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How I streamed my off-road Miata race using Starlink and StarStream by Emme Hall
Thursday April 9th, 2026 at 11:17 PM

Ars Technica
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Regardless of your interest in motorsport, you've almost certainly heard of the Monaco Grand Prix, Daytona 500, and Indianapolis 500. These iconic races are easy to spectate, with grandstands lining the course and a camera or two at every turn. Video feeds from the race can be transmitted live thanks to the infrastructure of the populated areas surrounding the tracks.

But what if your course is 100 miles (161 km) from nowhere? It's 1,000 miles (1,610 km) long, and the only way to access it is on bumpy, dirty access roads that require four-wheel drive and plenty of clearance. If you want to watch the whole race with your own eyes, you’ll need to hire a helicopter. And broadcasting it live on TV? Good luck.

All that is changing with the advent of StarStream, a video and content streaming service that can be used with Starlink, the low-Earth-orbit satellite Internet system that has changed the way off-road race teams communicate. But George Hammel, a former motocross and UTV racer, saw even more potential: a way to bring fans into the cockpit, live.

Until now, it has been hard to share this kind of racing with anyone but your co-driver. Credit: Dusty Summit

Hammel was always drawn to storytelling. As a factory-backed athlete, he quickly realized that the real value he brought to sponsors was not race results but how well he connected with fans. What better way to do that than by bringing them on board a vehicle during a race?

His first attempt at livestreaming was a disaster. His team outfitted his race car, chase vehicles, and a helicopter with GoPro cameras, but the Starlink connection they used was slow and couldn’t process the video sufficiently to transmit it over the Internet.

So Hammel wrote some code that breaks down the video data into small enough packets that can fit through the Starlink’s data points, and StarStream was born.

I decided to try it out.

What the heck is StarStream?

Hammel lent me a StarStream kit for a race in Laughlin, Nevada, last December, and I was pretty amazed by its simplicity. It consists of two GoPros tethered to a small box about 8 inches square and 2 inches thick (20 cm x 5 cm). One GoPro is configured to capture audio from a race car’s intercom system, recording conversations between the co-driver and driver, plus pit crew chatter. There's also a port for a Starlink mini and a power cord.

Three cars line up for the start of an off-road race Note the Starlink antenna (temporarily) mounted to the roof. The StarStream box was safely secured in a padded bag in my co-driver's footwell. Credit: Turn2 TV

(The system draws 1.1 A or less at 12 V; I could have hardwired it to my battery, but since I was using a loaner unit for a relatively short race, Hammel gave me a power cord that works with a Milwaukee battery.)

We lined up for the race at 6:15 am in the dark. Flaherty simply had to turn the StarStream box on, and the cameras instantly powered up, one facing inward and the other set to record the desert outside.

Buddy the off-road Miata

I race a lifted Miata named "Buddy." Since my setup is unique, I was placed in the sportsman class and took the green flag alongside two giant off-road rigs with V8 engines and 35-inch tires. Also sharing the track were UTVs with 20 inches of wheel travel, Trophy Trucks with even more, and everything in between. To say I was outclassed is an understatement.

StarStream let me share exactly what that experience was like. Each user gets a link to a webpage displaying the live feed, but I went one step further and hired someone to run the stream on my YouTube page. Using the free Open Broadcaster Software, Samuel Nyandwi from Live Stream Tricks and Tips made the broadcast look polished—adding a background, switching camera views, and even setting things up so sponsor logos could have been included if I’d had the time to organize them. Heck, with enough viewers, I could have even sold ads against the stream. And he did all of this from Quebec, Canada.

A screenshot of a livestream of someone racing off-road
This kind of thing would be unthinkable for an amateur racer a few years ago. Credit: Turn2 TV
A screenshot of a livestream of someone racing off-road
This is what the in-car footage from the livestream looked like. Credit: Turn2 TV

We sat in staging for a while, so the racing action doesn’t start until 20 minutes into the stream. Tune in to see Flaherty and me sing songs, panic at the glare of the sun, and catch more air than we intended to. Unfortunately, it ends in... well, let’s just say it involves smoke.

How the pros StarStream

Of course, my race was small potatoes compared to one of the largest off-road events in the world, King of the Hammers. While I used my StarStream as a lark—showing 400 people or so how dumb it is to race a Miata in the desert—Paul Wolff’s stream brought 73,000 fans along in a 13-hour race so difficult that only two of the 82 cars finished.

It’s hard to overstate just how difficult King of the Hammers is. Race trucks need to speed across a desert section filled with whoops and deep silt, and they then have to clamber over rocks twice their size. Sometimes the obstacles are so large that teams use winches just to get past them. The rigs themselves are monsters, with huge V8s, rear steering, beefy axles, and 42-inch tires. Most teams run a driver and co-driver, but Wolff prefers to do things the hard way, piloting a single-seat car all alone.

