[HN Gopher] Leaded Gas Was a Known Poison the Day It Was Invente...
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Leaded Gas Was a Known Poison the Day It Was Invented (2016)
Author : mrfusion
Score : 386 points
Date : 2021-09-12 12:22 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.smithsonianmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.smithsonianmag.com)
| jabl wrote:
| There are many octane boosters in addition to lead and ethanol.
| Like N-methyl aniline, ethers like MTBE and ETBE, and modifying
| the gasoline composition to replace low-octane components with
| high-octane components like aromatics, and so-called super
| alkylate.
|
| Most of these have disadvantages of their own, and tend to be
| more expensive. So TEL won for a reason. Particularly if you
| ignore things like diffuse health effects.
| Neil44 wrote:
| Yes, not to mention the lubricant properties of the lead for
| the valve seats and guides.
| nate_meurer wrote:
| This is a myth. Lead has no lubricative value in engines, and
| in fact causes damage. From https://www.shell.com/business-
| customers/aviation/aeroshell/...:
|
| _" The temperature for Lead deposits to form tend to be
| favourable around the spark plugs (as the whole mixture is
| quite cool before the flame starts to propagate) and on the
| exhaust valve stem (as the mixture cools after combustion).
| The problem is that the deposits are electrically conductive,
| which shorts out the spark plug - and corrosive, which can
| start to attack the metal of the valve stems."_
| jabl wrote:
| Late in WWII very high octane 115/145 aviation gasoline
| (read: lots and lots of TEL) became available for Allied
| frontline fighters, giving a performance boost. When
| cruising, pilots had to periodically rush the engines to
| full power in order to burn off the lead deposits on the
| spark plugs. And the spark plugs had to be replaced after
| every flight.
| nate_meurer wrote:
| Wow, I didn't know that. The engine in my favorite
| airplane (Fairchild P-47) had 36 spark plugs. That's a
| hell of a maintenance requirement.
| jabl wrote:
| Hardened materials for poppet valves and seats, like
| stellite, were invented and used before TEL. It was only
| after leaded gas became ubiquitous after WWII that
| manufacturers started saving a buck and stopped using them.
| nate_meurer wrote:
| Hardened valve seats are useful in racing engines and
| diesels, but car makers stopped using them in gasoline-
| fueled road cars simply because they weren't worth the cost
| regardless of whether the fuel was leaded. Reports of
| excessive valve seat recession after the phaseout of TEL
| were all anecdotal, and for every mechanic who swears there
| was a a rash of worn seats, there are others who say there
| wasn't.
|
| The theory that leaded gas prevents micro-weld induced
| valve abrasion has not been verified in controlled tests.
| The final report from the EPA's Valve Seat Recession
| Working Group found no evidence that leaded gas reduces
| engine wear under any but the most extreme operating
| conditions:
|
| https://archive.epa.gov/international/air/web/pdf/vsr-
| finald...
|
| _" In real world conditions, virtually no evidence of
| excessive valve wear has been found in vehicle or engine
| operation in normal everyday use, and several studies that
| monitored vehicles in actual daily service in countries
| that eliminated lead found no excessive valve wear."_
| [deleted]
| shadytrees wrote:
| If you're interested in reading more about leaded gasoline, I
| highly recommend Jamie Lincoln Kitman's in-depth article about it
| from 2000. It makes the case that the US government played a key
| role in allowing bad science to spread
| https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/secret-history-lea...
| magwa101 wrote:
| Private profits, future liabilities. We have been trading the
| future for wealth today, all that wealth has to be paid back. Is
| all the generated wealth zero sum?
| Symmetry wrote:
| I've got a sneaking suspicion we ought to go through everything
| else Thomas MIdgley Jr. invented and ban it, just to be sure.
| Leaded gas, CFCs, and the contraption he killed himself with is a
| worrying pattern.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr.
| bmitc wrote:
| > However, within the first two months of its operation, the
| new plant was plagued by more cases of lead poisoning,
| hallucinations, insanity, and five deaths.
|
| > On October 30, 1924, Midgley participated in a press
| conference to demonstrate the apparent safety of TEL, in which
| he poured TEL over his hands, placed a bottle of the chemical
| under his nose, and inhaled its vapor for 60 seconds, declaring
| that he could do this every day without succumbing to any
| problems. ... Midgley would later have to take leave of absence
| from work after being diagnosed with lead poisoning.
|
| Guy sounds like a nut.
|
| > Environmental historian J. R. McNeill opined that Midgley
| "had more impact on the atmosphere than any other single
| organism in Earth's history", and Bill Bryson remarked that
| Midgley possessed "an instinct for the regrettable that was
| almost uncanny".
|
| Later down in the legacy section, these are some serious burns,
| almost laughable if it weren't for them being true and the
| consequences of that.
|
| But I must say, although it's fun to pin it on one man, many
| people and corporations were involved in the propagation of his
| catastrophes.
| ijidak wrote:
| > Environmental historian J. R. McNeill opined that Midgley
| "had more impact on the atmosphere than any other single
| organism in Earth's history"
|
| I can't stop laughing when I read this.
|
| But it is shocking that one human can have such an impact on
| Earth.
|
| It's actually kind of scary.
|
| What's to stop the next nut, perhaps in a country outside the
| reach of international law, from causing the same?
| lovecg wrote:
| It can work both ways though. A single person can also
| invent a scalable way to sequester CO2 for example.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| after being diagnosed with lead poisoning ... again.
|
| > In 1923, Midgley took a long vacation in Miami, Florida, to
| cure himself of lead poisoning.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I think that proves he really believed what he was saying!
| DangitBobby wrote:
| Or that he was willing to risk his health for wealth at
| everyone's expense.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| Nah. It's much more plausible that he sincerely believed
| lead wasn't that dangerous.
| refurb wrote:
| Says the internet warrior who has invented nothing.
| jbuhbjlnjbn wrote:
| You don't know that. Also you are trying to defend this guy
| (from the wikipedia article): "Environmental historian J. R.
| McNeill opined that Midgley "had more impact on the
| atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth's
| history",[21] and Bill Bryson remarked that Midgley possessed
| "an instinct for the regrettable that was almost uncanny"."
|
| To put his other inventions under more scrutiny seems like a
| smart idea, but arguments for authority seem weirdly
| misplaced in this context.
| shucksley wrote:
| The fact that commenters at HN resort to ad hominem is a
| worrying pattern.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Related:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27983845
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Thats interesting the guy who invented the mRNA technology thinks
| that vaccines make COVID-19 infections worse.
