Journal of Cleaner Production 411 (2023) 137255
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Cleaner Production
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro
A novel method for evaluating the durability and environmental pollution
of road markings on asphalt pavement
Dawei Wang a, b, Xuan Yang a, Xiangyu Chu a, Yulin He a, Zepeng Fan a, *, Chao Xing a,
Pengfei Liu b
a
b
School of Transportation Science and Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, 150090, PR China
Institute of Highway Engineering, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, 52074, Germany
A R T I C L E I N F O
A B S T R A C T
Handling Editor: Baoshan Huang
Road marking system is a significant component of asphalt pavement, and it plays an irreplaceable role in
improving traffic safety. The durability of road markings is critical to driving safety, especially for the autono­
mous vehicles in the future. It is also a major source of environmental contaminants in the road area. However,
the currently used laboratory tests mainly focus on the measurement of the initial performance of road markings.
This study developed an Accelerated Wearing Tester (AWT) to simulate the wearing process between tires and
road markings. On the basis of the AWT results, durability and environmental risk of road markings was
investigated. The results show that the skid resistance of road markings presents an obvious fluctuation with the
wearing time. Environmental analysis indicates that the road marking promotes the emission of alkanes, ben­
zenes, and halogenated alkanes, and can increase the content of lead and chromium in wearing products. Special
attentions must be paid to the safety and environmental concerns of road marking materials. The method
established in this study lays the foundation for the future improvement of driving safety and environmental
friendship of road marking materials.
Keywords:
Asphalt pavement
Road marking
Driving safety
Wearing waste
Environmental pollution
1. Introduction
Road marking system is one of the most important components of
modern pavement. As a traffic safety facility, road marking system plays
an irreplaceable role in directing traffic flow, providing information,
improving the safety of drivers and pedestrians, and is extremely costeffective (Al-Masaeid and Sinha, 1994; Miller, 1993; Zwahlen and
Schnell, 1999; Office et al., 2021). For autonomous vehicles, the role of
road markings will be even more significant. There are five basic func­
tions for autonomous vehicles, location, perception, control, planning,
and system management (Jo et al., 2014). Autonomous vehicles with
advanced deep-learning-based computer vision techniques enable to
perceive and understand road markings, so the information contained in
road markings can help autonomous vehicles make decisions to improve
the driving safety (Chen et al., 2015; Yang et al., 2018; Lee et al., 2017;
Zheng et al., 2022; Editorial Department of China Journal of Highway
and Transport, 2020). Meanwhile, road markings have the great po­
tential to boost the accurate location of autonomous vehicles.
Road marking consists of two layers, a base layer and a glass beads
layer. The base layer determines the color of road markings, and the
glass beads layer provides retroreflective performance and skid resis­
tance. Retroreflection and skid resistance of road markings are very
important performance in practical applications because they are asso­
ciate with driving safety, which are characterized by the coefficient of
retroreflected luminance RL and British pendulum number (BPN),
respectively. However, the vast majority of publications concentrate on
RL (Karimzadeh and Shoghli, 2020). Instead, insufficient attention is
paid to the skid resistance of road markings. In America, AASHTO M 249
specifies the minimum retroreflective values of 325 mcd/lux/m2 and
200 mcd/lux/m2 for white and yellow reflective thermoplastic striping
material (solid form) exposed for 180 days, but there is no requirement
for skid resistance (Karimzadeh and Shoghli, 2020). In Europe, EN 1436
regulates classes of road markings according to the retroreflective per­
formance and skid resistance (STANDARDIZATION, 2018). According to
Chinese specification (GB 16311) (Administration, 2009), the minimum
values of RL for newly applied white and yellow road markings are 150
mcd m− 2⋅lx− 1 and 100 mcd m− 2⋅lx− 1, and that for in-service white and
yellow road markings are 80 mcd m− 2⋅lx− 1 and 50 mcd m− 2⋅lx− 1, and
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: zepeng.fan@hit.edu.cn (Z. Fan).
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2023.137255
Received 30 September 2022; Received in revised form 11 April 2023; Accepted 19 April 2023
Available online 30 April 2023
0959-6526/© 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
D. Wang et al.
Journal of Cleaner Production 411 (2023) 137255
Fig. 1. Framework of the evaluation method.
the skid resistance of skid resistant road markings need to be not less
than 45 BPN.