An off-road racing car competes on rough ground
Paul Wolff at this year's King of the Hammers. Credit: Matthew Molter
The underside of the roof of an off-road race car, with electronics modules mounted to it
The StarStream box hangs out below the roof. Credit: Matthew Molter
A satellite antenna, mounted into a roof panel of an off-road racer
The Starlink antenna has been permanently mounted here, unlike on Buddy. Credit: Matthew Molter

Wolff led much of the race, but 10 hours in, just as the sun was setting, the course turned into something rarely seen in competition. The route pushed through sections of Johnson Valley, California, long thought too gnarly to race on. Fans watched Wolff in real time as his steering system suffered a catastrophic failure, leaving him stranded in the dark with an abandoned, broken vehicle just ahead. With limited tools and the race clock clicking down to the 14-hour limit, he had to figure out a fix on the spot.

The livestream showed Wolff saying, “Come on, wifey—I need you, babe. Call me up.”

Using the Starlink connection onboard the car, he was able to contact his wife, Christie, as thousands of fans listened in. At one point, Wolff tells her, “I think I broke my foot,” as the video shows him limping among the large rocks at the front of the car. When he explained that he didn't have the parts to fix the steering problem, she replied, “Do you want me to Google something?”

A man adjusts an antenna on the roof of an off-road racing car Technology brought home the human side of this sport. Credit: Matthew Molter

Wolff assured his wife that he wouldn't quit, but he wanted to FaceTime with his kids. He collapsed onto the rear of the broken truck in front of him, exhausted but clearly still thinking about how to fix his broken steering.

Sometimes the oldest tech works, too

The whole situation was wild. Just two years ago, a call to a loved one in the middle of a race in the desert would have required a spotty, expensive satellite phone, and fans would have had to wait until the next day to hear what happened. Here, we watched Wolffe’s struggle unfold in real time.

What’s even cooler is what was happening back at race ops. There, organizers ran a live show using remote cameras and Starlink to broadcast the race from a few select points on the course to the nearly 200,000 people watching on YouTube. The live show hosts were able to display the live feed from Wolff’s car on their video feed, so even those who didn’t know how to find Wolff’s feed could see it happening. Again, all this happened in real time thanks to StarStream and Starlink.

A man fixes a wheel on his off-road racing car A rock counts as a tool. Credit: Matthew Molter

In the end, Wolff was able to get his car drivable by hitting the steering components with a rock and using a ratchet strap to hold it in place. He then manhandled the heavy car to his pit, where his team worked to get his rig back on course.

Benefiting the fans and the sponsors

Unfortunately, Wolff timed out of the race and was officially DNF–Did Not Finish–but he won the hearts of many fans. The team’s merchandise purchases increased tenfold, he’s the talk of the off-road Facebook pages, and Wolff’s sponsors, especially Warn winches, couldn’t be happier.

“King of the Hammers is a huge deal for us," said Jake Petersen, VP of marketing for Warn. “It’s the hardest race in the world where competitors have to winch around obstacles. Paul is by himself, and he had our new Zeon XC winch that we launched the week before. StarStream makes the Warn platform that much bigger. Fans can see the brand and watch the winch in action.”

The system isn’t perfect, though, especially when the Starlink antenna is obstructed. Wolff’s stream had plenty of unclear sections thanks to the narrow rock canyons the course goes in and out of. Without a clear view of the sky, the Starlink struggles.

An off-road race car drives up a 45-degree slope After the canyons of King of the Hammers (seen here), Wolff is off next to Moab, Utah. Credit: Paolo Baraldi

StarStream doesn’t come cheaply, either, although when factored into a pro race team’s overall budget, it’s fairly reasonable. The box, cameras, and cords are $3,600. You’ll need a Starlink Mini antenna for about $300, and you need the $250 per month Global Priority service plan. I bought my rooftop mount for $220 from Savage UTV. You’ll also need sturdy mounts for the cameras and a mount for the StarStream box.

Paul Wolff is back home now, no doubt resting his foot and tearing down his car in preparation for the next crazy rock crawling event on the red slabs of Moab, Utah, on March 31. He’ll be far from civilization, but his livestream will be right on your computer.

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The Gulf resource most imperiled by war may be water, not oil | AP News
Thursday April 9th, 2026 at 11:09 PM

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As missiles and drones curtail energy production across the Persian Gulf, analysts warn that water, not oil, may be the resource most at risk in the energy-rich but arid region.

