https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-12/uow-tci112420.php
News Release 3-Dec-2020
University of Washington
Every fall more than half of the coho salmon that return to Puget Sound's urban streams die before they can spawn. In some streams, all of them die. But scientists didn't know why.
Now a team led by researchers at the University of Washington Tacoma, UW and Washington State University Puyallup have discovered the answer. When it rains, stormwater flushes bits of aging vehicle tires on roads into neighboring streams. The killer is in the mix of chemicals that leach from tire wear particles: a molecule related to a preservative that keeps tires from breaking down too quickly.
This research was published Dec. 3 in Science.
"Most people think that we know what chemicals are toxic and all we have to do is control the amount of those chemicals to make sure water quality is fine. But, in fact, animals are exposed to this giant chemical soup and we don't know what many of the chemicals in it even are," said co-senior author Edward Kolodziej, an associate professor in both the UW Tacoma Division of Sciences & Mathematics and the UW Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering.
"Here we started with a mix of 2,000 chemicals and were able to get all the way down to this one highly toxic chemical, something that kills large fish quickly and we think is probably found on every single busy road in the world."
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