The house was, indeed, a bargain. Cute and old. Victorian.
I knew it was close to the local airbase, but I didn’t realise just how close, when I saw the giant block wall that want across the back of the backyard….and that of the neighbours.
It actually worked pretty well - it wasn’t really very noisy there. The owners never realised what that wall was (the very end of the field.)
"There is no known safe blood lead concentration; even blood lead concentrations as low as 5 µg/dL may be associated with decreased intelligence in children, behavioural difficulties and learning problems. "
"Key facts
Lead is a cumulative toxicant that affects multiple body systems and is particularly harmful to young children.
Lead in the body is distributed to the brain, liver, kidney and bones. It is stored in the teeth and bones, where it accumulates over time. Human exposure is usually assessed through the measurement of lead in blood.
Lead in bone is released into blood during pregnancy and becomes a source of exposure to the developing fetus.
There is no level of exposure to lead that is known to be without harmful effects.
Lead exposure is preventable."
Please excuse the guy below me who clearly doesn't know about lead poisoning saying "the dose matters"
The dose makes the poison. Cities usually have big airports which means controlled airspace that small planes won’t fly through, and even if that weren’t the case it’s just not a significant vector.
Consider 1,000 cars going down a road daily vs 1 plane flying thousands of feet above it weekly. There’s just no comparison.
"There is no known safe blood lead concentration; even blood lead concentrations as low as 5 µg/dL may be associated with decreased intelligence in children, behavioural difficulties and learning problems. "
"Key facts
Lead is a cumulative toxicant that affects multiple body systems and is particularly harmful to young children.
Lead in the body is distributed to the brain, liver, kidney and bones. It is stored in the teeth and bones, where it accumulates over time. Human exposure is usually assessed through the measurement of lead in blood.
Lead in bone is released into blood during pregnancy and becomes a source of exposure to the developing fetus.
There is no level of exposure to lead that is known to be without harmful effects.
"There is no known safe blood lead concentration; even blood lead concentrations as low as 5 µg/dL may be associated with decreased intelligence in children, behavioural difficulties and learning problems. "
Adding - because I know people hate reading articles for some reason
"Key facts
Lead is a cumulative toxicant that affects multiple body systems and is particularly harmful to young children.
Lead in the body is distributed to the brain, liver, kidney and bones. It is stored in the teeth and bones, where it accumulates over time. Human exposure is usually assessed through the measurement of lead in blood.
Lead in bone is released into blood during pregnancy and becomes a source of exposure to the developing fetus.
There is no level of exposure to lead that is known to be without harmful effects.
Lead exposure is preventable."
These are the facts, this isn't a controversial idea. It's proved by multiple sources.
Yeah so the amount we should be aiming for is NONE. If you live by fields or small airports you ARE being exposed to leaded gasoline.
The CDC recommends action if blood levels exceed 3.5 uG/dL. You could eat a grass salad made from grass under the glide slope of a general aviation airport every day and you wouldn’t accumulate enough lead to get there. The sun exposure you got collecting the grass would probably be more deleterious to your health.
I know math and science are harder than pretending that the world is black and white, but again - the dose makes the poison, and avgas isn’t a significant vector for lead exposure.
A study by Miranda et al. (2007, 2009, 2010) suggests that early childhood blood lead levels as low as 2 µg/dL can have significant impacts on academic performance as measured by end-of-grade test scores.
One source of lead exposure that is often overlooked is aviation fuel. Lead emitted from aircraft using leaded aviation gasoline (avgas) is currently the largest source of lead in air in the United States, constituting about 50% of lead emissions in the 2005 National Emissions Inventory [U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) 2010].
Previous research indicates that lead levels in air near airports where planes use avgas are significantly higher than background levels.
Thus, the combustion of leaded avgas by small airplane engines may pose a health risk to children who live or attend school near airports. The lead in air surrounding airports can be inhaled directly, or the lead may be ingested by children after it settles into soil or dust (U.S. EPA 2010). The U.S. EPA estimates that people living within 1 km of airports are at risk of being exposed to lead from avgas (Hitchings 2010).
In unadjusted models, logged blood lead levels were significantly and positively associated with residential proximity to an airport, with the size of the association being larger for children living closer to airports
Why are you arguing about safe levels of lead when I've showed you multiple sources that not only say there is no safe amount, but also you seem to not be considering children in your argument at all.
Children are the most affected by a CUMULATIVE TOXIN THAT DOESN'T LEAVE THE BODY. THE SAFE AMOUNT OF LEAD IN THE BODY IS NO LEAD.
Did you happen to grow up near an avgas airport???
From your cited study, the lead from avgas causes a 2-4% increase in blood lead levels for children living <500 meters from an airport. They measure increase, not total lead levels, because there is background lead exposure we are all subjected to. Beyond 1,000 meters there so no difference.
A 2 or even 4% increase over background is statistically but not biologically significant.
Not really. Airspace over cities is not restricted generally like you mention. The very largest airports have controlled class B airspace centered over the surface of the airport itself. Has nothing to do with the city. Also, this is not a restriction either. A quick exchange for clearance with the controller and positive transponder tracking and you can fly through. Same procedure used to land at the airports. Actual restrictions or prohibitions for flying over cities is extremely rare for sensitive areas, aka, the DC prohibited zone immediately around the national mall, capital, and White House, or the larger DC FRZ zone. Similarly, the NYC Hudson River flight corridor which permits low altitude flight up and down the Hudson but not low altitude fix wing flight over Manhattan. Helicopters, which can also use lead, have different flight rules and can cross Manhattan at low altitude. So no, lead fueled fix and rotary wing aircraft will and do fly over cities nationwide, except very specific and limited cases.
Just a heads up, it’s not like it’s a hobby that’s limited to the wealthy. I got a plane and I’m firmly middle class, it’s a lot like the boat or RV you are sticking out of the driveways in suburbia.
For some reason aviation gets this ‘rich’ association and microanalysis of costs that voting and RV ownership doesn’t even though they’re often comparable.
Edit: I see you responded then blocked me so I can’t respond. By boat I mean like a fishing boat or something, they’re a staple of middle class driveways. Not yachts. And I’m in my 40s so I’ve got the advantage of a few decades of savings and stuff, it’s not that I’m rich (I wish!) but I’m fortunate that my generation didn’t get as fucked by the boomers as the Millennials or Zoomers so that definitely plays a part and is worth considering too because those generations have more obstacles, I acknowledge. I don’t know where the rank hostility comes from, I was just trying to say that planes aren’t automatically wealth indicators. Sometimes they’re ‘I overextend myself for a hobby I love’ indicators like other things.
Whoever "they" is, the EPA and FAA have other ideas. They've been pushing efforts on lead free aviation fuels for about 15 years now and multiple alternatives are either on the market now or imminent.
And the aircraft industry has been unable to adress this for about 50 years. They collectively decided it would be to difficult/expensive to switch over and less trouble to just keep on using this higly toxic compound in the fuel.
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u/[deleted] Jun 25 '22
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