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/08/robert-m...
| air7 wrote:
| > The most compelling option was actually ethanol.
|
| But from the perspective of GM, Kitman wrote, ethanol wasn't an
| option. It couldn't be patented and GM couldn't control its
| production. And oil companies like Du Pont "hated it," he wrote,
| perceiving it to be a threat to their control of the internal
| combustion engine.
|
| I'm generally an avid beliver in free markets as an agent for
| positive change, so these types of "revelations" are really
| disheartening. What are the solutions to this? What governing
| system would have mass produced ethenol as the best antiknocker
| with no regard to the interests of top players?
|
| Perhaps the government should open companies that are meant to
| lose money and are tax supported (for-loss conpanies) that
| compete with the industry with solutions that are good for the
| people but bad for business?
| foob wrote:
| Intellectual property reform could be a solution. It sounds
| like they might have gone with ethanol if they weren't
| motivated by patents so that they could prevent free market
| competition. We see the same thing with pharmaceuticals and in
| many other industries. I'm not particularly convinced that
| intellectual property laws are anywhere close to a net positive
| for consumers or society at large.
| kube-system wrote:
| I'm not sure that removing IP from the equation would have
| wholly changed the situation. There are other ways to control
| markets and they likely would have leaned on them instead.
| bmitc wrote:
| Do you have any examples?
| kube-system wrote:
| The obvious example in my mind is a control of the means
| of production. For instance, if they used [x] instead and
| also happened to own all the [x] mines.
|
| Or using anticompetitive practices to prevent competitors
| from joining the market.
|
| Or by gaining regulatory capture.
| laurent92 wrote:
| Patents, but also copyright on software. We gain nothing by
| rewriting the software every time, OSS should be the default.
| Same for music. It's more controversial but Spotify is
| monetizing convenience, not music, which itself is available
| for free on P2P.
| arbitrage wrote:
| It's not controversial, it's the whole point of capitalism.
| kube-system wrote:
| I hear this frequently, but I don't think it will do what
| many people think it would.
|
| Part of the power of FOSS is that it often leans on
| copyright to compel sharing. But, in the absence of
| copyright, why wouldn't capitalistic powers simply stop
| sharing their code?
| kennywinker wrote:
| I think the gp post was not suggesting "get rid of
| copyright and leave oss unprotected" - by "OSS should be
| the default" i read that it should continue to be
| protected while copyright is removed. It would not be
| hard for new laws to enshrine + protect OSS licenses
| azlev wrote:
| Well, those kind of revelations are kind of frequent :-). I
| think the gov just should rule out lead and let top players
| decide what to do.
|
| But there was an economic incentive to use TEL, so the free
| market prioritized profits.
| wpietri wrote:
| To me this is an example of 3 negative features of free
| markets, exacerbated by a kyriarchic system, but I think it's
| fixable with work.
|
| The three issues I see: One, the short-term market incentive
| was for them to have something patentable and controllable.
| Two, the money accrued to them but the harms fell to others,
| creating a huge negative externality. And three, free markets
| in goods tend to create markets in political power.
|
| This is all exacerbated in a kyriarchic [1] system, one where
| domination hierarchies are normalized. Negative environmental
| externalities tend to fall on disfavored groups. The workers
| getting poisoned with lead were lower class; especially in that
| era, their deaths were seen as acceptable. Toxic spills don't
| happen on the Harvard campus or in wealthy suburbs, because
| however "safe" that stuff is in the official view, it's not so
| safe that elites will live next to it. Etc, etc.
|
| We could eliminate a lot of this with just by preventing any
| money flow from business to politics. No donations, no gifts,
| no ads, no PACs. Perhaps no lobbyists. Politicians live on
| fixed budgets, any private wealth is put in index funds, and
| they are restricted after public service in what they can earn.
| The finances of politicians and former politicians are entirely
| public. The finances of executives and companies are also
| entirely public. We have well-funded, independent ethics
| watchdogs.
|
| Then on top of that we have well-funded public science systems
| with empowered public health authorities. That definitely
| exists in the US at least in patches, so I think we could make
| rapid progress here.
|
| And then I'd want to see strong laws where people making and
| profiting from harm are always held accountable. If we look at
| the 2008 financial crisis, nobody went to jail. A lot of people
| got rich doing dodgy things, and a few of them had to give a
| fraction of the money back. That did not teach a lot of
| lessons. One could argue that's ok in finance (although I
| wouldn't). But when it results in physical harm and death, I
| think the money and power should not be separable from the
| consequences. Currently CEOs and execs take paydays and walk
| away from things where I think negligent homicide charges are
| merited. Instead of "Gosh, I didn't know" being an acceptable
| excuse, I think the standard of "knew or should have known" and
| "could have acted differently" should be sufficient for execs.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyriarchy
| ryandrake wrote:
| > Politicians live on fixed budgets, any private wealth is
| put in index funds
|
| I like where you are going with all this, but I'll nitpick
| here that while tying politicians' wealth to the overall
| stock market in general reduces their incentive to legislate
| in favor of particular companies, it does provide them
| incentive to legislate in favor of corporate America in
| general. We don't need laws that help stock market
| participants. ~50% of Americans don't hold stock in any form,
| even through mutual funds or retirement accounts.
|
| I don't know what the solution is. As long as rule making can
| disproportionately affect the rule maker's own personal
| wealth and wellbeing, you have a conflict of interest.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| > 50% of Americans don't hold stock in any form
|
| Maybe we should address that problem -- it's one of the
| best long term ways for anyone to build wealth. Why aren't
| we educating people about this in school?
| muricula wrote:
| Of that 50%, many have negative wealth due to eg credit
| card debt, many have zero wealth because they're poor,
| and many have all of their wealth tied up in houses or
| cars. It's probably not ignorance so much as lack of
| savings to invest.
| pope_meat wrote:
| It's not really a matter of education, I'm in the bottom
| 50% and after rent and bills I'm left with very little.
| It's a highly competitive system, with winners and
| losers.
| fiddlerwoaroof wrote:
| Wouldn't something like requiring their employers to pay
| into a pension fund that is invested in a safe mix of
| stocks and other assets allow more of the population to
| share in corporate profits? (Ignoring social security for
| the moment, but assuming the policy was implemented as a
| similar sort of thing; but perhaps not as a deduction
| from the nominal wage).
| Applejinx wrote:
| I don't think that's a good assumption. What you know is
| that, at the moment, some kinds of owning stock are
| effective at building wealth FOR NOW.
|
| It could have inherent failure modes you're not taking
| into account. For instance, if systemic crashes are built
| into the model, and 'anyone' as a class is substantially
| more likely to risk such crashes and lose everything,
| that changes the calculation.