Hundreds of desalination plants sit along the Persian Gulf coast, putting individual systems that supply water to millions within range of Iranian missile or drone strikes. Without them, major cities could not sustain their current populations.

In Kuwait, about 90% of drinking water comes from desalination, along with roughly 86% in Oman and about 70% in Saudi Arabia. The technology removes salt from seawater — most commonly by pushing it through ultra-fine membranes in a process known as reverse osmosis — to produce the freshwater that sustains cities, hotels, industry and some agriculture across one of the world’s driest regions.

For people living outside the Middle East, the main concern of the Iran war has been the impact on energy prices. The Gulf produces about a third of the world’s crude exports and energy revenues underpin national economies. Fighting has already halted tanker traffic through key shipping routes and disrupted port activity, forcing some producers to curb exports as storage tanks fill.

But the infrastructure that keeps Gulf cities supplied with drinking water may be equally vulnerable.

“Everyone thinks of Saudi Arabia and their neighbors as petrostates. But I call them saltwater kingdoms. They’re manmade fossil-fueled water superpowers,” said Michael Christopher Low, director of the Middle East Center at the University of Utah. “It’s both a monumental achievement of the 20th century and a certain kind of vulnerability.”

Early signs of risk

The war that began Feb. 28 with U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran has already brought fighting close to key desalination infrastructure. On March 2, Iranian strikes on Dubai’s Jebel Ali port landed some 12 miles from one of the world’s largest desalination plants, which produces much of the city’s drinking water.

Damage also was reported at the Fujairah F1 power and water complex in the United Arab Emirates, and at Kuwait’s Doha West desalination plant. The damage at the two facilities appeared to have resulted from nearby port attacks or debris from intercepted drones.

On Sunday, Bahrain accused Iran of indiscriminately attacking civilian targets and damaging one of its desalination plants, though it didn’t say supplies have gone offline. The island nation, home to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, has been among the countries targeted by Iranian drones and missiles.

Earlier, Iran said a U.S. airstrike damaged an Iranian desalination plant. Abbas Araghchi, the country’s foreign minister, said the strike on Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz had cut into the water supply for 30 villages. He warned that in doing so “the U.S. set this precedent, not Iran.”

Many Gulf desalination plants are physically integrated with power stations as co‑generation facilities, meaning attacks on electrical infrastructure could also hinder water production. Even where plants are connected to national grids with backup supply routes, disruptions can cascade across interconnected systems, said David Michel, senior fellow for water security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“It’s an asymmetrical tactic,” he said. “Iran doesn’t have the same capacity to strike back at the United States and Israel. But it does have this possibility to impose costs on the Gulf countries to push them to intervene or call for a cessation of hostilities.”

Desalination plants have multiple stages — intake systems, treatment facilities, energy supplies — and damage to any part of that chain can interrupt production, according to Ed Cullinane, Middle East editor at Global Water Intelligence, a publisher serving the water industry.

“None of these assets are any more protected than any of the municipal areas that are currently being hit by ballistic missiles or drones,” Cullinane said.

A long-standing concern

Gulf governments and U.S. officials have long recognized the risks these systems pose for regional stability: if major desalination plants were knocked offline, some cities could lose most of their drinking water within days. A 2010 CIA analysis warned attacks on desalination facilities could trigger national crises in several Gulf states, and prolonged outages could last months if critical equipment were destroyed.

More than 90% of the Gulf’s desalinated water comes from just 56 plants, the report stated, and “each of these critical plants is extremely vulnerable to sabotage or military action.”

A leaked 2008 U.S. diplomatic cable warned the Saudi capital of Riyadh “would have to evacuate within a week” if either the Jubail desalination plant on the Gulf coast or its pipelines or associated power infrastructure were seriously damaged.

Saudi Arabia has since invested in pipeline networks, storage reservoirs and other redundancies designed to cushion short-term disruptions, as has the UAE. But smaller states such as Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait have fewer backup supplies.

Climate change could threaten water plants

As warming oceans increase the likelihood and intensity of cyclones in the Arabian Sea and raise the chances of landfall on the Arabian Peninsula, storm surge and extreme rainfall could overwhelm drainage systems and damage coastal desalination.

The plants themselves contribute to the problem. Desalination is energy-intensive, with plants worldwide producing between 500 and 850 million tons of carbon emissions annually, approaching the roughly 880 million tons emitted by the entire global aviation industry.

The by-product of desalination, highly concentrated brine, is typically discharged back into the ocean, where it can harm seafloor habitats and coral reefs, while intake systems can trap and kill fish larvae, plankton and other organisms at the base of the marine food web.