The equipment and procedures for the measurement of RL are given
in standard ASTM E1710 (ASTM, 2018), and that for BPN are given in
standard ASTM E 303 (ASTM, 1993). Generally, these methods can be
used for field or laboratory measurements of road markings. However,
the laboratory tests mentioned above can only reflect the initial per­
formance of road markings, and the test results may not show the true
performance because of excess drop-on materials. The field tests can
reflect the true performance of road markings, but the shortcomings are
also obvious. For instance, the tests are time-consume, and the test
conditions are difficult to control. For experimental measurement of
road markings, the road simulator could be a promising method. The
road simulators are capable of simulating the wearing process between
tire and road by using real tires and road materials, and are widely used
in the study of aggregates, pavement, and tire and road wear waste
(Wang et al., 2021, 2022; He et al., 2022; Dawei et al., 2018; Wagner
et al., 2018; KreiderPanko and Sweet, 2010; Rodland et al., 2022).
The environmental impact of road markings has received extensive
attention from researchers, mainly including the emission of the volatile
organic compounds (VOCs) and heavy metal pollution, which are caused
using organic solvents, heavy metal pigments, and various additives
(Lanphear et al., 1998; Pirkle et al., 1998; Romieu et al., 1994; Mur­
akami et al., 2007; Burghardt et al., 2016; Burghardt and Pashkevich,
2018). Based on material type, road marking materials can be divided
into thermoplastic marking, marking tapes, cold-plastic marking,
two-component marking, and paint materials (Xu et al., 2021). As a
result of the lowest cost, easiest construction, and good performance,
paint-based markings are often applied as the best solution for road
markings. For paint-based marking materials, the function of the organic
solvent (such as toluene, xylene, methyl, etc.) is merely to turn the paint
into a liquid, which then escapes into the atmosphere as VOCs. VOCs are
hazardous to human health and will generate tropospheric ozone
through atmospheric photosynthesis, causing secondary contamination.
Chrome yellow (PbCrO4 or Pb(Cr, S)O4), containing a large amount of
chromium and lead, is a traditional pigments used in road markings
because of its excellent visibility, low cost, and high hiding powder,
which will precipitate with the increase of service life (Lee et al., 2016;
Genchi et al., 2020). Besides, the stripped road marking materials
migrate to the air, soil, and water, and increase exposure to heavy metals
in the environment (White et al., 2013; Gao et al., 2019). Studies have
shown that long-term exposure to heavy metals, especially lead, caused
diseases and deaths, and had adverse effects on children’s health,
development, and intelligence (Organization, 2020; Gottesfeld et al.,
2014; Tebby et al., 2022; O’Connor et al., 2018; M.E.H. and McFarland.,
2022; Zhang et al., 2021; Zhao et al., 2011; Zhao and Li, 2013). Envi­
ronmental researchers have identified organics and heavy metals from
real road dust samples. However, because of the complex composition of
real road dust, including tire particles, brake dust, vehicle dust, soil, and
road marking materials (Gaylarde et al., 2021; Sven and Knepper, 2018;
Lei et al., 2018; M.o. T.o.t.P.s.R.o, 2011; Hong et al., 2021), the content
of organic matter and heavy metal elements in road dust from road
marking materials is still unknown.
To summarize, the durability of road markings is vital for driving
safety, but there is no laboratory method for evaluating road marking
durability. Furthermore, the environmental pollution caused by road
markings during service has traditionally been overlooked, and there is
an absence of an efficient method for assessing it. The current study is
motivated by this, and a laboratory method for evaluating the durability
and environmental pollution of road markings was established to close
the knowledge gap.
2. Objective and framework
This study aims to develop a road simulator, Accelerated Wearing
Tester (AWT), to simulate the interaction between tire and road
marking, and established a method for evaluating the durability and
environmental pollution of road markings based on the AWT results. A
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D. Wang et al.
Journal of Cleaner Production 411 (2023) 137255
road marking paint was applied on the surface of the asphalt mixture.
Asphalt concrete (AC-13), the most constructed pavement structure in
China, was used in this study. The gradation limit specified for AC-13
and the selected grading curve is plotted in Fig. 2. The base asphalt
with a penetration grade of 60/80 from Sinopec Zhenhai Refining and
Chemical Co., Ltd. (Ningbo, China) was used as binder, and its basic
properties are shown in Table 2. The asphalt content was 5%. The
limestone and andesite were used as filler and aggregate, respectively.
