I think a more informative comment would add some perspective on how harmful break dust actually is or isn't. Whether or not someone would use it as seasoning is a moot point.
For example, I wouldn't sprinkle dirt all over my food. But I'm perfectly happy for my food to grow in dirt. Does that mean contact with dirt = bad? No.
It depends. The older the brake the worse the dust. But even modern brake dust is not something you want to ingest if you don't have to. In general dust is the worst possible form that you can get some contaminant in, it offers the largest reactive surface per unit weight and can get into all kinds of places that it shouldn't.
As for the dirt: plants act as natural filters, they select that which is good for them using their root systems and use that to build the rest of the plant as they go along. Some plants can be used to extract certain materials from the soil, others do the opposite and will react by rejecting the contaminants. What exactly happens depends on the plant, soil conditions, humidity, amount of sunlight and lots of other factors besides. Not all dirt is good, not all plants grown in all dirt are good, not all dirt is the same.
There are an endless number of gross and harmless things which I don't want to sprinkle on my food.
It's actually a good question, and I'm disappointed to read middlebrow dismissal of it.
As long as we want to go fast, there will be some brake dust in the air. Brake pads can be made out of a variety of materials, and we want to use the ones which are least harmful to our lungs and other organs.
That takes research, not emotional appeals to disgust (from the Latin, meaning "bad to eat").
Someone actually at a classic Mini. I wouldn't advise that either. The point is that if you have the choice to eat food with or without such contamination you'd always choose the uncontaminated food because you can reason out for yourself that it is probably unhealthy. If you want to run the experiment feel free, being disgusted by it has nothing to do with it, this is about food safety, not about taste.
Historically yes. But plenty of things that are perfectly safe to consume taste terrible and plenty of stuff that will kill you won't even register. So this is not a reliable indicator.