As climate change intensifies droughts, disrupts rainfall patterns and fuels wildfires, desalination is expected to expand in many parts of the world.

The threat is not hypothetical

During Iraq’s 1990-1991 invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent Gulf War, Iraqi forces sabotaged power stations and desalination facilities as they retreated, said the University of Utah’s Low. At the same time, millions of barrels of crude oil were deliberately released into the Persian Gulf, creating one of the largest oil spills in history.

The massive slick threatened to contaminate seawater intake pipes used by desalination plants across the region. Workers rushed to deploy protective booms around the intake valves of major facilities.

The destruction left Kuwait largely without fresh water and dependent on emergency water imports. Full recovery took years.

More recently, Yemen’s Houthi rebels have targeted Saudi desalination facilities amid regional tensions.

The incidents underscore a broader erosion of long-standing norms against attacking civilian infrastructure, Michel said, noting conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza and Iraq.

International humanitarian law, including provisions of the Geneva Conventions, prohibit targeting civilian infrastructure indispensable to the survival of the population, including drinking water facilities.

The potential for harmful cyberattacks on water infrastructure is a growing concern. In 2023 and 2024, U.S. officials blamed Iran-aligned groups for hacking into several American water utilities.

Iran’s own water supply at risk

After a fifth year of extreme drought, water levels in Tehran’s five reservoirs plunged to some 10% of their capacity, prompting President Masoud Pezeshkian to warn the capital may have to be evacuated.

Unlike many Gulf states that rely heavily on desalination, Iran still gets most of its water from rivers, reservoirs and depleted underground aquifers. The country operates a relatively small number of desalination plants, supplying only a fraction of national demand.

Iran is racing to expand desalination along its southern coast and pump some of the water inland, but infrastructure constraints, energy costs and international sanctions have sharply limited scalability.

“They were already thinking of evacuating the capital last summer,” Cullinane of Global Water Intelligence said. “I don’t dare to wonder what it’s going to be like this summer under sustained fire, with an ongoing economic catastrophe and a serious water crisis.”

___

Follow Annika Hammerschlag on Instagram @ahammergram.

___

The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

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Seth MacFarlane to Adapt Matt Dinniman’s Dungeon Crawler Carl for Peacock by Vanessa Armstrong
Thursday April 9th, 2026 at 11:07 PM

Reactor
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News Dungeon Crawler Carl

Seth MacFarlane to Adapt Matt Dinniman’s Dungeon Crawler Carl for Peacock

No news yet on who will play Princess Donut

By

Published on April 2, 2026

Seth MacFarlane image from vagueonthehow from Tadcaster, York, England, CC BY-SA 4.0

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shot of Seth MacFarlane at SDCC 2017 with cover of Dungeon Crawler Carl

Seth MacFarlane image from vagueonthehow from Tadcaster, York, England, CC BY-SA 4.0

It’s been over a year since we first heard that Fuzzy Door, Seth MacFarlane’s production company, had picked up the rights to adapt Matt Dinniman’s Dungeon Crawler Carl books. Today, we found out via Variety that the project is moving into development as a live-action television series at Peacock.

That’s right, we’re getting closer to seeing Carl and Prince Donut’s televised apocalyptic journey… on television.

Here’s the official logline for the project, which hews closely to the first book:

An alien invasion has wiped out most of humanity and any survivors are forced to fight for their lives on a sadistic intergalactic game show. Sounds bad, right? Now try doing it with bare feet and a stuck-up, self-centered, tiara-wearing talking cat as your partner. Welcome to Dungeon Crawler World: Earth, where the apocalypse will be televised… and Coast Guard vet Carl finds himself stuck with his ex-girlfriend’s award-winning show cat, Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk, as they try to survive the end of the world, fighting monsters, aliens, an insane A.I. and even other survivors… all for the sake of good TV. Survival is optional. Entertainment is not.

Dinniman and MacFarlane will serve as executive producers on the project, with Chris Yost (Thor: Ragnarok, The Mandalorian, Cowboy Bebop) also on board as writer and executive producer. The project is still in its early days, so there’s no news on casting for Carl and/or Princess Donut. Dinniman did say in a previous interview with Variety, however, that he was confident in how the show’s fantastical elements would look in live action.

“We’re not going to do it if it’s gonna look like absolute shit,” he said. “And they will do CGI testing on Princess Donut and stuff like that. And that’s all I can say, I think. It’s all gonna hinge on what it looks like. But Fuzzy Door, specifically, if you watch Ted or The Orville, you’ll see that they know what they’re doing when it comes to this. So I would say, don’t knock it till you try it.” [end-mark]

The post Seth MacFarlane to Adapt Matt Dinniman’s <i>Dungeon Crawler Carl</i> for Peacock appeared first on Reactor.

