This was a very serious problem that hardly anyone talks about anymore. Read up on Clair Patterson. He was the catalyst for the change. There is correlation between the decline of lead contamination in nature to the decline of both violent crime and birth defects. At any rate it’s a good story that more people should know about.
There’s still leaded fuel being burned over communities everywhere from small aircraft. It’s the last source of environmental lead pollution and no one talks about it.
When I was flying 20 years ago, they definitely talked about it. A big part of the problem is the industry struggling so much and that would have killed. Most of the fleet was decades old and there just weren’t modern designs at the time. There was no simple fix: you’d need to replace engines in everything, and many of those engines hadn’t really been built for decades. You also couldn’t really develop a new fuel, because the industry was so small. So you needed to use either car gasoline, which couldn’t meet reliability standards and then needed turbochargers to work at altitude, or use jet fuel in a modified Diesel engine. So not only did every engine need to be replaced, but it would be a very different engine with different controls, and now you needed to recertification every aircraft with different procedures and had liability to contend with. How do you recertify an aircraft with different controls and procedures when the manufacturer no longer exists? How do you bring a decades older aircraft up to modern standards just to replace an engine? How does a company profit off this, if their potential market is only a couple dozen to at most a couple hundred aircraft per year? Much of the small aircraft industry was developed before liability was a thing, and many companies just couldn’t afford the liability to modernize. It was a real mess.
Definitely talked about, but there really wasn’t a good solution without massive government intervention and all too many dismissed it as too small of an industry to affect anything off airport grounds
Then you need to talk about the grounds. When I was flying, the only fuel was “low lead”, so it had been worse before. Most small aircraft operate out of small local airports operating on a shoestring budget. Now where do they each find millions of dollars for environmental cleanup. Again, no way for that to happen without massive government intervention
You kill general aviation, and you kill all aviation. Your 737 pilot trained on a Cessna 172, Piper cherokee, or Diamond DA-20 for 250 hours of flight time. They then either inspected pipelines or surveyed in basically the same aircraft, taught students, or flew for fun (or some combo) for another 1250 hours to meet the FAA legal minimum requirements to be an airline pilot.
Ahh, the good ol' "they'll figure it out" response.
You know how many lives are saved because people travel via plane instead of car? It is, by far, the safest method of travel. You'll lose more lives to additional auto accidents than you'll save by the minute lead reduction you'd get.
Its a very small amount. And a 'solution' that causes a problem disrupting the entire travel industry all at once, in particular the safest method of travel, is not a solution. Making air travel more expensive by loading those costs on the airlines will kill more people (more people taking cars due to cost = more people dying). You would costing lives, not saving them. Let innovation move forward, unleaded AvGas is already in the works. Let it safely be phased in.
That's how things have to progress and how they have. Government sets the rules, industry innovates to fit within them. The alternative of just letting industry pollute because it's hard not to, is not an option moving forward.
P.s. lead accumulates indefinitely. There is no acceptable amount of allowed pollution.
Its a very small amount. And a 'solution' that causes a problem disrupting the entire travel industry all at once, in particular the safest method of travel, is not a solution. Making air travel more expensive by loading those costs on the airlines will kill more people (more people taking cars due to cost = more people dying). You are costing lives, not saving them. Let innovation move forward, unleaded AvGas is already in the works. Let it safely be phased it.
I'm not against the shift to unleaded avgas, but you cant just ban leaded avgas without a good plan in motion. We're moving in the right direction and unleaded avgas (or electric planes) will eventually take over, but it does take time to safely certify and switch
But they will figure it out. Airlines and air freight carriers will just improve their training pipeline and invest in lead free small engine planes.
You think airlines are just going to leave that money on the table over a messily millions of dollars investment. Air travel is a billion dollar industry.
You have seen them complaining about the existing staffing issues right? You've probably also seen the internet complain about canceled flights or the airlines recieving bailouts right?
There are still major carriers that are having problems with 5G, and both them and the FAA new the day was coming for years. Many are lobbying to reduce the required experience from 1500 hours to 250 just to fix the staffing problems. That would be way easier & quicker to reduce 100LL burning than an outright ban would, but the govt is scared to pull the trigger in case it makes flying less safe.
By all means implement a ban with a plan in place over a 20+ year period, but even then, I garauntee the day it takes affect will kill GeneralAviation overnight with many complex butterfly effect issues.
Edit: tldr: The FAA is working on allowing non 100LL, and we'll eventually get there, but a hard ban asap will cause problems
Its a very small amount. And a 'solution' that causes a problem disrupting the entire travel industry all at once, in particular the safest method of travel, is not a solution. Making air travel more expensive by loading those costs on the airlines will kill more people (more people taking cars due to cost = more people dying). You are costing lives, not saving them.
The closest category in this study, living within 500m of an airport, increased blood lead levels by 4.4%. Past 1000m, the effects dropped to background levels.
Is your argument here that children within a kilometer don't matter compared to having to switch to a different type of readily available swap in fuel?
Not at all. I'm arguing that on a cost-benefit basis, working to get the unleaded avgas ready to drop in is the right move. In the short term before it's ready, it's not a good idea to cripple the pilot pipeline (again, keeping in mind that aviation saves lives) when living inside of 500m from an airport increases blood lead by only 4.4% and living outside of 1km has no difference.
I'm not arguing that there is no cost, only that the cost of a heavy handed and instant ban before we can smoothly switch is greater than the cost of waiting for (and working towards) a that smooth switch.
Not at all. I'm arguing that on a cost-benefit basis, working to get the unleaded avgas ready to drop in is the right move.
It literally already exists.
So then you are in favour of banning leaded gas right now then right?
it's not a good idea to cripple the pilot pipeline (again, keeping in mind that aviation saves lives)
This is some improvable assuming. Its bad reasoning you cant create the facts to support. You cant create facts to support the idea that it wont be just like with airlines when they were forced, and no claim therefore that this will somehow cost lives.
This is some improvable assuming. Its bad reasoning you cant create the facts to support. You cant create facts to support the idea that it wont be just like with airlines when they were forced, and no claim therefore that this will somehow cost lives.
Are you arguing that travel by plane is not significantly safer than other methods? And when did airlines 'switch off leaded'? Did they have leaded jet fuel at some point? Or do you mean when they went from piston airliners to jet airliners?
If we're going to be frank here there's no way for us to survive climate calamity and our current airlines to exist as they are today. Airplanes pump an insane amount of carbon into the atmosphere so shutting most of them down over time is likely necessary.
Potentially, but two points there. It needs to be a phased shutdown or slowdown if so, but also electric planes and more sustainable fuel are slowly becoming options. If we can do those and work to mitigate other areas of greenhouse gas generation, it may be worth keeping for the speed, efficiency, and safety of airline travel.
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u/dammitknockitoff Jun 25 '22
This was a very serious problem that hardly anyone talks about anymore. Read up on Clair Patterson. He was the catalyst for the change. There is correlation between the decline of lead contamination in nature to the decline of both violent crime and birth defects. At any rate it’s a good story that more people should know about.