| wpietri wrote:
| Good point. I'd be happy with any sort of blind trust where
| it's reasonably correlated with overall economic health.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I'd like to see a system where, while in office, a
| representative's income is hard capped at the median
| income (or some multiplier of median) of the people they
| represent. This could apply to the president, too.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| One could argue that such a policy actually just ends up
| incentivizing politicians to accept bribes. Then again,
| it isn't like the current salary of a congressman seems
| to be preventing that anyway.
| wpietri wrote:
| Exactly. They should be able to live comfortably, so that
| they don't have to take bribes to survive. But wealth
| inequality in the US is so large that we can't pay them
| enough so they won't feel like they have to keep up with
| the joneses. If we made the salary, say, $10m/year we'd
| get the problem of totally unqualified loons pursuing the
| job and doing anything to keep it just because they
| wanted the money. So I think N times the median where N
| is between 1 and 10 is about the best we can do.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >correlated with overall economic health.
|
| How is this measured?
| wpietri wrote:
| That's the rub, of course. I suspect there's a whole
| array of valid measures sufficient to blunt incentives.
| We don't need something perfect, just enough so
| legislators don't gain so much that their pecuniary
| motivations override their duty to public service (and
| their fear of getting caught). Right now they can profit
| massively from legislation by betting on individual
| companies. If they're instead looking at a blind trust
| that contains a mix of index funds, bond funds, etc, then
| they still are aligned with the wealthy, which is
| certainly bad, but any gains they can drive for
| themselves become much smaller.
| [deleted]
| robocat wrote:
| > We don't need laws that help stock market participants.
| ~50% of Americans don't hold stock in any form
|
| But everybody benefits from the wealth of society, which
| somewhat includes the value of the businesses within the
| economy.
|
| Care needs to be taken not to kill the golden goose.
|
| The problem I see with the US is the two party political
| system. I live in New Zealand and while MMP has serious
| problems, it was a great improvement over FPP.
|
| Note I personally believe in equitable sharing of wealth
| ("The Scandinavian model"). But as a founder I also believe
| in the power of the incentives of personal gain from
| enterprise, which needs to be approximately 10:1 to break
| even given the risk (see VC).
| mcguire wrote:
| Add in a requirement for politicians to share wives, and I
| think you have Plato's philosopher-kings.
| krisgee wrote:
| >Perhaps the government should open companies that are meant to
| lose money and are tax supported (for-loss conpanies) that
| compete with the industry with solutions that are good for the
| people but bad for business?
|
| Many government owned companies actually make a profit until
| private industry lobbies them into ineffectiveness. The US Post
| Office was profitable until a change lobbied by Fed-Ex and UPS
| forced them to keep 100% of their pensions available at all
| times.
|
| Various crown corp electric companies were profitable in Canada
| and SaskTel, a crown corp telecommunications company is the
| last bastion of non-insane cell phone plans though I'm sure
| Rogers and Bell are working on it.
|
| People just hate seeing the government make money. They see
| that things are good, say "hey, why should the government get
| this money" and then shut down the system that's working and
| complain when everything costs more because private industry is
| trying to squeeze every last cent out of them.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| I think this is an overly simplistic (and I've seen this
| argument on the internet a lot) argument. It's true that
| there are a lot of people, especially in Anglo countries, who
| oppose any policy that could allow the State to be enriched.
| But it's also true that there are many crappy state-owned
| enterprises. My family came from a developing country that
| used to have _most_ things run by the state, and there was
| widespread corruption in the government which kept service
| bad and prices high.
|
| I do think it would be useful for economists to analyze the
| conditions under which state-run entities create good
| outcomes, but in the currently charged political climate, it
| probably won't happen.
| dundarious wrote:
| Provision of services is usually corrupt and high cost in
| less developed countries regardless of who's providing it:
| public or private sector. That is my personal experience.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > People just hate seeing the government make money.
|
| No, this is too generic - name the correct groups:
| _Conservatives, neo-liberals and the rich elites_ hate see
| "the government" or government-owned/ran entities make money.
|
| Everyone else sees that government-run services usually
| provide decent service at affordable prices, and that after
| privatization, service quality goes downhill and the cost
| keeps rising.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > perceiving it to be a threat to their control of the internal
| combustion engine
|
| Absolutely. In my country, the engines of nearly all cars run
| on any mix of gasoline and ethanol. I always have the option to
| choose. I've even seen cars running on natural gas, seems to be
| the only thing keeping things profitable for Uber drivers these
| days.
|
| Corporations should have no control over anything to begin
| with. Monopolists ruin everything. The damage they've done to
| the western world cannot be calculated.
|
| > What governing system would have mass produced ethenol as the
| best antiknocker with no regard to the interests of top
| players?
|
| My country did that.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_Brazil
| mcguire wrote:
| A strong regulatory environment.
| [deleted]
| G3rn0ti wrote:
| If ethanol was so effective as an anti-knocking agent why
| didn't gas stations just mix ethanol with petrol and sold that
| fuel with profit? Ethanol is cheaper and much safer to
| manufacture then tetraethyllead. But they didn't...
|
| I am not an expert on combustion engines but the biggest
| problem with ethanol in the early days was it polluted the
| engine with water that it absorbed as a water soluble organic
| compound. Those days engines were not made from Aluminium but
| iron so it destroyed motors over time due to the formation of
| rust. Furthermore, production of tetraethyllead got much
| cheaper once its synthesis was automated. Knocking itself is
| bad for motors so people actually _wanted_ to use anti-knocking
| additives to improve the longevity of their cars (aside of
| better fuel economy).
|
| So in the end tetraethyllead prevailed as an anti-knocking
| agent because of its technical and economical advantages and
| not because of a conspiracy of oil companies as the article
| suggests.
| AmVess wrote:
| Read more on how hard and long GM tried to suppress
| opposition to leaded gas, it was no conspiracy.
| smolder wrote:
| It _was_ a conspiracy... by GM.
|
| Conspiracy: n. An agreement to perform together an illegal,
| wrongful, or subversive act.
|
| The word conspiracy doesn't mean the same as "conspiracy
| theory" and even that doesn't necessarily imply something
| wacky like reptilian aliens secretly controlling the
| government.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Actually mixing ethanol with petrol is a pretty common
| thing...
|
| The main issue stations won't do it unless compelled is that
| it will reduce gas mileage slightly. You don't want to be the
| company selling gas that has a lower mileage. If they could
| sell it at a lower price that would be something.
|
| The thing is that you need a lot more ethanol than
| tetraethyllead, so it actually does end up being more
| expensive, for the same energy.
|
| And actually cast iron blocks are still being used nowadays.
| lazide wrote:
| Ethanol also sucks in water from the atmosphere which
| causes big problems if not adequately managed. Especially
| 'back in the day', the technology to do so was very poor -
| even keeping a gas tank somewhat sealed against rain was
| difficult and often didn't happen well.