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Nearly half of L.A. County’s pavement may be unnecessary, new map finds
Thursday April 9th, 2026 at 10:47 PM

Climate & Environment
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Los Angeles is often described as a concrete jungle, a city shaped by asphalt, parking lots and other hardscape. Now, for the first time, researchers have mapped that concrete in detail, and they claim a lot of it doesn’t need to be there.

A new analysis finds that some 44% of Los Angeles County’s 312,000 acres of pavement may not be essential for roads, sidewalks or parking, and could be reconsidered.

The report, DepaveLA, is the first parcel-level analysis to map all paved surfaces across L.A. County, and to distinguish streets, sidewalks, private properties, and other areas. The researchers divided all pavement into “core” and “non-core” uses. A street, for example, is core. Then they paired that map with data on heat, flooding and tree canopy, creating what they intend as a new framework for understanding where removing concrete and asphalt could make the biggest difference for people’s health and the climate.

Principal Brad Rumble visits an area where students are restoring natural habitat at Esperanza Elementary.

Paved surfaces get hotter than those with plantings, absorbing and radiating out the sun’s energy rather than converting it into plant growth, which in turn creates shade. Hotter areas also create more ozone smog. Greener areas are known to bring people psychological relief as well.

The authors are the nonprofit Accelerate Resilience L.A., founded by Andy Lipkis, who also founded TreePeople, the Los Angeles tree planting organization, and Hyphae Design Laboratory, a nonprofit that works to bridge health and the built environment.

What surprised them most, said Brent Bucknum, founder of Hyphae, was seeing where the pavement is concentrated. Nearly 70% of what they deemed non-core pavement is on private property.

Rather than a sweeping removal of pavement, the report highlights small changes that could add up.

The most potential they found was in parking areas, especially large, privately owned commercial and industrial lots. Redesigning 90-degree parking into angled parking could get rid of up to 1,600 acres, creating room for trees and stormwater capture, without reducing the number of parking spaces.

Parking lots, Bucknum said, are one of the clearest examples of how excess pavement has become accepted, even as it makes everyday life worse for residents.

Aerial view of hardscpe area inside Pershing Square in Los Angeles.

“I’m often amazed — I’ll drive into a parking lot and there’s beeping, bumper-to-bumper traffic, you’re under this sweltering heat trying to get out of the grocery store,” he said. “And the reality is, we can make it a lot nicer with more thoughtful design.”

Ben Stapleton, chief executive officer of the U.S. Green Building Council California, pointed to parking requirements that long tied the number of spaces to a building’s size and use.

“The natural solution was to just pave things over, because it’s cheaper, it’s less maintenance,” he said. “It’s not very expensive, especially asphalt.”

Residential property, including apartment complexes, are another place with potential.

If each residential parcel cut a 6-by-6-foot tree well in their patio, Bucknum said, it would amount to 1,530 acres of pavement removed, while on average only reducing patio space by 3%.

Emily Tyrer, director of green infrastructure at TreePeople, said pavement is expanding in residential yards.

“What we’re seeing is that a lot of residential yards are moving toward more paving and less lawn,” she said. “Rather than replacing it with shade trees and native plantings and low water use plants, they’re paving over.”

In many cases, she said, homeowners are responding to drought messaging and rising water costs.

A person walks their dog past native plants and flowers planted along the Merced Avenue Greenway in South El Monte, where they are rethinking how urban infrastructure can simultaneously serve pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists while providing essential environmental benefits.

“Paving does reduce water use, and it can reduce people’s water bills,” Tyrer said. “But it comes with trade-offs.”

The report also identifies schools as places where there could be less concrete or asphalt. On average, school campuses across L.A. County are approximately 40% covered in pavement, leaving students exposed to extreme heat.

At Esperanza Elementary School, near downtown Los Angeles, the campus was “just a sea of asphalt,” said Tori Kjer, executive director of the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust, which is overseeing a transformation at the school. Children ran across blacktop that could reach over 120 degrees on warm days.

It will soon have new California native plants and shade trees, stormwater capture features, grassy lawn, natural play elements, outdoor classrooms and more.

Many of the school families live in small apartments.

“People don’t have any open space,” Kjer said. “They leave their home, and they’re basically just on concrete streets and sidewalks.” Once the asphalt is removed and the trees go in, and rainwater is guided away, it will be a “place for quiet, imaginative play and active play.”

The idea for the Depave report grew out of years of work on tree planting and green infrastructure projects that repeatedly ran into the same barrier.

Installation of natural landscaping is currently under at Esperanza Elementary in Los Angeles.

