Tyre wear particles and metals in highway roadside ditches: Occurrence and potential transport pathways
Journal article, 2025

Tyre wear particles (TWP) pose significant environmental concerns, necessitating a comprehensive understanding of their environmental distribution for accurate risk assessment. Roadside soil has not been extensively studied for TWP occurrence and distribution. This study aims to characterise the occurrence and distribution of TWP and associated metals in roadside soils and to investigate the correlations between these contaminants. Soil samples were collected from two road ditches along a Swedish national motorway at varying depths and distances from the contamination source. TWP in fractions <500 μm were analysed using PYR-GC/MS. Results indicated that TWP concentrations in soil samples ranged from 0.74 ± 0.20 to 12.40 ± 1.88 mg/kg d.w., consistent with other studies, and decreased with distance from the road, similar to Zn. In one ditch, TWP concentrations remained constant with depth, unlike concentrations of Co and Cr, which increased, while in the other ditch, TWP and most metals did not decrease with depth or distance from the outlet. Strong correlations were found between concentrations of TWP and Zn in one, but not the other, where Zn might have followed different transport due to leaching. Metal correlations in both ditches suggest traffic-related but not necessarily tyre wear origins. These findings are crucial for risk assessments of traffic-related pollutants, particularly TWP, and their spread into soils.

Soil

Tire wear

Heavy metals

Road ditch

Pyr-GC/MS

Microplastics

Author

Maria Polukarova

Chalmers, Architecture and Civil Engineering, Water Environment Technology

Elly Lucia Gaggini

Chalmers, Architecture and Civil Engineering, Water Environment Technology

Elisabeth Rødland

Norwegian Institute for Water Research

Ekaterina Sokolova

Chalmers, Architecture and Civil Engineering, Water Environment Technology

Mia Bondelind

Chalmers, Architecture and Civil Engineering, Water Environment Technology

Mats Gustafsson

The Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute (VTI)

Ann-Margret Hvitt Strömvall

Chalmers, Architecture and Civil Engineering, Water Environment Technology

Yvonne Andersson-Sköld

Chalmers, Architecture and Civil Engineering

Environmental Pollution

0269-7491 (ISSN) 1873-6424 (eISSN)

Vol. 372 125971

Driving Forces

Sustainable development

Areas of Advance

Transport

Subject Categories (SSIF 2025)

Civil Engineering

Chemical Engineering

Environmental Engineering

DOI

10.1016/j.envpol.2025.125971

More information

Latest update

3/19/2025