|
| Modern plastics, better valves, better treatment chemicals
| all mean it's less of a problem now - but it is still a
| major problem and kills a lot of small engines in
| particular in states where all gas is some kind of ethanol
| blend.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| We did have the tech in the 1960s to make gas tanks that
| were sealed against the rain, actually.
|
| While yes ethanol is hygroscopic, 10% ethanol won't cause
| issues even in old vehicles (see people with old
| motorcycles) unless you keep it in for a long time
| without use.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| And at least in small engines, it's common to have an
| aluminum block with cast iron sleeves, so the combustion
| chamber is still walled with rustable metal.
| gumby wrote:
| > I'm generally an avid beliver in free markets as an agent for
| positive change, so these types of "revelations" are really
| disheartening.
|
| There are many such examples. Here's one from my life: when I
| was in the pharmaceutical business one of the chemists
| developed a treatment for a fairly common disease. He and a
| couple of others tried it on themselves. We could have patented
| it and run it through clinical trials, but it was something any
| compounding pharmacist could have whipped up so such a patent
| would have been worthless. We were a startup so didn't spend
| any effort doing a study much less a full program. Instead
| there are marketed, less effective products on the market.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| So the chemist and his friend had the exact same disease and
| it was successfully treated and they wouldn't release it
| because it could be made by someone else? Uh a recipe can be
| patented and that protects it from being sold. Compounding
| pharmacies can't magically ignore those patents if they don't
| want to get sued into oblivion or lose their license. I'm
| kind of skeptical of your story, sorry.
| gumby wrote:
| It's not really practical to sue a thousand small
| businesses -- you might not even hear about them. And
| anyway it's better to go after a product with a protected
| high margin than try to fight where somebody else can
| attack your margin.
|
| BTW it wasn't "the chemist and his friend" -- that would
| have been a crime. It was a few chemists in the company
| dosing themselves -- also technically illegal but done all
| the time and generally excused if it's a trivial scale and
| disclosed in your filings.
|
| Feel free to be skeptical but those are the business
| issues.
| yyyk wrote:
| >> I'm generally an avid beliver in free markets as an agent
| for positive change, so these types of "revelations" are
| really disheartening. >There are many such examples... one of
| the chemists developed a treatment for a fairly common
| disease... We were a startup so didn't spend any effort doing
| a study much less a full program.
|
| It's understandable that a startup could not invest further
| in something they can't sell. The problem seems therefor
| deeper than a general invocation of 'free markets'.
|
| Perhaps the real problem is that apparently there was no way
| or perhaps incentive to publish the result without an
| expensive full study. Had the idea been published perhaps
| someone else would have picked it up. Would the recent
| fashion of preprints have helped?
|
| Or maybe the problem is that pharmaceutical business/research
| income depends on patents alone, and we should have some form
| of public investment which guaranteed profits for development
| of treatments regardless of patents?
| jzebedee wrote:
| Have you written about this anywhere? I'm curious what common
| disease could be cured in the manner you described. It seems
| like the low-hanging fruit is already picked clean in the
| pharma industry.
| gumby wrote:
| It was using urea to fight topical fungal infections (anti
| fungal drugs are typically quite toxic). The mechanism of
| action has been well known for decades; what the folks came
| us with was a formulation that got the dosage high enough
| without causing damage. It was easily whipped up in the lab
| but I don't remember the details. Any notes from this would
| be long gone as this was over a decade ago and the company
| has been sold and surely any paper lab notebooks are buried
| and forgotten.
| refurb wrote:
| How much money did GM make off of cars versus leaded gasoline.
| That seems like a silly theory.
|
| Sometimes giving away an invention for free (or finding a non-
| patentable alternative) makes you more money because it's not a
| barrier to adoption.
| [deleted]
| Aloha wrote:
| TEL (tetraethyl lead) had and has other advantages over ethanol
| beyond patentability -
|
| Unlike TEL, ethanol is hydrophilic, which makes gasoline
| blended with it more apt to be contaminated with water, and
| other water containing contaminants, this is particularly
| relevant for aviation uses and also reducing incidences of
| vapor lock.
|
| TEL is also (more) rubber and seal friendly, other than the
| (very) high risk of lead toxicity, TEL blended gasoline is
| easier to work with and process than Ethanol blended gasoline.
|
| TEL also acts as a natural lubricant of its own, the lead
| acting as lubricant, particularly on valve and other top end
| engine components.
|
| This isn't really a defense of TEL - particularly not in road
| gas, while it _was_ understood that exposure to large
| quantities of lead was toxic, toxicity of low dose exposure to
| environmental lead wasn 't really fully understood until the
| 50's/60's, we also didn't really understood how long
| environmental lead lingered around until the 60's. Modern
| technologies have overcome much of the issues from ethanol in
| road gas, but there are reasons TEL is still used in AvGas.
|
| TEL in AvGas was vital in reaching higher octane, and Ethanol
| is contraindicated in AvGas (at the last I looked into the
| topic) because of its hydrophilic nature - our ability (the
| allies) to produce high octane AvGas is one of the factors that
| won WW2, and use of TEL was a deciding factor in that.
| Zigurd wrote:
| "Dry gas" which is used to correct moisture problems in cars'
| fuel systems is alcohol: Ethanol, methanol, etc. and it takes
| advantage of alcohol being hydrophilic.
|
| Ethanol has requirements for hoses and seals that might
| otherwise be degraded by alcohol. But this is not an ongoing
| issue in modern vehicles.
| HPsquared wrote:
| The same property, increased ability to absorb water, both
| helps to remove excess of water and can cause a problem in
| the longer-term.
|
| It's like using a towel to dry your shower tray: in the
| short run it's helpful but if you leave it there all the
| time you'll end up with a permanently soggy towel keeping
| everything damp.
|
| EDIT: Some empirical evidence for the doubters-
| https://youtu.be/UvS_D4_lF5U
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| Those problems were solved for cars, they can be solved for
| planes. We shouldn't use it. Bioaccumulation of heavy metals
| was understood very early. Everything has a cost, spraying
| lead everywhere should be higher than what we are willing to
| pay.
|
| I am guessing it's still allowed because people who fly
| planes can afford to lobby.
|
| I was astounded to find TEL was still allowed in aviation
| fuels. Rates of cancers etc are higher near military bases
| due to fuel handling incidents.
| Aloha wrote:
| The amount of TEL used in AvGas is infinitesimally small,
| its only used in Aviation Gasoline, which is only used in
| older piston engined craft, the military flies none of
| these as far as I know.
| consumer451 wrote:
| It's finally over.
|
| > After more than three decades of research and
| development, general aviation finally has an approved
| unleaded 100-octane fuel.
|
| https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/gami-awarded-long-
| awaite...
