A brake on copper

Asbestos was banned from the brake pads of cars more than ten years ago, but
the copper that replaced it may be polluting the soil and harming wildlife. A
study by the Swedish Environment Protection Agency found that concentrations of
the metal on roadside verges are between two and three times as high as
background levels, and they are increasing. “It seems that we have traded a
health problem for an environmental problem,” says Bo Bergback, the study’s
author from Kalmar University in southern Sweden.