The properties of AC-13 are listed in Table 3, and all meet the technical
requirements of Chinese specification JTG F40, “Technical Specifica­
tions for Construction of Highway Asphalt Pavements”.
Table 1
Properties of road marking paint.
Properties
Measured
values
Fineness/μm
Drying time/h (temperature 25 ◦ C ± 2 ◦ C, relative humidity
55%)
Outflow time/s
Hiding power/g⋅m− 2
≤50
≤24
≥60
≤200
3.2. Preparation of specimens
The asphalt mixture specimens used in this study were prepared
according to the T 0703–2011 method in “Standard Test Method of
Bitumen and Bituminous Mixtures for Highway Engineering” with a
length of 300 mm, a width of 300 mm, and a height of 50 mm (Yang
et al., 2021). Two groups of asphalt mixture specimens were prepared,
and there were two specimens in each group. In Group I, the surfaces of
both specimens were painted with road marking paint, but one was not
sprinkled with glass beads, named Group I-1, and the other was sprin­
kled with glass beads, named Group I-2. Group II was not painted. The
prepared specimens are shown in Fig. 3. The two groups of specimens
were placed at room temperature for 24 h for subsequent experiments.
3.3. Accelerated Wearing Tester (AWT)
The Accelerated Wearing Tester (AWT) developed by Harbin Insti­
tute of Technology was applied to simulate the interaction between road
marking paint and tires for this work, as shown in Fig. 4, and its structure
schematic is shown in Fig. 5. AWT consists of a speed control system,
loading system, workbench system, and dispenser system. The speed
control system and loading system can simulate a set of radial tires
rotating on the workbench at constant speed and load. The radial tires
were produced by Giti company, and their type is 185/60 R 14 with the
tire pressure of 0.2 MPa. The rotating speed can be controlled within the
range of 0 rpm–150 rpm, and the load can be controlled within the range
of 0 kÑ8 kN. The workbench system with two grooves for fixing pave­
ment specimens can move forwards and backward during the test. The
speed of the workbench is 0.0825 m/min, and the travel range is 0.55 m.
The water was spayed onto the surface of the specimens at a rate of 35
mL/min to cool down the tires, and the sand was sprinkled at a rate of
18 g/min to improve the wearing efficiency. The dispenser system can
spray water and intermediate medium at a constant speed. The sand
spreading rate is 18 g/min and the water spreading rate is 35 mL/min.
Moreover, AWT fitting with acrylic boards can avoid the loss of wearing
waste and the intrusion of contaminants.
The specimens were fixed in the fixation grooves of the workbench in
such a way that the surface of specimens and the workbench was in one
horizontal plane. The load was set as 1500 N for this work. The pressure
of both tires was 0.2 MPa and the rotation speed was 100 rad/min.
Water was sprayed at the speed of 60 mL/min to keep the pavement
moist. The accelerated wearing tests were carried out for 5 cycles, and
the specimens were worn for 30 min in each wearing cycle. The
dispenser system introduced 50 g of silica sand in one wearing cycle to
facilitate the wearing process. The skid resistance was measured using
the British Pendulum Tester (BPT), and a total of six skid resistance tests
were performed on each specimen (before the accelerated wearing test
and at the end of each wearing cycle). The wearing waste generated
from both groups was collected and stored in jars at room temperature
for 24 h, as shown in Fig. 6.
Fig. 2. Gradation curve of AC-13.
Table 2
Properties of asphalt binder.
Properties
Measured values
Requirements
Penetration/0.1 mm (25 ◦ C, 100 g, 5 s)
Softening point/◦ C (ring & ball)
Ductility/cm (15 ◦ C)
Viscosity/mPa⋅s (135 ◦ C)
68.17
47.45
>100
373
60–80
≥42
≥100
–
Table 3
Properties of AC-13.
Properties
Measured values
Percent air voids/%
Marshall stability/kN
Flow value/0.1 mm
Dynamic stability/cycle⋅mm− 1
Flexural tensile strength/MPa
Maximum bending strain/με
Bending stiffness modulus/MPa
3.52
12.2
32.2
1756
7.53
2376.33
3291.52
commonly used yellow solvent-based road marking was evaluated using
the proposed method. The framework of the proposed method is shown
in Fig. 1.