| bleachedsleet wrote:
| It will be over, but it's not over yet. Your link says
| that it will both take a while for it to come to market
| and also be more expensive to produce...an expense that
| will likely be balked at by the airlines until forced to
| use it at which point it will be the customers that pay.
| tjohns wrote:
| For what it's worth, unleaded avgas is already available
| at some of the Bay Area airports as of recent, and it's
| currently priced cheaper than traditional leaded avgas.
| jabl wrote:
| Do you specifically mean the new 100 octane unleaded
| mentioned in the article the parent linked to?
|
| If not, it could be some lower octane unleaded
| formulation. There are a couple of standards for these,
| but they have never caught on.
| tjohns wrote:
| It's UL94, so lower octane (94 octane, as the name
| suggests). However, this is still fine for lower
| performance aircraft that make up the majority of the GA
| fleet.
|
| There's been a lot of interest in it, especially in light
| of the recent discussions to close RHV in San Jose. I
| know one of the flight schools here just switched all
| their aircraft over to UL94.
|
| Higher performance aircraft will need UL100, which is
| still not available, but is expected soon. There's been
| significant progress in getting it approved over the last
| year.
|
| Swift Fuels sells the supplemental type certificate
| aircraft owners need to use UL94. They are offering a
| free upgrade to the UL100 STC once it's offered, so
| aircraft owners don't have to pay twice to start using
| UL94 today.
| jabl wrote:
| > It's UL94, so lower octane (94 octane, as the name
| suggests). However, this is still fine for lower
| performance aircraft that make up the majority of the GA
| fleet.
|
| The standard story seems to be that 20% of the planes
| burn 80% of the fuel, and need all the octane in 100LL.
| And GA is such a small market that airfields can't
| justify having multiple fuel grades available, so 100LL
| everywhere it is.
|
| But yes, nice to hear that UL94 is nonetheless available
| in some places.
| Aloha wrote:
| Airlines (outside of bush planes) are not using AvGas in
| any substantive quantity, and have not been since the
| early 60's. The amount of AvGas used a year is dwarfed
| (several times over) by the amount of Jet Fuel (Jet A
| does not have TEL in it).
|
| AvGas (which uses TEL) is used by general aviation
| exclusively.
| tialaramex wrote:
| I would guess one thing that confuses non-pilots is that
| while say an A320 or a 747 _looks_ like it has jet
| engines, lots of small regional aircraft (e.g. a Dash-8)
| visibly have propellers, and so it 's natural for lay
| people to assume that's basically the same idea as on a
| Cessna 172 or a Spitfire scaled up.
|
| But it isn't. Those planes aren't aren't fuelled by
| AvGas. Their engines use JetA (basically kerosene)
| because they've got a turbine inside like those turbofan
| engines which look so visibly different, however their
| turbine powers the propeller rather than a set of fans to
| drive more air through the engine and produce thrust that
| way.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turboprop
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| That doesn't make jet fuel any better. Just search for _'
| Toxicologic assessment'_ or _' profile of jet fuel'_ and
| focus on the _' A1'_,
|
| which is the one used for commercial aviation.
|
| Then there is the elephant in the room nobody wants to
| talk about, the military which is using the _' JP-X'_
| variants all over the world,
|
| some of them even for their cars and trucks, because,
| hey, it's just better Diesel, why would we stock
| different fuels if we don't have to?
|
| What a logistic nightmare!1!!
| eutectic wrote:
| Organic compounds burn up, lead just accumulates.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| You're free to inhale as much as you want to.
|
| It's just something I won't do.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| For people not familiar with terminology, "general
| aviation" does not mean "regular airplanes", but, to a
| first approximation, "small piston-engined airplanes",
| operated by hobbyists or small charter operations.
| tialaramex wrote:
| I don't think most "small charter operations" would be
| General Aviation (unless I understand what's being
| chartered here?) and although most GA planes are pistons
| that's not part of the definition. What matters is _why_
| you 're flying, not what you fly.
|
| The categories (for non-military use) are generally
| Scheduled or Air Transport (any time you buy tickets for
| a flight, that's the category, you don't know or care who
| is flying, you paid for the journey between a specific
| origin and destination at a specific time; a FedEx plane
| is also Transport), then Commercial (not Transport but
| somebody is getting paid to fly aircraft, maybe it's crop
| spraying, TV news copter, police, or just another TV
| priest being flown around in his private jet), and only
| if nobody was getting paid is it General Aviation.
|
| If your cosmetic dentist can afford a brand new Vision
| Jet so that he can live 100 miles away and fly in to do
| $5000 appointments without sitting in traffic, that's
| General Aviation. The authorities don't care that he's
| getting paid to be a dentist, he's not getting paid to
| fly his plane.
|
| If your airline uses a relatively tiny PA-42 to get
| customers to an obscure but important airstrip with maybe
| 3-4 passengers per day that's still Air Transport.
|
| On the other hand if some oil sheik owns their own A320
| with their own custom decor and has a team of pilots to
| fly it wherever they want, that's still only Commercial,
| not Air Transport because nobody is buying tickets, it
| just goes wherever he wants.
| sokoloff wrote:
| GA is non-commercial, non-military, non-aerial-work
| (application, survey, etc). The pilots can be paid
| employees and have it still be GA. (Your sheik A320
| example would be considered GA, not commercial, as would
| business operators, fractional operators, and of course
| private operations.)
|
| Don't confuse the commercial certificate["license"](which
| is required to be paid for flying) with commercial
| operations (typically holding out to the public for air
| transport).
| bombcar wrote:
| Military planes just kerosene/JP-8 which contains no lead
| as far as I know.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| The fuel itself is toxic to the environment and animals.
| The fuels can have really harsh things in them like
| benzene, iirc.
| nitrogen wrote:
| Not too different from ordinary gasoline.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Which is complete bonkers.
|
| We fill our cars every week and when you stand there
| thinking "damn I love this smell" yet when there's 1ppm
| of benzene in sun cream people scream "caaaancer"...
| letitbeirie wrote:
| Kerosene/JP-8 is great in a jet but it's not going to get
| you very far in a piston prop.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| There is no particular reason why you can't put a diesel
| engine in a plane and indeed there are a number of diesel
| engines certified for just that.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| There are few technical reasons, to be sure, but there
| are plenty of economic and business reasons. The most
| popular engines in general aviation are
| Continental/Lycoming ones, and these are based on what,
| 50+ years old basic designs? Automotive industry have
| developed significantly better piston engines in last few
| decades, in terms of power to weight ratio, fuel
| efficiency, MTBF and service interval. However, the
| nature of the field, its relative niche quality, and
| regulatory framework make it difficult to adapt and adopt
| them in general aviation. There has been recent attempt
| to do it, with diesel engines from German automotive
| industry, but they are facing a lot of very real
| problems, for example, lack of maintenance
| infrastructure.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > but they are facing a lot of very real problems, for
| example, lack of maintenance infrastructure.
