Tires: dry rot tires, inflation pressure, pressure checks

Question
I have tires, goodyear, 50,0000 tires on a 2005 buick that has 21,000 miles on it , however tires are dry rotting. can i put inter tubes in them to prevent flat tires ?

Answer
Rick,

Recent bulletins from the tire industry indicate that tires degrade simply due to time.  The age of a tire is important even if the tire is unused.  There some disagreement over how to best express this age limitation, but my take is:

If you live in a hot climate (AZ, CA, NV, TX, and FL) then the limit is six years.  If you live in a cold climate (MN, ND, WI, MT, etc), then the limit is 10 years.  States in between are  ..... ah ........ in between.

Cracking is the natural outgrowth of the state of the material and the amount of stress that materuial undergoes.  So as a tire ages it ought to gradually develop cracks.  

And, of course, the more intensive the maintanence practices are (inflation pressure checks, rotation, alignment checks), the later these cracks will appear.  

It is this "state opf the material" which is the concern.  Air retention does you no good if the rest of the tire is not retaining its properties.  The problem isn't losing air, the problem is losing structural integrity, so an innertube is not a fix for this.