cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/7820643
U.S. regulators say they will review the use of a chemical found in almost every tire after a petition from West Coast Native American tribes that want it banned because it kills salmon as they return from the ocean to their natal streams to spawn.
The Yurok tribe in California and the Port Gamble S’Klallam and Puyallup tribes in Washington asked the Environmental Protection Agency to prohibit the rubber preservative 6PPD earlier this year, saying it kills fish — especially coho salmon — when rains wash it from roadways into rivers. Washington, Oregon, Vermont, Rhode Island and Connecticut also wrote the EPA, citing the chemical’s “unreasonable threat” to their waters and fisheries.
The agency’s decision to grant the petition last week is the start of a long regulatory process that could see the chemical banned. Tire manufacturers are already looking for an alternative that still meets federal safety requirements.
“We could not sit idle while 6PPD kills the fish that sustain us,” Joseph L. James, chairperson of the Yurok Tribe, told The Associated Press. “This lethal toxin has no business in any salmon-bearing watershed.”
Whenever someone bring up electric cars as a fix I just say : “tires”
“Tires” may not be the strongest argument against electric cars, but it’s certainly succinct. Personally, I’d probably pick “traffic”, at the cost of an extra syllable
It’s an entry point for explaining how personal vehicles if inherently inefficient
Tires, 8 lane roadways, massive swathes of parking lots often taking valuable land, the electricity powering it has to be green, road maintainance/resurfacing.
EVs only really solve the gasoline problem with cars, they solve little else.
As NotJustBikes put it: EV’s are not here to save the planet; they’re here to save the car industry.