Vehicle Tires Are the Largest Source of Nanoplastics Pollution in the High Alps, Study Finds

New survey results have revealed that vehicle tires are the biggest source of nanoparticle pollution in the remote Alps.

In the Alpine survey, trained mountaineer citizen scientists collected samples of high-altitude glaciers, and scientists used a method called thermal desorption-proton transfer reaction-mass spectrometry (TD-PTR-MS) to analyze the samples for nanoplastics.

Mountaineers collected samples from 14 sites in the French, Swiss and Italian Alps. From there, scientists analyzed nanoparticles for the presence of compounds such as polyethylene, polyethylene terephthalate, polypropylene, polyvinyl chloride, polystyrene and tire wear particles. Out of the 14 remote sites, researchers detected nanoparticle pollution in samples from five of the sites.

The most abundant polymers in the nanoparticles included tire wear particles (found in 41% of nanoparticles), polystyrene (28%) and polyethylene (12%). The team published their findings in the journal Scientific Reports.

In recent years, growing research has outlined the extent to which our vehicle tires emit pollutants. One study published in 2022 determined that tire particles could be harming marine life after scientists found exposure to tire particles led to negative effects on coastal and freshwater organisms.

Vehicle tyres found to be biggest source of nanoplastics in the high Alps

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— The Guardian (@theguardian.com) February 4, 2025 at 5:50 AM

Then, a separate study published later that year revealed an alarming finding — that the pollution coming from vehicle tires could be as much as 2,000 times worse than the pollution coming from vehicle exhaust pipes.

As Yale Environment 360 reported, tire particles could make up an estimated 78% of ocean microplastics, and globally, vehicle tires shed around 6 million tons of particles per year.

The impact is so widespread that in one study, scientists found the chemicals from tires present in human urine samples.

Moving forward, the trained mountaineers who helped with this study are also continuing on, collecting samples for evaluation from remote locations all over the world for the Global Atmospheric Plastics Survey.

“It will be the first study of global background nanoplastic pollution,” Dušan Materić, bio-analytical scientist and Head of the Research Group for Microplastics, Nanoplastics and Elements at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Leipzig, Germany, told The Guardian. “We need to establish that baseline so we can come back in future decades and see if things have got better or worse. It is a pioneering study, putting this issue on the map.”

The survey is meant to dive deeper into microplastic pervasiveness by determining what types of microplastics are present, the sources of these pollutants, and how far they are traveling. As of January 2025, mountaineers Oliver Graves and Brendan O’Ciobhain have just pulled samples from the Ellsworth Mountains in Antarctica.