Citing science, since they DO NOT link lead to airborne sources nor do they cite where that population immigrated from, nor do they cite what occupations they have; removing GA traffic will do exactly squat.
Will be they apologize when the numbers don’t improve or pay back pilots who have bought more expensive fuel? No, they never are held accountable.
BINGO !! The do gooders want us to believe that ‘slightly higher’ levels of lead in children living near the airport are directly linked to the airport and flight ops. I say … PROVE IT !! I’ve been flying for over 50 years and the only negative physical thing I’ve noticed is that my hair fell out. Damn 80/87 !! Who do I sue?
This is a fight that GA can’t win. The facts don’t matter, we simply don’t have a large enough political constituency as compared to environmental groups.
100LL is going away so the only thing GA advocacy groups can do is push for a manageable transition period. However to do that we have to acknowledge the status quo is not sustainable. Ignoring this issue invites the worst case scenario; a ruling of a ban on 100LL with immediate effect
80/87 was allowed to have lead, but typically it didn’t have any lead, since it wasn’t needed to bring the octane up.
So; blame you hair loss on your genes, not your fuel.
AND; if you airplane was good on 80/87 fuel, it will run just fine on Mogas, and your cylinders will last longer.
Get your heads out of the sand folks; leaded Avgas has been on borrowed time for years; it will go away!
The last country in the world to use leaded car gas phased it out last month;the market of tetraethyl lead is drying up.
The one company that makes it, uses a very old ship to transport it; that ship will go out of service at some point, maybe abruptly, and the source will be gone.
Learn some biology; Lead is bad for people; learn some mechanics; Lead is bad for engines, particularly bad for valves.
Aircraft engines don’t need lead, they need octane; lead is just an octane additive; just one way of achieving octane ratings.
The amount of foot dragging and misinformation on this topic is staggering!
The “Affordable Housing” thing has nothing to do with the fact that Leaded Fuel is on borrowed time and has been for years; we need solutions, not nonsensical uninformed comments.
The get-the-lead-out campaign was started to prevent children from getting lead poisoning when they chewed woodwork. Sounds like a good idea. However, lead in paint had a lot of useful properties. It gave the paint durability and it lasted longer than today’s water-based paints. Woodwork (door jabs, windowsills, baseboard) is painted with trim paint. Instead of just saying trim paint had to be lead-free, the EPA made it that all paint had to be lead-free. I don’t think too many kids chew on walls. It took a good ten years before the paint manufacturers to figure out a way to make water-based paint come close to the “old” lead-based paint. Then the crusade to eliminate lead from everything started. Removed lead from gasoline. Again, the lead additive helped even burning rather than the detonation of the fuel in the cylinder. Lead in solder. Solder has a large percentage of lead, but it has to do its job of melting at a low temperature and then holding solid when cooled. There are trillions of soldered connections in today’s electronics. Lead-free solder doesn’t work as well. Aviation electronics got a waiver due to the critical nature of the avionic computers, but no more. We as taxpayers pay government employees to come up with regulations that do not have a favorable benefit to cost ratio. The government never says good enough, we don’t need any more regulations in that area. Thousands of EPA jobs depend on new regulations, so on it goes.
William nailed it that UNLESS pilots and airport workers also show dangerous lead levels, their entire argument is lost.
What? Seems obvious that the precipitated lead out the exhaust from planes would land on the soils surrounding the airport. There’s a reason every country in the world has banned it from auto-fuel.
I’m not in favor of shutting airports, but I’m sympathetic to wanting to reduce lead in the environment. There’s tons of data that shows it’s terrible even in low amounts, especially for kids. We need to get an practical unleaded alternative out there quickly.
Yeah I thought that too. They say affordable housing now, but once the airport is gone the NIMBYs will fight against building any affordable housing in its place.
I totally agree that government should stop regulating the housing market in California.
You should be able to build dense housing in areas where now only single-family homes are built. There should be no height limits on residential buildings! There should be no mandatory minimum number of parking spaces. The housing free market has been hamstrung with ridiculous government regulations for decades and it’s given us California’s biggest problem.
