Environmental pollution caused by tire combustion

At around 22:10 local time on the 12th, a fire broke out at the Hantai Tire Factory located in Daejeon City, South Korea. There are many flammable substances in the factory, and coupled with strong winds blowing on site, the firefighting work is facing numerous difficulties. The fire department has raised its response level and issued a "third stage response order", dispatching 114 fire trucks and more than 300 firefighters to participate in the firefighting work.

The fire lasted for 13 hours, injuring 11 people, burning an 87000 square meter factory, and damaging approximately 400000 tires. Explosions continued to be heard at the scene, and toxic smoke spread to the surrounding areas. Residents of nearby communities received notice of refuge, and four schools also urgently suspended classes. Some high-speed trains were temporarily diverted and bypassed. According to preliminary inference, the fire may have been caused by a malfunction of machines inside the factory.

For sites that store a large amount of tires or waste tires, it is crucial to store them in a standardized manner and pay attention to fire safety. From the previous multiple tire fires, it can be seen that a large amount of tire burning can cause extremely serious harm to the environment!

In 2021, a fire broke out in the world's largest abandoned tire yard in the Suleibia region of Kuwait in the Middle East. This abandoned tire storage yard covers an area of 600000 square meters, with approximately 52 million tires stored here. After the fire, billowing black smoke rose into the air, and even the spreading black smoke can be seen from satellite images in space. Experts predict that the tire fire accident will have very serious consequences. Harmful substances floating in the atmosphere will scatter on the surface and ocean, gradually entering the food chain, causing irreversible harm to the human body for decades.

In 1999, 7 million abandoned tires piled up in Stanislaus County, Northern California, United States, spontaneously ignited. The fire burned for more than ten days, causing huge environmental pollution. The temperature of tire combustion reaches over 1000 degrees Celsius, and the thick smoke reaches an altitude of over 600 meters. The grease generated by the melting of discarded tires flowed into a nearby pond, and even the pond burned. Even nearby cities were implicated, and it unexpectedly started to rain "black rain". According to statistics, 3600 tons of hazardous substances were released in this incident, including 120 tons of carcinogen.

In order to prevent such incidents from happening again, there are regulations in China for the storage of tires and waste tires. In 2020, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Industrial Norms and Conditions for Comprehensive Utilization of Waste Tires", which required enterprises to "meet the requirements of recycling management standards for waste tire storage sites":

For stores or individuals that store a small amount of waste tires, it is also necessary to standardize storage. Long term stacking of waste tires not only takes up a lot of space, but also breeds mosquitoes and rodents, affecting our physical health. Disordered storage can also cause fires due to accidental reasons such as lightning strikes. Once ignited, it is difficult to control and extinguish, and it can continue to burn for a long time, posing a threat to our lives and property.