A toxic mix of rubber and a host of other chemicals. Researchers at the university of vienna were able to prove in the lab that substances from tires accumulate and let us plans via from up the tire were part of collaborative. This is the chemicals and tires can be absorbed by plants and metabolized in plants. So they could potentially wind up on consumers plates coming each year around 100000. 00 tons of tire where particles, a crew on roads in germany alone. Tires are the source of most of the micro plastic and the environment. Car tires are technical marvels as the only connection between the vehicles on the road. They need to have a good grip roll quietly. And last for a long time to do that, hundreds of chemicals are added to them via sewer systems. These additives leech and the environment and the us researchers were long puzzled by a die off of pacific salmon populations until they prove that the sim and were being poisoned by a substance created when tire, where particles get into the environment. Its name 6 p p d, quinones. Physically the austin was all we know from the us and mass depth of sam and that car solely due to tire aware particles that were washed off the streets. Now there is evidence, for example, that these chemicals are just as toxic for trout and snails and all that pump system does look efficient. The experts say that fish populations in germany could also be effected, but these additives remain vital to tire, making the bulk and these are the we need these additives right now to take the most toxic one to 6 p p. D. Quinones, this quinonez a decomposition product needed to stabilize tires, to protect them against oxidation and aging. So for now, you cant simply remove a ton of stuff from a mental his pulse name. But we also cancel out the possibility that 6 p. P d is toxic to other creatures to including humans. Its effects havent been extensively studied. That alarms to hoffman and his team. They wanted to find out if the tire additive could also wind up in the human food chain. So for 14 days, they took young, let us plants and added chemicals from tire. Were part of goals to their water. For the most common, the additives and the decomposition product. 6 p, p d quint. In a 2nd test, they added physical tire aware particles to the water given to the plants. The analysis and the mass spectrometer showed that in both experiments, plants integrated the material into their cellular structure. I looked and stuff and all of the 5 substances we studied or absorbed and transported into the plant and been capitalized by the plant, 2 metal bodies. Yet further studies should show whether these talks in this land up and let us not just in the lab, but also into real life conditions. But its clear where theres traffic, theres tire aware, and thats unlikely to change in the near future. Tire particles can wind up in the food chain through various channels, but a large number are washed into the sewers. Inner city waste water is normally clean the treatment plans, the tire particles, wind up in the leftover sewage slides. Its rich and phosphorus, which is why you choose to fertilize crops in many countries, including germany, austria, canada, and the u. S. In the fields that can come into contact with plants in germany, there are legal restrictions on using sewage sledges. Fertilizer, tier fields used to grow letters cant have been treated with a slide for at least 24 months outside the big cities. Much of the water from the street goes straight into rivers and lakes and treated. So a team at berlins Technical University studied whether tire, wear particles could be filtered right out of the drains themselves, down your thing, house web city, streets to collect dust entire particles. Then he experimented with a variety of filtration systems, placed under drain covers, the name of them, tests that are test stand, and berlin under defined conditions and the addition of real st george and refuse if we dropped up to 97 percent of the particles. Uh, typically a great success, but not every filter is suited to every drain, since the mixture of the test leaves and other particles varies from place to place. To keep developing their field tracing system, the team wanted to find out where it is, the most tire, where a car they installed filters in various measuring stations and analyzed the remaining residue. The results showed up to 7 times more tire, where particles near bands and up to 3 times more at intersection. The reason taking sharp terms, slowing down, starting and stopping, all put extra pressure on tires and lead to greater wear and tear. The traffic apps can help by providing tips for a more fluid driving style and monitoring the drivers brake too often. For example, the 30 kilometer per hour zones could also help reduce the amount of tire where particles and cities. The filters require a fair bit of maintenance, so it makes the most sense to employ them where lots of tire where particles accumulate. But why dont manufacturer simply change the materials used in their tires given their impact . Environmental scientists to hoffman thinks thats unrealistic at the moment itself. But this isnt long enough because theres a long way to go this. Im not very optimistic that this will happen quickly, because we dont have good alternatives for many of the substance as well as to start, realistically speaking, the development of truly more eco friendly additive. So well take 5 to 10 years. So what does all this mean for our supermarket . Let us despite the potential risk pawsman doesnt think people need to worry about that. Does a lot of them are in general, the let us in the supermarket will be totally ok. Well, thats not the problem kind of the point is that the complexity of chemicals and plastics must be reduced because some 10000. 