I’d just be happy with letting people build what they want. You want to build a single-family home, great. You want to build a 20-story high-rise with 160 units, fantastic! The problem isn’t “affordable housing” per se: these aren’t “housing projects”. The problem is that current state regulations mean its easier and more profitable for developers to build large homes for richer people than smaller more affordable homes. Housing rules in California mean there’s no real free-market for housing.
Well said.
There are some technical hurdles though, if it were an easy problem it would already have been solved. But we shouldn’t pretend that using leaded gasoline indefinitely is just fine.
That’s kind of wrong. The risks of using lead in gasoline were known for a long time but underplayed. The guy who invented it even suffered lead poisoning. In 1922 the agency tasked with testing it said said we should not allow this stuff to be used in cars.
You can often avoid eating lead paint. You can’t generally avoid breathing lead-laden exhaust fumes. This is a problem if you live next to a busy road and have young children.
There’s decent evidence that the drastic rise in murders the world (not just the U.S.) in the 1980 and 90s and then the inexplicable drop-off may have had something to do with lead-induced behavioral issues by kids who grew up in the heyday of leaded gasoline 20 years before.
Leaded auto fuel hasn’t just been banned by crazy American liberals, it’s now been banned by every country in the world.
I agree. Sometimes, even though it would hurt a lot of persons involved, I almost wish an immediate ban would lead would take place. Then maybe those advocating banning 100LL will see a real airline pilot shortage because training companies can’t train new pilots, none of the essential work operations conducted by piston engine aircraft ( news and traffic helicopters, some medivac planes, some of your overnight freight ops to remote areas, a large portion of aviation in Alaska, most of Cape Air ops)would happen, I could go on and on. I’ll bet that bastion of “liberal” thinking in Cape Cod, Nantucket, Martha’s Vinyard, and other island vacation spots around Massachusetts area the local people like to go to would be unhappy if Cape Air were to shut down due to no fuel available.
I appreciate the feedback. You could be right. My father worked in aviation fuel research in the 1930’s thru 1950s and died at the age of 89. To support your case, could I have the reference to 'The guy who invented it even suffered lead poisoning." And where I can find the reference material for “lead-induced behavioral issues by kids who grew up in the heyday of leaded gasoline 20 years before.” Thanks.
Equating correlation with causation (e.g. lead in gasoline caused, or causes, a high level of murders) is a super-handy technique if you have an agenda but are short on actual evidence. You do, however, have to be careful not to become wedded to the technique, because it can lead you down the rabbit hole in a hurry. For example. murders are once again spiking, just as electric cars are spreading through the environment. Or might it be the solar panels? Oh, dear.
Affordable housing is a complete red herring.
“Lead-free solder doesn’t work as well.”
Nonsense. Lead-based solder is banned from plumbing to keep you from drinking the lead. Has been for decades. I’ve done more than my share of plumbing, and I can assure you that the lead-free solder works better than the old lead-based solder. Electronics are still all done with lead-based solder. Not a problem because the lead is not exposed.
Getting the lead out of auto gas was a huge step forward because of the volume going into the air, the soil, the water, and everything else. Cars seems to be running just great on lead-free gas.
Oh, and with paint, water-based vs lead-based is a complete non-sequitur. Lead was in the white pigment. Been replaced with titanium dioxide and it works just fine, your choice of oil-based or water-based.
And if the politicians aren’t directly in “bed” with developers and getting graft payments ‘under the table’ or via “investments,” they have the incentive to allow such development because they then don’t have to manage any cash flows. NEXT year’s public incomes will be more than this so they don’t have to manage anything and – to a casual external observer – it appears that they’re managing everything correctly. I call this ‘management by inertia.’ And – oh by the way – they’re performing positive social engineering functions, too. Saving everyone from those pesky small aeroplanes who are spewing lead all over everyone and occasionally falling on citizen’s heads.
The “it seems” obvious is pseudo- science; it plays on emotions and is an excuse to avoid real science.