3. Materials and methods
3.1. Materials
In this study, a commonly used yellow solvent-based road marking
paint was taken as the research object, and the solvent was acrylic. The
properties of the road marking paint are listed in Table 1. In order to
simulate the interaction between tires and road markings reliably, the
3.4. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analysis
For purpose of observing the morphology, wearing waste was dried
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D. Wang et al.
Journal of Cleaner Production 411 (2023) 137255
Fig. 3. Prepared specimens (300 mm × 300 mm).
by the vacuum freeze-drying method. Its principle is to freeze the water
in the sample into ice, and then sublime the water under vacuum so that
the water is removed in the form of vapor (Byun et al., 2020). In this
study, the process of the separation of wearing waste and water was
divided into three steps: (1) Filtered the sample in the jar and placed it in
a Petri dish; (2) Put the Petri dish containing the filtered sample in a
low-temperature refrigerator for 2 h; (3) Freeze-dried sample under
vacuum at a temperature of − 30 ◦ C to obtain dried wearing waste. Tire
and road wearing particles smaller than 500 μm will be transferred into
the aquatic environment with runoff, or be suspended in the atmosphere
and may enter the human body through the respiratory system (Dahl
et al., 2006; Kwak et al., 2013; Li et al., 2018), which is potentially
harmful to aquatic organisms and humans. Accordingly, the wearing
waste collected through accelerated wearing tests was sieved to obtain
particles with a particle size of smaller than 425 μm. The mesoscale
morphology (at 200 μm) and microscale morphology (at 10 μm) of
collected wearing waste was characterized by a scanning electron mi­
croscope (SEM). The field-emission scanning electron microscope (SEM,
Merlin Compact, Carl Zeiss, Germany, as shown in Fig. 7) uses a
Schottky field emission electron gun and the patented Zeiss Gemini
electron optical system to obtain extremely high-resolution secondary
electron images and backscattered electron images. The secondary
electron resolution is 0.8 nm at 15 kV and 1.4 nm at 1 kV, and the ac­
celeration voltage is 20 V–30 kV. It has been widely used for surface
morphology observation of materials, physics, chemistry, metallurgy,
biology, minerals, and other samples.
3.5. Organic compounds analysis
Gas chromatography-mass spectrometer (GC-MS) has been used as
one of the main tools for the characterization of organic compounds. The
Gas chromatography-mass spectrometer (GC-MS, GCQQQ), produced by
Agilent Technologies, was used to detect the organic matters in the
wearing waste generated from Group I and Group II, as shown in Fig. 8,
and the MassHunter Software was applied to analyze the results. Prior to
the GC-MS test, the samples need to be extracted into the n-hexane
solvent. About 2–3 g of wearing waste was mixed with anhydrous so­
dium sulfate to remove all moisture. Then, the sample with 20 mL of nhexane was subjected to ultrasonic extraction for 30 min. Later, the
cooled mixture was filtered by a 0.45 μm microporous membrane into a
50 mL volumetric flask, and the sedimentation was ultrasonically
extracted with 20 mL of n-hexane for another 30 min and filtered. The
filtrate was used for GC-MS testing to detect the chromatogram and
target ion abundance of wearing waste.
3.6. Heavy metals analysis
Inductively Coupled Plasma Atomic Emission Spectroscopy (ICPAES) is the most commonly used method for heavy metal analysis, and
was used in this study to determine the content of heavy metal elements
released by road markings into the environment due to tire wearing. The
tested samples include wearing waste, asphalt binder, road marking
Fig. 4. The accelerated wearing tester (AWT).
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D. Wang et al.
Journal of Cleaner Production 411 (2023) 137255
Fig. 5. Structure schematic of AWT.
Fig. 7. Field-emission scanning electron microscope (SEM).
Then the sample was filtered and poured into a 50 mL volumetric flask,
and adequate HNO3 was added to bring the sample volume to 50 mL.
The ICAP 7000 SERIES, from Thermo Scientific, was applied to examine
the heavy metal contents of wearing waste, as shown in Fig. 9. The
equipment with a 4-channel miniature peristaltic pump can continu­
ously and automatically adjust the speed in the range of 0–125 rpm. It
has a self-excited RF generator with a frequency of 27.12 MHz, and the
output power is more than 1300 W. The optical system is a constant
temperature (38 ◦ C± 0.1 ◦ C) gas-driven medium step spectroscopy
system with a wavelength range of 166 nm–847 nm, optical resolution of
(FHW) 0.007 nm at 200 nm, and a linear dynamic range of more than
105. The detector is a semiconductor-cooled solid-state detector with
over 290000 built-in detection units (temperature − 45 ◦ C, start-up time
3 min). The plasma emission power, plasma flow rate, auxiliary gas flow
rate, atomizer flow rate, and injection flow rate were set as 1200 W, 15
L/min, 0.2 L/min, 0.8 L/min, 1.5 mL/min, respectively.