00 chemical additives can be found in the plastics which pollute are ours, both on land pending to see the effect of these chemicals needs to be better researched and their use limited tire particles. Are a big part of the problem. Though its expected that starting in 2026 tire manufacturers in europe at least well have to comply with maximum limits for tire. Were particles. Its clear plastic is a big problem, but just how big is it and how small is a piece of micro plastic. Exactly. And where is there more of it floating around in oceans and sees or in fresh water. Busy for mine, rena examine is water samples from the wells oceans because its still unclear just how much plastic winds up in the marine environment. Its audible moment on with our research where specifically trying to analyze micro glass tank to the fullest expertise were trying to find out exact figures to discover and demonstrate how big the problem is, is it relies to and what its a fact was, might be helped in boston to all the effects, you know, see, well, monday, you know, was out at sea himself and collected these samples. Now hes examining them in the lab. The simple but was meet these here are samples from the mediterranean. Last week you have your standard pieces of plastic like this fragments for its from some kind of packaging. It said, but then theres also a lot of file from a cigarette packs or potato chip bags, etc. Punk stick it all chips through to take the ones and then theres everything that comes from industrial fishing like left over bits of fishing, long and histories is like the mediterranean is really one of the most, if not the most polluted, sees when it comes to micro plastic exhaust camico plastic full monday know travels the loan to conduct his research. Hes developing techniques to measure my capacity ics and standardize these measurements this month. And that captures the smallest of plastic particles floating on the water surface. The prostate is swimming around in old. If the wills oceans on the problem is only growing, it spreading through all areas of marine life the each year around 9000000. 00 tons of plastic winds up in the worlds oceans. So every minute, some 15000 kilograms of Plastic Waste floods into the sea. Thats equivalent to the weight of 10 calls per minute. Or yet few people realize that rivers, lakes and soil a mole polluted with up to 23 times as much plastic as in nancy. And saw that the numbers that have been communicated and continue to be communicated are far too low. Its out of assume theyre going talk slow to many times what they are now, that for 2 reasons, die. First of all, we on the Research Side of gain deeper insight into the matter. So were seeing more up and were going to be paying more attention to micro plastic and how much of it theyre really yes, that alone will make the figures rise by 100. 00, if not a 1000 percent compared to what weve been told and plus all the literal pollution, which just keeps growing, you know, to hold on dana thoughts, the collective plastic, according to its size. He and his team of focusing on fragments less than 3 millimeters long of those little data on such small pieces. Measure sits itself. We know that our bodies absorb plastic. Its also been detected in human blood, but we still dont know what is the exact effects of that are fixed. Thats being investigated using a variety of Research Method of solving lane is research shows. Switzerland also has a problem with plastic. Michael prostate has been found in old lakes and in the mountains to lake geneva as walter may look, crystal clear. But micro plastic isnt always visible to the naked eye. Again, ill save all myself. Ive seen lake geneva, where we are now has around the same proportion of micro plastic a certain hotspots in the mediterranean, and were finding really large amounts of plastic. Thats not surprising, given that a lake is usually a closed system or at least has little in and out flow. So everything accumulates. Each year, late to neighbor alone, takes in some 55 tons of plastic, mainly in the form of micro particles. Its estimated that around 580. 00 tons of now accumulated in the light transported by rivers about 20 tons of micro plastic, from switzerland and to the ocean. Every year i contribute to pollution worldwide. So how can this problem be solved . Classical name is a plastic problem, is a global problem that requires a variety of approaches. Its not just about finding one that will work. You need different options on a variety of levels. So you can tackle the problem is a home. The the trouble is plastic doesnt decompose. It just breaks down into ever smaller pieces. But why is there so much of this stuff around . Are all plastics the same . Whats plastic actually made . The plastic is made of polymers change of molecules like this. Usually plastic is produced using petroleum, when broken down into its individual parts and rearranged synthetic polymer change take shape. These both special characteristics. Theyre like youre tough and can take on almost any shape or form. The plastic is easy to make, but hard to get rid of. Synthetic polymers are hard to break apart and only break down very slowly. It can take between 501000 years for some of them to decompose on. The 1st, the plastic made from synthetic components was developed in 1907 because its based materials were relatively inexpensive. Plastic soon became ubiquitous. It promised to make our lives easier and better. Yeah, state and sites, the pulse, its sites the eyes and sides. Less of your height to the construct of the site fight and us plus the se. Plastic are suited to mass production, allowing products to be made and reproduced quickly. But plastic and polymers arent only produced from petroleum polymers can also be found in nature and used to make bio plastic, corn, sugar cane. And cellulose can be processed to produce molecular chains that possess similar characteristics to Petroleum Based plastics. While theyre more easily broken down, they still take a long time to degrade. So solutions are needed for disposing of bio plastics to recycling is one such solution, but it only works if the plastic is all of the same type. Get most Food Packaging is made up with a colorful mixture of plastics, which must 1st be separated from one another and sort it could chemistry provide the solution to that problem. The in the swiss town of c on chemist Samantha Anderson has developed a new process to break down mixed plastic into its basic Raw Materials and recycling. So whats our secret, the chemical or cycling . Its the, i think its the easiest way to take it from the polymer to the monomer. And then back to the polymer again, i think this allows us to