A marina on Lake Champlain with a tire "breakwater" surrounding the boats. Photo: Dale Azaria
When I set out in a kayak on the Chattahoochee River to help clean up litter, the garbage that I uncovered shocked me. The abandoned items accumulated along the riverbank included the spectacle of a children’s play area, a stuffie, a plastic wrench, and a bouncy ball. With my grabbers, I tried my best to pick up as much trash as I could, but it was impossible to get everything. When I dropped my paddle into the water, something coiled around it, tugging it far below the brackish surface.
It was rope around a tire, submerged at the bottom of the riverbed.
How Harmful Industrial Materials Accumulate in Our Waters
Such industrial materials have no place in our waters. Yet from my hometown’s watershed in Atlanta, Georgia to Lake Champlain in Vermont, our waterways are clogged with tires. Since 2025, we’ve found dozens of abandoned tires during our Lake Champlain litter patrols and cleanups. They sit on riverbanks, float alongside driftwood near docks, and sink to the bottom, poisoning our aquatic ecosystems and wildlife, like turtles, trout, and the beloved lake sturgeon.
People use tires to stabilize streambanks, believing it will prevent erosion near their private property. Marina operators also connect hundreds of tires together, creating a “breakwater,” which they believe protects boats. This is a dangerous fallacy. In fact, tires can break free from the streambanks and linkages during storms and flooding. When this happens, the tires just sink to the bottom of the river or lake, releasing rubber and toxic materials that plague our drinking water.
In August 2025, while patrolling the Lamoille River, in Milton Vermont, Lake Champlain Lakekeeper Julie Silverman documented hundreds of tires. She did not expect to also find one side of the riverbank lined entirely by tires, like a rubber fence.
Vermont’s rivers and lakes continue to suffer from our past decisions. In 2026, during Vermont River Conservancy’s Kingsbury Branch River cleanup, volunteers removed eight tires from the river corridor. Memphremagog Watershed Association’s Clyde River cleanup found 26 tires. The Connecticut River Conservancy discovered a new tire dump in Brattleboro. More and more tires are rolling into our watersheds.
Tires in our waterways aren’t just an eyesore. They’re leaching harmful chemicals into our lakes and rivers and polluting the fish we eat and the water we drink.
6-PPD, the Lethal Chemical Leaching From Tires
The danger of tires in our lake is not a new discovery, but science is shedding new light on just how toxic tires are.
The zinc, heavy metals, and rubber coming off these disintegrating tires are not your average industrial materials. Included in the microscopic rubber tire particles is a toxic preservative called 6-PPD. When 6-PPD reacts with ozone from the air, it creates 6-PPD-quinone, or 6-PPD-Q, a highly toxic, dangerous byproduct. Dumped tires aren’t the only source of this toxic chemical – roadway runoff that flows into Lake Champlain also contains 6-PPD-Q. Automakers have used 6-PPD since the 1960s to prevent tire degradation, cracking, and weathering.
If this chemical is strong enough to make your tires last for decades, imagine how hazardous it is to the human body and aquatic animals.
Waterkeepers across the country, such as the Puget Soundkeeper in Washington, are calling for more regulation of 6-PPD.
A study by Main Department of Environmental Protections shows that 6-PPD-Q is especially lethal to juvenile fish. Known sensitive species coho salmon, brook trout, lake trout, and largemouth bass, died within 24 hours of exposure to concentrated amounts of 6-PPD-Q. These critical fish provide significant ecological, recreational, and economic value for our rivers and lakes.
Regulating and Managing 6-PPD-Q
All of these facts point towards a single question: What are the federal government and states doing to regulate 6-PPD-Q? The answer: Relatively little.
The EPA does not have a limit or legally binding rule on 6-PPD-Q. The agency’s non-binding guidelines are too little, too late. In addition to federal inaction, neither Lake Champlain states (New York and Vermont) have any laws that ban 6-PPD or 6-PPD-Q, nor are these chemicals classified as hazardous waste.
California and Washington are the only two states in the country that limit 6-PPD-Q. Washington has authorized $500 million to pay for regional stormwater system upgrades and fund studies to remove tire pollutants from roadway runoff. There are increased efforts to optimize street sweeping, in which vehicles remove dirt and car debris from the roads.
New England states could learn from Washington’s example. We don’t yet know the full impact of 6-PPD-Q on Lake Champlain’s native fish and aquatic species. There is also limited research on the reactions between 6-PPD-Q and other toxic chemicals, which exacerbates the need for more attention to 6-PPD as an emerging contaminant in New England. Our stormwater infrastructure needs a significant upgrade, especially in Vermont, which experienced devastating floods in 2023 and 2024 and has aging roadways.
We need to invest in projects that filter disintegrated tire particles before they enter streams, such as buffer strips. Studies show that healthy, active soil consistently lowers 6-PPD-Q levels. This is especially key for waterways that are home to native fish, many of which are endangered and particularly vulnerable to this pollution.
Lake Champlain Deserves Protections from 6-PPD
Over 300 creeks, streams, and rivers flow into Lake Champlain, including 11 major rivers in Vermont, New York, and Quebec draining more than 8,000-square-miles of land. Lake Champlain provides drinking water to more than 165,000 people across the entire watershed. But keeping toxins out of the water won’t just help people. Every day when I go out on the lake to kayak, monitor toxic algae levels, or educate people with our Lakekeeper boat, I see something new.
A bald eagle’s nest peeking behind the shadows of centuries-old cedars. A mother osprey, hovering over her baby. Perch and smallmouth bass, happily swimming under my kayak. Yellow pond lilies, greeting Julie and me every time we go to check on our wetlands.
More than 90 fish species, 318 bird species, and thousands of anglers, birders, sailors, and paddlers, hunt, play, and make their home on Lake Champlain. Yet, these degrading rubber materials from our tires are quickly seeping into our lake and putting it all at risk.
We need to regulate 6-PPD now. And we need to expand stormwater control measures so that 6-PPD and other toxic roadway pollutants do not enter our waters. CLF’s Lake Champlain Lakekeeper program continues to monitor changes in our lake. From tracking emerging contaminants like 6-PPD to working with partner organizations to pull tires out of the water, the Lakekeeper Program educates the public on the perennial tire pollution issue.
Our watershed connects to everything that touches our lives. Aquatic life in Lake Champlain needs clean water to thrive, and we need clean water to drink. From the swimming holes where our kids cool down to the water we source for our local breweries, Lake Champlain gives us life.
