Because coho salmon kept dying in Pacific Northwest streams, West Coast tribes carried a complaint about a tire ingredient to the federal government. The Environmental Protection Agency has answered. It will review 6PPD, a preservative that keeps rubber from degrading, and it may go as far as banning the chemical outright. Yale E360 reported the decision. The chemical has been linked with salmon deaths along the U.S. West Coast.
How Tires Reach a Fish
The trouble begins with ordinary driving. Every mile on the road grinds tiny flecks of rubber off the tread. Those flecks are rich in 6PPD. Where the preservative meets ozone pollution it transforms into 6PPD-q, a compound toxic to fish, and from there the weather handles delivery. Rain falls on streets and parking lots, picks the chemical up, and carries it into the streams and rivers where salmon live and spawn. In the Pacific Northwest the result has been lethal. Coho are the species that has absorbed the worst of it there.
The Agency’s Statement
Michal Freedhoff, an assistant administrator at the EPA, set the review against a backdrop of steady loss. “These salmon and other fish have suffered dramatic decreases in population over the years,” Freedhoff said in a statement, before adding that addressing the use of 6PPD “is one way we can work to reverse this trend.” The statement did not commit the agency to any particular outcome. The commitment, for now, is to study. Nothing more.
California moved a year earlier. Regulators there told tire makers to hunt for substitutes, which made the preservative an early test of how far one state can push product chemistry. The industry’s public answer has stayed noncommittal; the U.S. Tire Manufacturers Association says it is studying potential alternatives, and it has named none and offered no timeline. On the association’s account, no replacement has arrived yet.
The Tribes’ View
When the announcement arrived, the Puyallup Tribal Council, among the groups that pushed for the review, read it as vindication. The council called the news “a victory for salmon,” and said that banning 6PPD in tires would “be hugely important in protecting fish.” Those words run ahead of the record. A review is open. No ban exists.
What follows is the agency’s study of the chemical’s impact, and then a decision on whether the preservative still has a place in American tires. Until that decision lands, rain keeps moving the compound from road to river.
Sources
- After Salmon Deaths, EPA Takes Aim at Toxic Chemical Issuing from Car Tires – Yale E360
- EPA Launches Comprehensive Rulemaking To Address Toxic Tire Chemicals Threatening Salmon