tackle complex waste. It allows us to do material recovery. Um yeah, i mean for us this is, this is the way that were gonna, were going to achieve this. Samantha anderson and her team found a way to turn Plastic Waste into plastic. That looks brand new. Start by shredding the waste. Its all kind of mixed together. Its dirty, it hasnt been pre washed, anything like this. As you can see, theres different colors. Theres different types of plastic in there. So really we dont have to do any kind of pre screening that would be required for other types of technology out there. This secret chemical cocktail is her invention. At Room Temperature, it separates the p e t. From the other plastic pieces, the reaction is very specific to the p t plastic. So if you have a mix of p t and lets say pbc, pbc wont react and the p h p will. So we can actually separate out different solids from the p t, and then we can actually separate the monomers from the p t. From themselves. She discovered the secret reagents together with our colleagues. Part of your value is odd a and christopher ireland. Theyre turning their innovation into a business, so we cant show you the whole process, especially not how the Plastic Waste is transformed into this mixture. As we did it on a friday nights. And after about the 1st 30 minutes, we saw that it was working. And i remember writing the christmas musical, my gosh, is working. And then we decided to wait the entire weekend just to make sure that everything reacted that. You know, we didnt want to stop the reaction to early and get no correct results. And it was the most uh, suspenseful weekend. I think ive had an a really long time cuz you, you knew that when you would go back, that there would be something waiting for you that youve got to explore and analyze. And def file monday, when we showed up it was more or less exactly like this. Afterwards, the mixture is filtered to obtain the pure Building Blocks to create new plastic. The end product is this powder. Its called purified through public acid. Its commonly a source right now from the oil industry. So what they do is they pull out crude oil, it goes through a refining process and they make this white powder. And this powder is used to make any a t t item polyester and any sort of plastic that has uh, termites are folic acid in it. Uh, yeah. So we can actually make it now instead of from oil directly from our own waste. So they can extract polyester from clothing and for example, recycled the remaining car. Thats possible because the plastic is removed at Room Temperature and not at high temperature. Their prototype stands and an incineration plant. Here they have a room where they can build tests and scale up their chemical recycling system. Terrell stomach acid. The basic Building Block for p t is trapped by this filter, but it is chemical recycling sustainable. It can be clean. Actually the majority of the chemicals that were using for this, you probably, uh, interacted with on a regular basis already. Its either used to make, for example, brands, um, its for example, found in tooth paste. So it can be that kind of clean, that sustainable. Uh that easy to do, its just choosing the right system, which is what weve developed. And this is what makes our technology really special, is that the chemistry of really simple. So scaling, its really simple. They want to offer the chemical recycling process and world wide. So theyve found that to start out called di pauline and already attracted initial investors. Their innovation could be part of the solution to the global plastic problem. Why do humming does not get drunk. Why do Gravitational Waves squeeze all bodies . How much do we need to put a stop cons cream for help find beyond says get smaller on dw science outtake talk channel in labs chemist. Create innovative compounds with taylor made characteristics like p size. They are vital ingredients in many products, but they arent found in nature. So we make them our selves. Unfortunately, some p thoughts are also highly toxic. Her and police flu elton substances or defense as an umbrella to put thousands of different chemicals. They do a great job of repelling water grease and it, which is why nearly every branch of industry uses them. Different in non state cook with artificial leather furniture, firewood titans cleaning fluids, electronics, makeup, cars, pesticides, soils, Drinking Water and also use literally as when he 1st pose a serious risk to health on the environment. And worst of all, they never degrade for this reason that also includes the chemicals and they have an impact on practically all of this high concentration is can lead to increase level weight and even cause cancer. Kidneys are at risk to pay phones can also affects the quality of the booth weights of newborns can likewise below it, how the substance is actually working. The body isnt clear. According to what i thought this is a restructure cell battery is what scientists do know is that the immune response is low is and in general, clark seems, can be rendered less effective payphones into the soil and was associates by a landfill discharge emissions. Some industrial facilities, commercial waste flow to, or simply when we watch rain coats, Wastewater Treatment ponds often con, so to them the e. U is thinking about binding o p funds except for essential ones like those used in medical equipment. But even if we succeed in outgoing the chemicals, one problem will remain what can be done about the huge amounts of p fast that are already in the environment . Thats a question to which we still have no real lance or getting rid of them is like trying to take mill back out of your coffee again after adding it. But despite the difficulties, one attempt is under way at a nato airfield on germanys north sea coast. It might look like a giant sand box here, but its anything but a playground. This entire area is contaminated, says cost, and hind from lower section is Building Management all. Lets begin the house bestbuy in talking. We assume well need to watch 7 to 800000 tons of her or she gets a pass out of the samples. Visa spans for per and poly for roll out hills substances. These include more than 10000. 00 different chemicals in various forms, summer solid,