On project after project, pavement emerged as the central problem, according to Bucknum. “We were trying to plant trees, but so much of the city is paved that there was nowhere to put them,” he said.

The team realized they needed better data to understand the problem, down to the block and neighborhood scale. Something more sophisticated than what is pavement and what is trees.

“This is a first step,” said Devon Provo, senior manager, planning and program alignment at Accelerate Resilience L.A. “It’s an opportunity assessment, not a prescriptive plan for what should 100% be removed.”

Olivier Sommerhalder, a principal and global sustainability leader at the design and planning firm Gensler, pointed out businesses that have paid out the money to pave something would need an upside to replace it.

“There are no incentives for property owners to reduce hardscape,” Sommerhalder said. “The municipality does not incentivize the removal of parking to mitigate urban heat hot spots.”

Sommerhalder said sustainability is increasingly part of design conversations with clients, particularly as tenants ask about comfort and environmental performance. But without policy or financial incentives, he said, surface parking often remains untouched until redevelopment.

This innovative 1.1-mile greenway in South El Monte offers not only safe and accessible paths for walking and biking but also serves as a sustainable approach to managing stormwater, restoring habitats, and reducing urban heat.

As for what an incentive might look like, “we think a really good analogy is the lawn replacement program,” Bucknum said, referring to rebate programs that helped shift Southern California away from water-intensive turf. “People didn’t know there were other options until there was education and financial support.”

It’s important to take into account what is underneath the pavement, said Carlos Moran, executive director of North East Trees, especially in areas with industrial histories.

In some neighborhoods, he said, pavement caps contaminated soil that cannot safely be disturbed. “We can’t just rip it out.”

But he agreed there’s too much pavement. “The hottest blocks in Los Angeles, they’re not just lacking trees,” he said. “They’re overbuilt with asphalt.”

The goal of the report, Provo said, is to give Angelenos and decision-makers a shared starting point for conversation.

“This data is relevant to anyone who wants to have a say in reimagining the future of Los Angeles to be cooler, healthier and more vibrant,” Provo said.

“My hope is that it opens the eyes of people who are building projects who may not have ever even thought about pavement in this way,” Stapleton said. “Once you learn something, you don’t unlearn it.”

By reframing pavement as a design choice rather than a default, Stapleton believes that the analysis could prompt developers and property owners to rethink how much concrete their projects really need, and what they might gain by replacing it.

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Microplastics and nanoplastics in urban air originate mainly from tire abrasion, research reveals
Thursday April 9th, 2026 at 10:47 PM

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by Tilo Arnhold, Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research

Microplastics and nanoplastics in urban air originate mainly from tire abrasion Particulate matter (PM) samples of PM10 (smaller than 10 micrometers) and PM2.5 (smaller than 2.5 micrometers) were taken at Torgauer Street in Leipzig using two high-volume samplers, as are otherwise used at air monitoring stations in accordance with European standards. Credit: Ankush Kaushik, TROPOS

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.

Extrapolated, this means that people in a city like Leipzig inhale approximately 2.1 micrograms of plastic per day through the air, which increases the risk of death from cardiovascular disease by 9% and from lung cancer by 13%. These findings underscore the need to take global action against plastic pollution and to examine air quality and health at the regional level, write researchers from the Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research (TROPOS) and Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg in the journal Communications Earth & Environment.

How plastic particles enter the air

Plastic particles in the air have become the focus of scientific attention in recent years because they have been detected even in uninhabited regions such as the polar regions and high mountains, and because they have the potential to disrupt ecological processes and affect human health. There are many possible sources of this type of air pollution, such as tire wear, brake wear, textile fibers, dust and urban surfaces.

However, plastic that enters the oceans in large quantities via rivers can also later return to the air as microplastics and nanoplastics via sea spray. Nanoplastics are defined as all plastic particles smaller than one micrometer, while microplastics are defined as all particles between one micrometer and one millimeter. Although the amount of plastic is clearly increasing, too little is known about the risks posed by inhaled plastic particles.

Health risks and regulatory blind spots

What is clear so far is that inhaled nanoplastics can enter the lungs and cause oxidative stress or inflammatory reactions that contribute to respiratory diseases. In addition, these particles can carry heavy metals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and other substances on their surface, which increase toxicity. The lack of knowledge about microplastics and nanoplastics is also one reason why neither the World Health Organization (WHO) nor the European Union currently has any recommendations or limit values for plastics in the air.

While plastic pollution in the oceans is now part of the negotiations on a UN plastics agreement, the small plastic particles in the air have so far played hardly any role in the political discussion.

