Our Contribution to Cutting Edge Air Quality Research

Airborne pollutants are produced by a variety of anthropogenic sources including industrial processes and power generation. Over recent decades in the UK, a lot of attention has also focused on vehicle emissions, but primarily those associated with the combustion process, i.e. tailpipe exhaust emissions. Road transport also generates non-exhaust emissions (NEE), such as those generated by erosion of vehicle components like brakes and tyres, or road surface wear and re-suspended dust¹. The UK Health Forum estimates that air pollution-related diseases cost the NHS more than £2 billion in medical expenses and kill over 30,000 people in the UK each year², so there is an established need to measure and characterise these pollutants.

Butterworth Laboratories has contributed data to an inter-laboratory study into brake wear emissions from road vehicles conducted by the National Physical Laboratory (NPL)³. A novel sampling apparatus was developed to collect brake wear particulate samples from vehicles. These samples were sent to four separate laboratories across academia and industry.

For this study, the brake wear samples were subjected to microwave digestion in acid, then tested for heavy metals by ICP-MS. The Butterworth results were in close agreement with those from the other laboratories, supporting method development for the study.

Reproduced with kind permission from NPL³

Following the introduction of Euro 7 standards in November 2026, limits will be set on brake particulate emissions for the first time⁴. The current study underpins the capability to collect samples and provide high-quality measurements of brake wear chemical composition in support of public health, national atmospheric emissions inventory benchmarking and the UK’s commitment to Net Zero.

Jody Cheong from NPL presented the study as a poster at STEM for Britain 2026 in Parliament and received a Silver Award. This work has clearly made an impact, so congratulations, Jody!

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7439988592472555520

Butterworth Laboratories are proud of the contribution our analytical testing is making to the field of air quality research.

Sharon Goddard – QC Officer

References

1. Goddard, S. L., Williams, K. R., Robins, C. et al. Determination of antimony and barium in UK air quality samples as indicators of non-exhaust traffic emissions. Environ Monit Assess 191, 641 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-019-7774-8

2. Public Health England (2018), Health matters: Air pollution. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/health-matters-air-pollution/health-matters-air-pollution

3. Cheong J. H. L. et al. (2026) The Path to Cleaner Air: A Pioneering Inter-Laboratory Study on Brake Wear Emissions from Road Vehicles. https://stemforbritain.org.uk/posters-awards-2026/jc26_POS.pdf

4. Vehicle emissions and battery durability (Euro 7): technical requirements and certification rules. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/summary/vehicle-emissions-and-battery-durability-euro-7-technical-requirements-and-certification-rules.html