Lead wheel weights to be dropped in California by end of 2009

Lead wheel weights, which are used to balance vehicle tires, will be phased out in California by the end of 2009 under a court settlement this week with environmentalists, according to an article today by Times staff writer Martin Zimmerman.

In the suit filed in May by the Center for Environmental Health against Chrysler and three lead wheel weight makers, the group said the car parts threatened drinking water. Environmentalists said wheel weights falling off vehicles release 500,000 pounds of lead into the environment. The wheel weights are "ground down by passing vehicles and the lead can find its way into drinking water supplies" and landfills where they can leach into groundwater, the article says.

Zimmerman says some observers see the settlement as a first step toward a broader ban on the wheel weights.

Lead is a highly toxic metal that can cause brain damage and other nervous-system disorders, especially in young children. It has been used to make wheel weights for decades because it is cheap and heavy, allowing mechanics to use relatively small weights when balancing tires. (Unbalanced tires can wear unevenly and pose a safety hazard.)

The lead wheel weights were banned in the European Union in 2005 and are being phased out in Japan and South Korea, according to the article. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is sponsoring a voluntary initiative to reduce the use of lead wheel weights but has not banned them, the article says.

-- Tami Abdollah

Comments

[Gekkobear]

"Environmentalists said wheel weights falling off vehicles release 500,000 pounds of lead into the environment."

When, where, and over what timeframe? I mean, seriously how many wheel weights get used in the U.S. every year, how many are "lost" and not left on the car when sold/traded/rebalanced...

This seems like a made up number, and without a more credible source than "environmentalists" I have to wonder.

Skeptics say environmentalists exaggerate claims by a factor of 75 in their favor rather than actually using the numbers from any studies done.

Go ahead and use that and you'll have some balance to your bizarre unsupported random claims; by adding bizarre unsupported claims to the other side.

Not really credible, but that would require effort and work and research and stuff.

[AnnJo]

This flunks the common-sense test.

I've never seen a wheel weight that was not attached to a tire or in a bin at the car shop, and I'm old enough to join AARP and do a fair amount of outdoor walking. I just asked my nephew, who skateboards everywhere and pays a lot of attention to pavement, and he's never seen one either. And yet, according to this story, they should be liberally scattered along our roads.

500,000 pounds is 8 million ounces. Most car wheel weights weigh less than an ounce. We have less than 2 million miles of paved roadways in the whole country, so there should be more than 4 wheel weights per mile of paved road (much more in cities, since you usually have to hit a curb to knock one of those things off as I understand it). What are the chances that it would be such a rare event to actually see one of them on the road?

I think Gekkobear is right; this is more environmentalist fabrication.

Some math-challenged individual funded by our tax dollars through some "non-profit" "public interest" organization needed a good line for a grant proposal, so here we go again with a big scare, more laws, more regulations, more control, more bureaucrats to rule-make, inspect, direct, demand and, as Jefferson put it in the Declaration of Independence, to "harass our people and eat out their substance."

These people need to go back and study the story of the Boy Who Cried Wolf. Someday there will be a real and serious problem, and we'll all be so fed up with them that no one will pay attention.

[Craig Harrison]

Wheel weights definitely fall off wheels and onto streets. I collect them because there are a lot of neat things you can do with them (besides grinding them up into powder and blowing it into your nemesis' SCUBA tank). As I ride my bicycle I often look at the ground and pick them up. I only once in the last two months didn't find any on a 13 mile ride. I often ride the same route so I assume they fell off in the day or so between rides. The most I ever found is about 12 oz in one day.

Yes, environmentalists like to make up scary numbers. This Halloween I"m dressing up as an environmentalist. Trick or ......government grant to study the environment?

Craig

[Joe]

Lead is a very toxic material. It is stupid to use lead wheel weights when a safer material can be used. Great job by the environmentalists!

[NObama]

Why just this last week at least 12 people in our city died from lead exposure.

Of course it was a higher velocity lead injection than one normally finds from wheel weights.

Someday we'll get our priorities straight.

[Fetrow]

Kalifornia is once again, way over the top.

Let's ruin lots of tires instead of balancing them and having them live a long(er) time.

What freaking morons!

A lead weight is NOT lead powder or vapor.

Kalifornia is killing off industry and CONSUMERS!