James Burchill's article on the benefits of nitrogen inflation for tires is certainly well written, better than this rebuttal I'm sure. However, his concepts are grossly mistaken.

1. Oxygen does not rot tires from the inside. Have you ever looked at a 60,000 mi tire on the inside? It looks pristine.

2. Removing the oxygen from air does not necessarily remove water vapor. The two are entirely different molecules and removing one does not necessarily mean removing the other.

3. Nitrogen is not denser than oxygen. For exactly the same volume and pressure oxygen is 14.% heavier.

4. Nitrogen inflated tires do not run cooler at the same pressure. The thermal conductivity (k) of nitrogen at 122 degrees F is 0.0160, oxygen is 0.0164 at the same temperature. That indicates that a tire filled with pure oxygen would run 2.5% cooler than one filled with pure nitrogen. Air should run 0.5% cooler - not a real factor.

5. Is flammability a factor inside a tire? No. The fuel that burns in an automobile wreck has plenty of air on the outside to support combustion.

6. The nitrogen molecule and the oxygen molecule are very similar in many ways. They are exactly the same size, very nearly the same weight (oxygen has one more proton and one more neutron in the nucleus and one more electron in the same electron shell), and they both follow the ideal gas laws. They are different chemically, but that doesn't really effect their performance in tires.

It's a gimmick to sell more nitrogen and make more money off of the people that don't know any better.

I've never seen a "scientific" article fuller of non science in my life.