Why studying airborne plastics is difficult

The fact that research into plastic in the air has only gained momentum in the last ten years. One reason is that "plastic" is not just one material, but a whole group of different substances with different chemical properties. Because of this diversity, scientists use several complementary analytical methods. Spectroscopic techniques can provide information about particle structure and surface characteristics, while mass-based approaches are used to determine overall quantities.

However, very small particles, especially nanoplastics, are particularly difficult to analyze and clearly identify in complex environmental samples. Conventional optical methods are limited in their ability to reliably detect particles in the nanometer range, and identifying the exact polymer type remains challenging at these small scales.

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Py-GC-MS and polymer fingerprinting work

Pyrolysis gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (Py-GC-MS) has become an important tool in overcoming these limitations. In this analytical method, the samples are broken down into smaller fragments by rapid heating (pyrolysis), separated by gas chromatography and identified by mass spectrometry.

As there are currently no standards for detecting the different polymers, the team had to develop methods for this. To this end, they selected 11 common types including TWPs (tire wear particles), such as PE (polyethylene), PP (polypropylene), PVC (polyvinyl chloride), PET (polyethylene terephthalate), PS (polystyrene), PMMA (polymethyl methacrylate/plexiglass), PC (polycarbonate), PA6 (polyamide 6), MDI-PUR (Polyurethane). The analytical "fingerprint" was determined using commercially available raw polymers and then compared with the samples from the air in Leipzig.

How the Leipzig air samples were taken

Particulate matter (PM) samples of PM10 (smaller than 10 micrometers) and PM2.5 (smaller than 2.5 micrometers) were taken using two high-volume samplers, as are used at air monitoring stations in accordance with European standards. In this process, 500 liters of air per minute are sucked through a filter system and the filter is changed every 24 hours. The filters are later analyzed in the laboratory using pyrolysis gas chromatography and mass spectroscopy.

Measurements were taken over a two-week period (1 to 14 September 2022) in the Science Park on Torgauer Strasse, an arterial road in the Leipzig city area—in other words, at a hotspot.

"This gave us a focused and detailed overview of the composition of micro–nano plastics in areas with heavy traffic. This setup offered the advantage of being able to record the peak values of urban exposure with a fine size resolution of particulate matter and generate high-quality baseline data for assessing health risks," explains Ankush Kaushik, a doctoral student at TROPOS who took and analyzed the samples.

"To our knowledge, this study represents the first polymer-resolved, size-segregated quantification of airborne micro- and nanoplastics in Germany that integrates analytical measurements with exposure and health risk assessment."

What the Leipzig study reveals

The study provides an initial insight into the pollution of the air we breathe with microplastics in a city like Leipzig. However, the extent to which concentrations vary over time and space remains completely unclear. From the researchers' point of view, different locations (urban and rural backgrounds) should therefore be included and longer-term sampling carried out. In the next step, Kaushik's team plans to evaluate samples from an entire year to find out whether there are seasonal fluctuations.

Micro- and nano plastic particles in urban air had previously been identified by other research teams in Graz (Austria), Kyoto (Japan) and Shanghai (China). The Leipzig study is the first in Germany and provides important insights into the composition and origin of the fine dust particles: tire abrasion particles dominated with a share of about 65% of the total plastics, followed by polyvinyl chloride, polyethylene and polyethylene terephthalate. These polymers correlated strongly with carbon-containing aerosol markers, suggesting common emission and mixing in the atmosphere.

Estimating exposure and health risks

Fine dust has been known to pose a health risk for decades. According to the WHO, mass concentration is a key parameter for assessing air pollution and its impact on health, as well as for developing legislation. In order to roughly estimate the extent to which people in Leipzig are exposed to risks from plastic particles in the air they breathe, the research team first determined the mass of plastic particles in the air and then calculated how much adults inhale based on their lung volume.

According to their findings, residents of Leipzig who spend around 24 hours a day on Torgauer Strasse would inhale approximately 2.1 micrograms of plastic particulate matter per day, which corresponds to 0.7 milligrams per year. Estimates of how much microplastic humans breathe in have also been made for megacities in China and India. However, these estimates vary strongly. This wide range underlines how important it is to record all relevant types of plastic and how necessary standardized measurements are.

Due to their small size, the smaller nanoplastic particles in particular can penetrate deeper into the respiratory tract, which carries a higher potential for long-term illness. To investigate possible health effects, the Leipzig study calculated the relative risk based on existing epidemiological models to estimate environmental exposure. These projections resulted in a potentially increased mortality risk of 5–9% for cardiopulmonary diseases (RR: 1.08) and 8–13% for lung cancer (RR: 1.12).
,

"This is higher than the risk of fine particulate matter PM2.5, in general in Europe. Our observations suggest that micro-nano plastics, despite their low mass, may pose health risks over time. The increased risk of mortality from lung cancer and cardiovascular disease could be caused by a possible polymer-specific toxicity of plastic particulate matter," explains Kaushik.