Fig. 6. Wearing waste, (a) road marking and tire wearing waste, (b) road and
tire wearing waste.
paint, and rubber tire powder. Sample pretreatment is an important step
for ICP-AES. Approximately 100 mg samples were digested by 10 mL
aqua regia (the ratio of the volume of HCl to the volume of HNO3 is 3:1)
in a 150 mL conical flask and heated to boil on a hot plate until the
reaction was completed. After cooling, 3 mL of HClO4 was added and the
mixture was heated for thermal decomposition until white fumes
appeared. Later, 5 mL of deionized water was added while boiling for
about 10 min until the fumes were completely released. Subsequently,
the sample was cooled to room temperature, and 5 mL of 10% HCl was
added and heated until the reaction is finished. Afterward, the conical
flask was cooled and its inner wall was washed with 2 mL of 2% HNO3.
3.7. Environmental risk assessment
Currently, wearing waste from pavement lacks effective disposal
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D. Wang et al.
Journal of Cleaner Production 411 (2023) 137255
Table 5
The classification standard for Er and RI (Dahl et al., 2006).
Er
RI
Risk level
Er < 40
40<Er < 80
80<Er < 160
160<Er < 320
Er ≥ 320
RI < 150
150 < RI < 300
300 < RI < 600
RI ≥ 600
Low
Moderate
Considerable
High
Very high
can reflect the toxicity of heavy metals and the sensitivity of organisms
to heavy metals. Cir is the pollution factor of heavy metal element i. CiD
means the detected content of heavy metal element i. CiF means the
background content of heavy metal element i, the reference value used
in this paper is the heavy metal content of soils in southern Heilongjiang
Province, China, as shown in Table 4.
According to the research of (Xu et al., 2008), the value of biological
toxic factor Tri of Zn, Cr, Cu, Pb, Cd was determined, namely 1, 2, 5, 5,
and 30, respectively. The classification standards for Er and RI are shown
in Table 5 (HaKanson, 1984).
4. Results and discussion
4.1. Skid resistance analysis
Fig. 8. Gas chromatography-mass spectrometer (GC-MS).
The specimens after wearing for 150 min are shown in Fig. 10, and
the results of skid resistance tests are shown in Fig. 11. It shows that the
initial BPN of Group I-1 is smaller than that of Group II, indicating that
road marking paint filled the macro-texture and micro-texture structure
of the pavement, and the formed paint film was smoother than the
pavement surface, resulting in a decrease in the initial skid resistance.
The BPN of Group I-1 and Group II increased with wearing time in the
first 60 min, which was due to the dense film materials were stripped
under the effect of tires, while the highly textured materials were
exposed. For Group I-1, the road marking paint film on the surface of the
specimen gradually peeled off under the wearing effects of tires, and the
asphalt mixture was exposed. For Group II, the asphalt film of the
asphalt mixture was gradually stripped with wearing time, exposing
aggregates. With the further prolongation of wearing time, the aggre­
gate was also worn during the last 90 min of wearing, resulting in a
gradual decrease in the BPN of Group I-1 and Group II, and finally
tended to a constant value.
The initial BPN of Group I-2 is greater than that of Group II, and is
about twice that of Group I-1, illustrating that glass beads enriched the
texture structure of the paint film and improved the skid resistance
performance. The BPN of Group I-2 decreased gradually within wearing
time. The glass beads and paint film fell off first under the interaction
with tires. Then, the asphalt mixture was worn. Eventually, as the
aggregate was worn, the BPN of Group II tended to be constant, and the
value is close to that of Group I-1. A very interesting fact is that after
wearing for 60 min, the BPN of Group I-2 and Group I-1 is very close,
indicating that the glass beads mainly improve the skid resistance per­
formance of the road marking at the initial stage. According to Chinese
specification (GB/T 16311) (STANDARDIZATION, 2018), the skid
resistance of skid resistant road markings should be no less than 45 BPN,
and the road markings containing glass beads (Group I-2) can meet this
requirement during the entire service period. Therefore, when consid­
ering the skid resistance of road markings, sprinkling glass beads is a
very economical and effective means.
