Airborne Tire Wear Particles: A Critical Reanalysis of the Literature Reveals Emission Factors Lower than Expected

Tires are a ubiquitous part of on-road transport systems
serving
as the critical connecting component at the interface of the motive
power and road surface. While tires are essential to automobile function,
the wear of tires as a source of particulate air pollution is still
poorly understood. The variety of reported emissions found in the
secondary literature motivated us to summarize all known mass-based
tire wear emission factors for light-duty vehicles in primary research.
When excluding road wear and resuspension, mean emissions of 1.1 mg/km/vehicle
(median 0.2 mg/km/vehicle) were found for tire wear PM10 and mean emissions of 2.7 mg/km/vehicle (median 1.1 mg/km/vehicle)
when including studies with resuspended tire wear. Notably, these
factors are substantially lower than broadly cited and accepted factors
in the secondary literature with mean emissions of 6.5 mg/km/vehicle
(median 6.1 mg/km/vehicle). As revealed by our analysis, secondary
literature reports emission factors systematically higher than those
of the primary sources on which they are based. This divergence is
due to misunderstandings and misquotations that have been prevalent
since the year 1995. Currently accepted mass-based emission factors
for directly emitted airborne tire wear particles need revision, including
those from the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the
European Environment Agency.