|
| Comprehensive government regulation would create such an
| infrastructure. When the government says "in 5 years we
| will disallow creation of new airframes that use leaded
| gas, and in 10 years there will be no more leaded gas
| sold, and in 15 years additives will be illegal",
| _everyone_ knows what 's on the horizon - and you can bet
| that there will be engine vendors selling modification
| kits and maintenance infrastructure, since now everyone
| knows that there will be a massive market coming up as
| _everyone_ has to adapt to the new rules if they want to
| keep flying!
| tialaramex wrote:
| Politically the rationale is likely that this constituency
| is _small_ and so forcing them will have a relatively small
| benefit compared to the main policy goal; but they _really
| care_. If you fly a piston prop, you likely don 't have $1M
| spare (you could use that to trade your piston plane for a
| small jet) for Washington lobbyists, but you _do_ have a
| vote and you care about banning the only fuel you are
| authorised to use enough that you 're going to use that
| vote and you're going to be loud about it.
|
| A previous article about Leaded Petrol caused me to read
| how the UK exempted some very old cars which could not be
| effectively modified. There's actually a waiver so that, in
| theory, every fuel station in the country can do paperwork
| to get a small amount of leaded gasoline (a tiny fraction
| of their total fuel sales) and sell it for this purpose.
| The politicians were thus able to tell their constituents
| we did not screw you, just ask your local supplier to set
| aside fuel for you.
|
| But economics does the rest, at first those retailers see
| sales of leaded fuel are very low. Those who love classics
| maybe decide to set aside the option for a year or two and
| see how it goes, everybody else stops selling leaded fuel.
| The wholesalers now see that sales of leaded fuel are tiny,
| so they don't bother making it, it becomes a special order,
| which then further increases the pressure not to bother
| stocking it. Today enthusiasts will just mail order the
| lead additive and pour it into their tank after a refill or
| they use a substitute additive which these days works well
| enough, the politicians didn't have to lift a finger.
| jrockway wrote:
| > Rates of cancers etc are higher near military bases due
| to fuel handling incidents.
|
| Avgas is only used in piston engines, and the military
| mostly flies turbines, which use ordinary jet fuel (which
| does not contain lead). They have _some_ , but I think if
| you told the military "jets and turboprops only" it
| wouldn't be a big problem. (Not sure how they would train
| new pilots, however.)
|
| If you're looking for disease/damage from lead in avgas,
| you want to find a little airport in the middle of nowhere
| that has a really good restaurant on the field ;)
|
| https://www.faa.gov/about/initiatives/avgas
|
| > I am guessing it's still allowed because people who fly
| planes can afford to lobby.
|
| People that fly piston engines do not have any money to
| lobby.
|
| To me it feels very similar to why software engineers pay
| so much tax -- we get paid just enough to be dinged by
| things like the AMT, but not enough to afford lobbyists.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| Jet fuel is carcinogenic and causes other problems, I
| didn't say this was just about lead.
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/973128/ as an example.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| I find the T-53A, a trainer version of the Cirrus SR20,
| which is piston-engine propeller aircraft:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_United_State
| s_m...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirrus_SR20
|
| There might be some piston-based helicopters (too many to
| check), or drones.
|
| Otherwise, yes, bangers are out.
| nate_meurer wrote:
| > _TEL also acts as a natural lubricant of its own, the lead
| acting as lubricant, particularly on valve and other top end
| engine components._
|
| This is a myth. TEL has no lubricative properties in engines.
| The reality is opposite; lead deposits are corrosive. From
| https://www.shell.com/business-
| customers/aviation/aeroshell/...:
|
| _" The temperature for Lead deposits to form tend to be
| favourable around the spark plugs (as the whole mixture is
| quite cool before the flame starts to propagate) and on the
| exhaust valve stem (as the mixture cools after combustion).
| The problem is that the deposits are electrically conductive,
| which shorts out the spark plug - and corrosive, which can
| start to attack the metal of the valve stems."_
| Aloha wrote:
| TEL _before combustion_ does have lubricative qualities,
| much in the way phosphorus does in oil or sulfur does in
| diesel fuel.
|
| After combustion, its like any heavy metal being burned, it
| turns into an oxide, which has a variety of
| characteristics.
| nate_meurer wrote:
| It's the supposed benefits of the post-combustion lead
| oxide deposits that defenders of leaded gas cite. I have
| never heard anyone cite the lubricity of TEL itself.
|
| The most popular theory is that the lead oxide fouling
| reduces the occurence or effects of micro-welds between
| valve and seat surfaces, which otherwise produce abrasive
| particles that contribute to valve seat recession. While
| this theory is plausible, it has not been shown to occur
| under normal operating conditions in automotive engines,
| nor in aviation engines as far as I know.
|
| The final report from the EPA's Valve Seat Recession
| Working Group found no evidence that leaded gas reduces
| engine wear under any but the most extreme operating
| conditions:
|
| https://archive.epa.gov/international/air/web/pdf/vsr-
| finald...
|
| _" In real world conditions, virtually no evidence of
| excessive valve wear has been found in vehicle or engine
| operation in normal everyday use, and several studies
| that monitored vehicles in actual daily service in
| countries that eliminated lead found no excessive valve
| wear."_
| cjfd wrote:
| I am not sure it should be formulated as market vs. government.
| The general public can be quite short sighted too. Also,
| marketing can be used on the general public.
|
| What I think would be improvements are protections to free
| speech. More specifically, removal of any obstacle to free
| speech. The next thing, and in line with this is very generous
| protections to whistle blowing. There could be a yearly award
| with elections by the public that chooses the whistle blower of
| the year. The price money should be enough to live on for some
| tens of years at the least, perhaps even for life. Also,
| winning the price should make a person immune to lawsuits
| related to the issue that the whistle blowing was about.
| HomeDeLaPot wrote:
| ... Regulation? Just ban lead in gas and let the free market
| find the next best solution.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| It was banned and has been banned for almost 40 years?
| Obviously not in plane engines, which were a much smaller %
| of the pollution. You can't just ban it which in turn bans
| avgas. That's just dumb, it has to be phased out and
| alternatives developed. Sounds like those exist currently but
| aren't being pushed.
| hbogert wrote:
| That's what happened it took decades.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| No, just tax or outlaw this behavior, don't nationalize
| industries.
|
| There is an intellectual framework in place for making sense of
| leaded petrol in the context of markets, and that's
| externalities. It is no different in concept to noise
| pollution, carbon pollution, or other types of externalities,
| it is just one that's significantly worse.
