Although plastic particles in the air are increasingly coming into focus, knowledge about their distribution and effects is still limited. Chemical analyses from Leipzig now provide details from Germany for the first time: Around 4% of the particulate matter consists of plastic. Around two-thirds of this comes from tire abrasion.
We also had more trollies in mid-sized cities until the tire lobby persuaded city governments to invest in buses.
They didn’t persuade them, they bought the companies and then killed them off. My town had a pretty extensive trolley system, the remnants of which still exist as bike and walking trails further from downtown. The infrastructure for it is still visible and it’s a painful reminder of what could have been. Instead we get a routine traffic problem in a town of only 160k.