Policy implications and next steps

Combating air pollution from plastic particulate matter is important for reducing human exposure (UN Sustainable Development Goal (UN SDG3: Good Health and Well-being), integrating air quality management into urban planning (UN SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities) and mitigating the impact on the atmosphere (UN SDG 13: Climate Action).

"With around two-thirds of microplastics coming from tire abrasion, this shows that action is needed and that the fine dust problem cannot be solved by switching to electric mobility alone. To protect health, it would be important to also take tire abrasion into account when regulating air quality and to set limits for microplastics in the air," demands Prof. Hartmut Herrmann from TROPOS, who led the study.

Current findings such as this study from Leipzig increasingly suggest that inhaling plastic particles, especially nanoplastics, could have health implications. However, research in this area is still relatively new. Further long-term studies are needed to confirm the toxicity of individual types of plastic, establish safe limits and develop regulatory standards. Until then, the findings from Leipzig underscore the importance of monitoring micro- and nanoplastic particles in the air as new pollutants and further refining methods for assessing health risks.

Publication details

Ankush Kaushik et al, Composition, interactions and resulting inhalation risk of micro- and nano-plastics in urban air, Communications Earth & Environment (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s43247-025-02980-0

Citation: Microplastics and nanoplastics in urban air originate mainly from tire abrasion, research reveals (2026, March 2) retrieved 7 March 2026 from <a href="https://phys.org/news/2026-03-microplastics-nanoplastics-urban-air-abrasion.html" rel="nofollow">https://phys.org/news/2026-03-microplastics-nanoplastics-urban-air-abrasion.html</a>

This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.

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acdha
33 days ago
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Cars are the biggest health risk in most cities but we’re just not used to thinking about them as negative or a choice
Washington, DC
LeMadChef
33 minutes ago
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Denver, CO
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Americans trust Fauci over RFK Jr. and career scientists over Trump officials by Beth Mole
Thursday April 9th, 2026 at 10:38 PM

Ars Technica
1 Comment and 2 Shares

Anti-vaccine activist and current Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has worked hard to villainize infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci, even writing a conspiracy-laden book lambasting the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

But a year into the job as the country's top health official, Kennedy—who has no background in medicine, science, or public health—still holds less sway with Americans than the esteemed physician-scientist.

In a nationally representative survey conducted in February by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, 54 percent of respondents said they had confidence in Fauci, while only 38 percent had confidence in Kennedy. Breaking those supporters down further, 25 percent of respondents said they were "very confident" in Fauci, while only 9 percent said the same for Kennedy.

Credit: Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) of the University of Pennsylvania, 2026

Overall, the survey found a clear divide between the confidence in Kennedy and other Trump administration officials and that of career scientists and medical associations.

Among federal agencies, 67 percent said they had confidence in career scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, and the National Institutes of Health. But only 43 percent said they had confidence in the leaders of those agencies.

"The public is differentiating the trustworthiness of career scientists in the CDC, NIH, and FDA from that of the leaders of those agencies and recalling substantially higher confidence in the guidance that former director Fauci provided than that offered by Secretary Kennedy or Dr. Oz," Ken Winneg, APPC’s managing director of survey research, said in a statement.

Overall confidence in federal agencies was also lower than that for medical associations. Sixty-two percent of respondents were confident in the FDA and NIH generally, while 60 percent were confident in the CDC. In contrast, the American Heart Association earned confidence from 82 percent of respondents, while the American Academy of Pediatrics earned confidence from 77 percent, and the American Medical Association earned confidence from 73 percent.

"Trust is the foundation of effective health care and public health," AMA CEO John Whyte said in a statement. "In a challenging information environment, patients need clear, evidence-based guidance they can rely on... The AMA is dedicated to helping patients cut through the clutter and elevate the valid over the viral. Accurate, trustworthy information saves lives."

In a statement to Ars Technica, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, Andrew Nixon, said the decline in trust in US public health began before the current Trump administration. "Secretary Kennedy was brought in to restore credibility through transparency, gold standard science, and accountability. HHS is focused on rebuilding public confidence by ensuring that decisions are driven by rigorous evidence."

The survey also found that trust in federal agencies—the CDC, NIH, and FDA—has declined during this administration, falling from 67 percent overall in February 2025 to 60–62 percent in February 2026.

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LeMadChef
42 minutes ago
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Well, that's comforting.
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