Fig. 9. Inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy (ICP-AES).
Table 4
The background content of heavy metal.
Heavy metals
Zn
Cr
Cu
Pb
Cd
Background content (mg/kg)
57.34
50.82
18.74
22.70
0.079
measures, causing pollution to the environment. The potential ecolog­
ical risk index (RI) has been widely used to reflect the environmental risk
of heavy metals to the environment (HaKanson, 1984; Xiao et al., 2015;
Jing et al., 2016). The potential ecological risk index (RI) can be
calculated using formula (1):
i
∑
RI =
n=1
Eri =
i
∑
(
n=1
i
) ∑
( i
/ )
Tri × Cri =
Tr × CDi CFi
4.2. Morphology analysis
(1)
n=1
The morphology of the collected wearing waste was characterized at
different scales using SEM, as shown in Figs. 12 and 13. The mesoscale
morphology (see Fig. 12) shows that the wearing waste consists of tire
wearing particles (TWP) and road wearing particles (RWP) (Kovochich
Where Eir represents the potential environmental risk index of heavy
metal element i. Tri is the biological toxic factor for heavy metal i, which
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Journal of Cleaner Production 411 (2023) 137255
Fig. 10. Specimens after wearing for 150 min (300 mm × 300 mm).
et al., 2020). During high-speed driving on the specimen, the tire was cut
due to shear force to generate TWP. At the same time, due to the
insufficient adhesion of the asphalt to the aggregate, some asphalt
mixture particles are peeled off to generate RWP. TWP varies in size and
are irregular in shape (some elongated, some rounded), while RWP is
smooth and angular (Kovochich et al., 2020).
The microscopic morphology (shown in Fig. 13) shows the surface of
single wearing waste particle containing materials of tires and road
(Rausch et al., 2022). The surface of the wearing waste produced by
Group I adsorbed more particles than that produced by Group II because
of the road marking materials applied to the surface of Group I. There­
fore, the wearing products of road marking and tires containing various
heavy metal elements and organic compounds enter the water envi­
ronment and the atmospheric environment, which will have potential
hazards to aquatic organisms, animals, plants, and human health.
4.3. Organic compounds analysis
The test results of GC/MS for the two groups of wearing waste are
shown in Fig. 14. The organic compounds were obtained by matching
the mass spectral data with the spectral information of the reference
substances in the NIST.17 database, and a total of 102 and 72 organic
compounds were detected in Group I and Group II, respectively. Among
the organic compounds in the tested samples, alkanes are the most
numerous, with 70 and 53, respectively, followed by benzene, with 25
and 12, respectively. However, the types of haloalkanes and other
Fig. 11. Skid resistance development during accelerated wearing test.
Fig. 12. Mesoscale morphology of wearing waste.
Fig. 13. Microscale morphology of wearing waste.
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D. Wang et al.
Journal of Cleaner Production 411 (2023) 137255
study. Our previous research has detected heavy metals of asphalt
binder and tire powder (ASTM, 1993), and the results of them are listed
in Table 6 along with road marking results. The results of wearing waste
are given in Table 7. Among all samples, the content of heavy metals in
asphalt binder is the least. The content of Zn in tire powder is much
higher than the other four heavy metal elements because Zn is usually
associated with fillers and vulcanizers in tire treads (Kovochich et al.,
2020; Gualtieri et al., 2005). The content of Zn in the two groups of
wearing waste is close to tire powder, which is much higher than road
materials (asphalt binder and road marking), so tires are the main source
of Zn in wearing waste, nor road marking. The content of Pb in the road
marking was the highest, followed by Cr, and the content of Pb and Cr in
the road marking is far more than those in other samples. This may be
related to the use of lead chromate yellow pigment. The content of Pb
and Cr in Group I sample was much higher than that in Group II sample.
Accordingly, road marking is the main source of Pb and Cr in wearing
waste. Furthermore, the content of Cd and Cu in the two groups of
wearing waste is higher than that in other detected samples, indicating
that heavy metals can be enriched during the wearing process between
tire and pavement materials.
Table 6
Heavy metal content of single material (mg/kg).
