According to the EPA’s Scrap Tire Cleanup Guidebook, released June 8, 2006, large scrap tire stockpiles present a risk to human health and the environment for several reasons. They provide an ideal breeding ground for disease-carrying mosquitoes and rodents. Stockpiles can also catch on fire as a result of lightning strikes, equipment malfunctions or arson. State, federal and local agencies have spent tens of millions of dollars over the past few decades responding to tire fires.

Approximately 290 million automobile and truck used tires are discarded by Americans every year.

Since 1989, when only 10 percent of scrap tires were recycled or reused, the United States significantly increased its tire reclamation efforts to slightly more than 80 percent. However, the 55 million tires (19 percent) not reclaimed are being thrown into landfills or, even worse, disposed of illegally on roadsides and properties around the country.

Perhaps you've driven by a tire graveyard, where hundreds or even thousands of tires create, not only an eyesore, but public health and safety hazards as well. Discarded tires are convenient breeding grounds for mosquitoes and rodents, which carry a host of diseases, including West Nile and Eastern Equine virus, encephalitis, dengue fever, and hanta virus. Tire piles attract children, who can injure themselves playing among them.

Scrap tires in landfills can also damage the landfill linings that have been installed to help keep surface and groundwater free from landfill contaminants.

Another problem with discarded used tires is the risk of fire: tire pile fires can smolder for weeks and months, releasing extremely toxic pollutants into the air, creating serious respiratory and other health problems for people in the vicinity and many miles away. Runoff water from such fires is also laden with toxins, which can contaminate water supplies. In 1999, a tire fire in Westley, California, ignited by lightning, burned for 30 days. The fire produced large amounts of pyrolitic oil that not only contaminated a nearby stream but also ignited and caused additional pollution problems. In 1983, a seven million-tire fire in Rhinehart, Virginia, burned for nine months and polluted water supplies with arsenic and lead.

The good news is that 80.4 percent of scrap tires in the United States are being reclaimed in various ways.