Although plastic particles in the air are increasingly coming into focus, knowledge about their distribution and effects is still limited. Chemical analyses from Leipzig now provide details from Germany for the first time: Around 4% of the particulate matter consists of plastic. Around two-thirds of this comes from tire abrasion.
I bet they did as well, but outside of Donald Trump’s America, most of the world still operates on empirical evidence so the more things are studied, the better.
E.g yes we already knew that tires shed a lot of microplastics, but now that we know that the majority of urban microplastic pollution is from tires specifically, it’s easier for governments to push through either a ban on cars in certain areas, or weight limits, or heavily weight-based taxation (heavier cars = more tire wear), or something else.