Fig. 14. Results of GC/MS: (a) Chromatogram of the Group I wearing waste
and (b) Chromatogram of the Group II wearing waste.
organic compounds (such as esters, ethers, alcohols, etc.) in Group I and
Group II are few and almost the same. Consequently, the use of the road
marking increases the types of alkanes and benzenes emitted into the
environment.
The mass proportion of various organic compounds was calculated
by the mass spectrum area, and the results are shown in Fig. 15. It is seen
that the mass ratio of alkanes was the highest, accounting for more than
80% of the total organic matter, followed by haloalkanes. The mass ratio
of alkanes in Group I wearing waste is 83.97%, which is lower than that
in Group II of 86.63%, and the mass ratio of highly toxic benzene series
in Group I is 1.50%, which is lower than that in Group II of 2.63%. This
indicates that the emissions of alkanes and benzene series introduced by
using road marking are limited. It is worth noting that the mass ratio of
haloalkanes in Group I is higher than that in Group II, indicating that the
road marking promotes the emission of haloalkane.
Sample type
Cd
Pb
Cr
Cu
Zn
Asphalt binder (ASTM,
1993)
Tire powder (ASTM, 1993)
Road marking
0.23
5.64
14.45
9.03
36.23
0.20
0.29
12.42
43257.14
54.44
16128.57
7.44
9.14
1458.08
33.01
Table 7
Heavy metal content of wearing waste (mg/kg).
Sample type
Cd
Pb
Cr
Cu
Zn
Group I
Group II
1.80
0.69
6307.40
13.93
1807.90
545.27
27.20
25.87
1213.10
1513.90
Table 8
The Er and RI of heavy metals in the two groups of wearing waste.
4.4. Heavy metals analysis
Sample
type
ECd
r
EPb
r
ECr
r
ECu
r
EZn
r
RI
Group I
683.54
Very
High
262.03
High
1389.30
Very
High
3.07
Low
71.15
Moderate
7.26
Low
21.16
Low
2172.40
High
21.46
Low
6.90
Low
26.40
Low
319.86
Considerable
Group II
The content of Cd, Pb, Cr, Cu, Zn in samples was analyzed in this
Fig. 15. Mass ratio of the various organic matters: (a) Group I wearing waste and (b) Group II wearing waste.
8
D. Wang et al.
Journal of Cleaner Production 411 (2023) 137255
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Table 9
The environmental risk assessment.
Sample type
Risk index
Pb
Group I
Group II
1460.45
24.53
High risk
Low risk
Dawei Wang: Conceptualization, Methodology, Supervision,
Writing – original draft. Xuan Yang: Writing – original draft. Xiangyu
Chu: Investigation, Writing – original draft. Yulin He: Methodology,
Writing – review & editing. Zepeng Fan: Data curation, Formal analysis,
Writing – original draft. Chao Xing: Writing – review & editing. Pengfei
Liu: Writing – review & editing, Review $ editing.
Cr
4.5. Environmental risk assessment
The calculation results of Er and RI of heavy metals in the two groups
of wearing waste are shown in Table 8. The results show that the use of
road marking increases the pollution of Pb and Cr to the environment,
which eventually leads to an increase in the risk level of the environ­
ment. While the content of Cd in Group I wearing waste is higher than
that in Group II, which may be attributed to the enrichment of Cd during
the wearing process rather than the use of road marking.
According to the study in Section 4.4, the use of road marking mainly
leads to an increase in the content of Pb and Cr in wearing waste.
Therefore, in order to accurately evaluate the potential pollution of road
marking to the environment during the wearing process with tires, RI of
the two groups samples were recalculated exclusively considering EPb
r
and ECr
r . The RI of Group I is 1460.45, and that of Group II is 24.53. The
environmental risk assessment is shown in Table 9. The results imply
that a low environmental risk level for Pb, Cr and recalculated RI in
Group II (no road marking was used). However, when road marking
applied, there is an extremely high risk of Pb contamination and a
moderate risk of Cr contamination to the environment, and the envi­
ronmental risk is high.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Data availability
Data will be made available on request.
Acknowledgement
This work was supported by the National Key Research and Devel­
opment Program of China [grant number 2019YFE0116300], National
Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 52250610218],
Natural Science Foundation of Heilongjiang Province of China [grant
number JJ2020ZD0015], and Opening Project Fund of Materials Service
Safety Assessment Facilities [grant number MSAF-2021-005].
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