It's going to take more than electric vehicles to solve our air pollution problem – if we keep laying asphalt.
Whilst Aggregate Industries proposes a new asphalt plant on a Devon hilltop with a 27m smokestack, researchers from Yale University, Carnegie Mellon University and the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry have shown that emissions from asphalt surfaces are a significant source of air pollution in urban areas, especially in hot weather.
Asphalt roads make city air pollution worse in summer, study finds https://t.co/PrMU2r3z89— The Guardian (@guardian) September 2, 2020
Dr Gary Fuller, senior lecturer in air quality measurement at Imperial College London, said:
"We already know road surfaces are an increasingly important source of air pollution. We have historically thought of traffic pollution as coming from vehicle exhausts. This has been the focus of policy and new vehicles have to be fitted with exhaust clean-up technologies.
"With heavier and heavier vehicles, the combined total of particle pollution from road surface, brake and tyre wear is now greater than the particle emissions from vehicle exhaust but there are no policies to control this."
