The air in climbing gyms is more polluted than on the streets
Keystone-SDA
The rubber abrasion from climbing shoes makes for thick air in climbing gyms. The concentration of potentially harmful chemicals in climbing gyms is sometimes higher than on busy roads, say researchers from Switzerland and Austria in a study.
+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox
“The air pollution in the boulder gyms was higher than we had expected,” said study leader Thilo Hofmann from the University of Vienna in a statement from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) on Tuesday.
“The values we measured are among the highest ever documented worldwide, comparable to multi-lane roads in megacities.”
The reason for the air pollution in climbing gyms is the soles of climbing shoes. These are made of rubber compounds similar to car tyres.
+ Why the high point of climbing is not the summit
For the new study, the researchers collected dust samples from various bouldering gyms in Switzerland, France and Spain. They published the results in the journal Environmental Science and Technology Air.
Translated from German by DeepL/ts
How we work
We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate them into English. A journalist then briefly reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.
Did you find this explanation helpful? Please fill out the short survey below to help us understand your needs.
External Content
Don’t miss your chance to make a difference! Take our survey and share your thoughts.
