WHEN asbestos was banned from vehicle brake pads more than a decade ago,
copper was the replacement. Now a study by the Swedish Environmental Protection
Agency finds that the concentrations of copper on the roadside verges are two or
three times as high as background levels, and increasing
(Â鶹´«Ã½, 1 April, p 19).
So I asked roads minister Lord Whitty if we had only traded a
health problem for an environmental one.
Whitty replied that copper had been used in brake friction materials since
the 1930s. At first a wire form was woven into the material. Being a…