|
| Leaded petrol is at best a negative externality which should be
| taxed, and probably should just be considered physical assault
| similar to punching someone in the face (the user of the petrol
| is giving others literal brain damage) and totally banned and
| criminalized.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| So we should just stop using airplanes because their fuel has
| lead in it? What?
| roamerz wrote:
| Yes - brought to you by the same people that would stop you
| from eating beef because cows fart.
|
| From a tech perspective tetraethyl lead also has
| lubricative properties that add to exhaust valve longevity
| under high temperature conditions which may be one of the
| reasons it took so long to disappear.
| nate_meurer wrote:
| No, this is a myth. In reality, lead fouling decreases
| engine performance and longevity. From
| https://www.shell.com/business-
| customers/aviation/aeroshell/...:
|
| _" The temperature for Lead deposits to form tend to be
| favourable around the spark plugs (as the whole mixture
| is quite cool before the flame starts to propagate) and
| on the exhaust valve stem (as the mixture cools after
| combustion). The problem is that the deposits are
| electrically conductive, which shorts out the spark plug
| - and corrosive, which can start to attack the metal of
| the valve stems."_
| [deleted]
| wombatmobile wrote:
| > I'm generally an avid beliver (sic) in free markets as an
| agent for positive change
|
| That form of belief gets fixed in your mind via a very
| different method to beliefs such as "what goes up must come
| down".
|
| It's not a result of distilling evidence.
|
| It's a result of persuasion.
| dexen wrote:
| _> I'm generally an avid beliver in free markets as an agent
| for positive change_
|
| I'm with you here - especially including the observation that
| it was the non-free market force ("It couldn't be patented")
| that skewed the choice in favor of the inferior, poisonous
| option.
|
| Side note, besides its anti-knock properties, the lead also had
| protective effect on the valves - with early metallurgy, the
| high temperature gasses wore out valves, in particular the
| exhaust ones; lead partly ameliorated that. It is a concern
| with older vehicles (aircraft and cars) and they may require
| leaded gasoline for that particular reason - or at least
| replacement of relevant engine parts.
| arbitrage wrote:
| > It is a concern with older vehicles
|
| This hasn't been true since about 1970, and even then, it was
| dubious.
| dexen wrote:
| That only applies to car engines; aviation piston engines
| evolve much slower and commonly required leaded gasoline
| til recently - specifically for the lead content, beyond
| the anti-knock properties. Most common avgas is 100LL, with
| significant (if reduced) lead content.
|
| Cf. _> Lycoming provides a list of engines and fuels that
| are compatible with them. According to their August 2017
| chart, a number of their engines are compatible with
| unleaded fuel._
|
| _> However, all of their engines require that an oil
| additive be used when unleaded fuel is used: "When using
| the unleaded fuels identified in Table 1, Lycoming oil
| additive P/N LW-16702, or an equivalent finished product
| such as Aeroshell 15W-50, must be used."*
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avgas_
| nate_meurer wrote:
| Aircraft piston engine makers like Lycoming and TCM have
| never provided any actual evidence that unleaded avgas
| increases engine wear. Their assertions that leaded gas
| provides lubrication are anecdotal and borderline
| superstitious. TCM pretty much admits this in its
| literature:
|
| _" Field experience has determined the use of unleaded
| automotive gasoline to be the cause of premature cylinder
| replacement due primarily to rapid and severe valve seat
| recession."_ [1]
|
| They don't ever present evidence from controlled testing
| that backs up their "field experience". And controlled
| testing of automotive engines has shown that leaded fuels
| don't provide any significant protection. [2]
|
| Twenty years ago, aviation writer John Deakin issued a
| challenge for anyone to provide good evidence that leaded
| avgas prevents engine wear [3]. As far as I know that
| challenge was never met .
|
| 1 - https://web.archive.org/web/20171004135916/https://pc
| eonline...
|
| 2 -
| https://archive.epa.gov/international/air/web/pdf/vsr-
| finald...
|
| 3 - https://www.avweb.com/features/pelicans-perch-55lead-
| in-the-...
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > it was the non-free market force ("It couldn't be
| patented") that skewed the choice
|
| Interesting, because my take on patent law is that it exists
| to encourage capitalism. Specifically, to reward the risk
| takers that develop novel ideas (leading to positive
| change?).
| CapitalistCartr wrote:
| All we needed was strong environmental protection at the time.
| It's a natural commons, ripe for protection and regulation. But
| "The Environment" wasn't a common concept at the time.
| pyrale wrote:
| > Perhaps the government should open companies [...] that are
| good for the people but bad for business?
|
| Perhaps the government should close companies that are good for
| business but bad for the people instead.
|
| In France after WW2, the companies that had participated in the
| German war effort, or to collaborate were simply confistated.
| When I see this kind of revelation, which show a complete
| breakage of corporate oversight and an evaporation of personal
| responsibility, I wonder whether the easiest solution may be to
| void existing stocks, have the government take over the board
| and re-auction the company once the management structure has
| been cleared.
| garavanting wrote:
| >I wonder whether the easiest solution may be to void
| existing stocks, have the government take over the board and
| re-auction the company once the management structure has been
| cleared.
|
| That's precisely what Norway did in its own financial crisis:
|
| >In the last years of the 1980s, there was a major financial
| crisis in Norway and by 1991 the bank had used up all
| capital. To save the bank, the Government of Norway took over
| the bank and gave it new capital, rescuing it from
| bankruptcy.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christiania_Bank
|
| It's a good idea: the shareholders, who boast that their
| returns come from the risk they're taking, should bear that
| risk. If the business is too big to fail, well, then it
| should just be brought under government control when it would
| otherwise fail.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Free markets work as long as there's competition. When
| companies become so big they can kill any nascent competitor on
| a whim, that's when it becomes an issue. That's why trust
| busting and regulations and governments are necessary.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| I've had this argument many times with my friends who are
| libertarian leaning and they start hand waving when you bring
| up a 100 different examples of companies being downright evil
| when they became too large.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Removal of the patent system would be the "free market purist"
| answer to this one. Though ethanol already wasn't patented,
| hmm.... I can only assume the leaded fuel was cheaper.
| josho wrote:
| > Perhaps the government should open companies that are meant
| to lose money
|
| Canada used to have crown corporations (until conservative
| governments sold them off to do a one time balancing of the
| budget).
|
| When done well the crown Corp. serves a valuable purpose. The
| government no longer needs to rely on industry to tell them
| what is needed.
|
| Eg. In this scenario the crown Corp. refinery would have their
| own scientists doing research to stop the engine knock and
| those scientists would have the expertise to know of safer
| alternatives and would use those as additives. Creating a more
| competitive environment.
