learn “.
There may be something here, but others need repeat these measurements. It is also not clear that they have proven that the compound is actually the cause of die off. Maybe they have, or maybe not.
This is based on observing one creek??
I really doubt that this is a conclusive proof. I may be wrong.
“Puyallup is a coastal city, as are all the large cities of the Pacific Northwest. The freshwater streams are hundreds of miles upstream in the mountains where there are few or no roads.”
Wouldn’t young Salmon have to swim downstream, through the 6PPD-quinone polluted waters, to the ocean? And adult Salmon have to swim upstream, through the 6PPD-quinone polluted waters, to spawn?
Yes, Fred. Puyallup is on the Puyallup River Estuary which is flushed by the river and the tides into Puget Sound where abundant fishing birds, sea lions, and k*ller whales consume up-swimming spawners and down-swimming smolts by the millions. Predators hoover them with aplomb. It has been ever thus.
And yet, despite the carnage and the urban sewage/storm drain effluent, salmon runs are at record highs. Sensitive Planet Earthers might be, must be, quite shocked at this conundrum, and in utter denial over it. They have my sincere pity.
Please note a little known fact about salmon: for every 1,000 smolts that make it across the bars and into the ocean, 3 return to spawn. That’s a 0.3% survival rate; 99.7% die in the ocean. That is why oceanic conditions are the critical factor in salmon population dynamics. What happens in the ocean is what determines how many fish return. Ipso facto, the PDO matters, a lot.
Do I sense an equitable replacement tax for vehicle fuels taxing to pay for the road network? Wrap up rego and CTP with a national tyre tax only. Well apart from a cost recovery user pays recording system for number plates and tracking owners and their addresses of course. Drive lightly and minimally and you’re taxed lightly which might be a wee problem for EV owners as I hear they’re hard on tyres with their weight.
Reading a summary of the article it sounds like everything done in the lab with new and used tires. They analyzed an extract and found this chemical amongst 1000’s. They synthesized it and than poisoned salmon in the lab. Smoking gun ?????
Copper dust from brake pads affects young salmon.
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Here’s Why You Can’t Buy A Camaro SS Or ZL1 In California Or Washington Next Year
If you’ve been eyeing up a new Camaro SS, ZL1 or 1LE but happen to live in California or Washington, you’ll have to purchase yours before 2020 ends, or risk having to wait a year.
Chevrolet dealers in both states have been forced to put a hold on ordering Camaros with those high-performance packages, GM Authority reports. The models’ Brembo brakes are to blame, as new regulations in California and Washington that take effect on January 1, 2021, will ban the sale of brake pads that contain more than 5 percent copper.
https://jalopnik.com/heres-why-you-cant-buy-a-camaro-ss-or-zl1-in-california-1845833877
I’m tired of hearing about Klimate change causing everything
The study states that the deaths can’t be explained by high temperatures. It’s quite a leap to suggest they’ve “exonerated climate change.” There are many secondary and unknown connections to changes in average global temperatures, and of course the “climate change” label can refer to any or all of them. Here, though, the researches were talking about the temperature of the water in which the salmon live. Yes, climate change may be a cause of higher temperatures, but it would be a logical fallacy to suggest that all of the other impacts of climate change are not contributors. And — most important — the study did not actually try to address that. It’s dishonest of you to try to make that connection.
You end the piece saying, “Now that real science without a climate change agenda has been published on the salmon issue, we can move from a baseless blame-game to a solution.” But that’s not how real science works. First off, publishing a study is quite different from concluding a cause and effect relationship, especially one that will hold in the real world and real ecosystems. The next step is to continue studying more robust hypotheses about the toxicity impacts on other species and systems, in different contexts and with more data. Any attempt at implementing a “solution” would be an absolute waste of money. And, of course, your reference to the “blame-game” is a gross attempt to conflate public discourse with real science. Scientists don’t blame anything; they ask questions in ways that can provide measurable answers, continuously trying to falsify every theory so that something better can be determined. This study on 6PPD should be seen as just a new next step, maybe one that brings us closer to the truth. But there’s absolutely no reason to suddenly stop considering all the other possible causes at play and the possible cumulative effects of those.
Air has a puny heat content compared water. At room temperature of equal volumes of air and water the water has 3200 times more heat than the air. Hence a transfer of say one degree C from air to water will result in a miniscule rise in temperature of the water. Ergo no effect on fish
I appreciate your analysis of heat transfer, but it’s not really just a simple equation of warm air molecules touching water. There are bigger system issues like the water being held in reservoirs, absence of bank shading, and reduced springtime water volume. Anyway, even minuscule variances in temperature, dissolved oxygen, toxicity, and even the timing of seasonal changes do indeed have profound effects on salmon’s ability to survive, thrive, navigate, and spawn. The results aren’t massive die-offs; they’re much more insidious and long-term.
I would be most concerned about run off in urban areas. Not necessarily what is here which i’m quite skeptical. Biological and chemical oxygen demand are often the culprits in urban areas. My first suspects would sewage treatment plants and whether they have had any “accidents” or leakage.