|
| The government can also use those industry experts to get
| honest answers on what the industry needs. Eg. "Mr. lobbyist,
| If these safety standards increase your industry's costs too
| much then how come our own government plant is seeing net cost
| savings due to lower worker injuries?"
|
| It's a crime that in short term interests crown corps have
| largely stopped being a thing.
| slavik81 wrote:
| There are nearly 50 Canadian crown corporations, including
| the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), the Canadian
| Deposit Insurance Corporation (CDIC), and the Bank of Canada.
| There was even a new one created recently. The government
| created the Trans Mountain Corporation when they nationalized
| the Trans Mountain Pipeline.
| Jiro wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean by your reference to a free market.
| Patents are a government-granted monopoly, violation of which
| can get you fined or jailed. If a company hurts people because
| hurting people allows them to make money from a patent, that's
| not a failure of the free market, it's a failure of government
| control.
|
| Unless you mean that you're disheartened that the government
| doesn't allow a free market here, and you wish they would?
| eternalban wrote:
| The problem, in all cases, remains the long standing oligarch
| families and aristocratically rooted institutions, and their
| captive "public service" institutions, some of which are global
| in scope. Not wishing to engender a flaming thread, I will
| simply state that certain aspects of "institutional capture"
| are very much du jour topics of global interest and impact.
|
| A global reset of "free markets" via a 'day zero of capital
| accumulations' could provide a solution. Many of the
| established capital hordes are legacies of activities that are
| now understood to be anti-social at best, and predatory at the
| extreme.
|
| Coupled with this, we need pedagogical guidance to inform the
| new generations who are not to manor born. Almost none of the
| new blood born to middle or lower classes are educated in the
| necessities of generational wealth preservation and
| applications of wealth towards affecting societal outcomes. At
| best, we have children of Marxists and pseudo-Marxists railing
| against "Capital" without understanding the dynamics of
| societal power based on multi-generational societal networks,
| which transcend mere capital.
|
| Primary sources working against such a program are precisely
| the "entertainment" complexes owned stock, lock, and barrel by
| informed and purposive societal networks, which at this point
| in human history have fully transcended ethnic and national
| boundaries, and clearly aim for stupefying the masses. There is
| a reason you have been treated to 2 decades of Marvel comics in
| films.
| agumonkey wrote:
| If I get you right you're disappointed that free markets didn't
| lead to 100% efficiency. IMO the simple truth is that nothing
| will be perfect and there's always strange patterns emerging
| from the chaos. It's almost like entropy to me.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Public opinion is the weak point in many systems that are
| supposed to converge to an optimal socially-beneficial
| equilibrium.
|
| The way competition and free markets are supposed to work,
| someone else would've introduced ethanol as an anti-knock
| additive, sold gasoline cheaper (and healthier!), and everyone
| would've benefitted. But Kettering & Midgley went on an
| extensive PR campaign after their invention to convince the
| public leaded gasoline was safe, and they had GM and Dupont's
| full advertising budgets at their disposal. The public wouldn't
| know any better, so they believe what they're told and leaded
| gasoline becomes the standard.
|
| You can hear echoes of that with many Facebook advertising &
| misinformation campaigns today.
|
| This also causes stock market bubbles & crashes. People are
| supposed to independently value securities, and then their
| errors cancel out and you get a very good statistical
| approximation of true value. Instead, they invest in what
| everyone else invests in in, until prices have been bid up to
| insane levels, then run out of gullible buyers and the price
| crashes.
|
| And brand-based monopoly. Instead of judging product quality
| for themselves, they buy products that all their friends are
| buying, "trusted brands", and this creates a barrier to entry
| that new entrants have a very hard time surmounting.
|
| Democracy is affected too. In theory, the best candidate should
| win. In practice, the candidate with the most money to buy ads
| wins. People's opinions are mutable; they don't rationally seek
| out information independently and make an informed, self-
| interested choice. They tend to trust what they hear a lot,
| which creates a market for influencing people's opinions.
|
| I can't think of a way to solve this, though. The "solution"
| would be to go from a high-trust society to a low-trust
| society, where everybody basically assumes that whatever
| they're told is a lie and ignores it. Societies like this have
| much higher transaction costs, much lower rates of innovation,
| and much higher rates of violence, which is not an improvement.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| I've always argued that modern (late-stage?) capitalism and
| state socialism have similar failure modes. In state
| socialism, the Politburo controlled economic distribution and
| used their power to enrich themselves and their buddies. In
| many modern capitalist systems politicians are captured by
| economic interests and so large corporations play the same
| role that the Politburo played in state socialist systems.
|
| The failure modes always center around the capture of popular
| opinion, whether through explicit buy-in from the state or
| through aggressive PR campaigns.
| zionic wrote:
| We could call it hybrid capitalism, mix the free market vs
| government run non profit.
| shucksley wrote:
| Or we could just call it what it is - fascism.
| Biologist123 wrote:
| There are a few organisations campaigning for directors and
| shareholders to take unlimited liability.
| [deleted]
| thriftwy wrote:
| USSR had the same leaded gas which has eventually lead to a
| torrent of random street crime known as e.g. "Kazan
| phenomenon".
|
| So it's not just free markets.
| nawgz wrote:
| > I'm generally an avid beliver in free markets as an agent for
| positive change, so these types of "revelations" are really
| disheartening
|
| > What are the solutions to this?
|
| Not believing in propagandist fairy tales? The "free" market is
| clearly a lie, it's a false front around capitalists seeking to
| maximize profit based in the regulatory framework(s) that
| government(s) have stood up. These frameworks aren't respected
| for their actual spirit either, instead exploited to their
| literal letter at every moment.
|
| To see someone on a logical forum like HN espouse a childish
| idea like "the free market will make an efficient solution",
| with none of the subtext that the solution is exclusively to
| the problem of making money, just shows how effective that
| propaganda is.
|
| Instead, acknowledge reality: incentives control actions, and
| capitalist incentives exclusively are to make money and control
| markets. Captive markets make more money, so they will work
| towards aspects of the regulatory frameworks that they can use
| to keep others out.
|
| There is no goodwill from corporations. There is no
| environmental concern from corporations. There is no concern on
| social impact from corporations. There are no morals in
| corporations. There is profit maximization techniques and
| nothing else.
|
| The free market has seen capitalists destroy our world with
| barely an impressive invention along the way.
| [deleted]
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Pure gasoline is not that great of a motor fuel because it knocks
| (explodes when it's not supposed to during the internal
| combustion engine cycle). This is a major problem with high-
| compression airplane engines.
|
| However, tetra-ethyl-lead (think one lead atom bonded to four
| ethanols minus the oxygen atoms) was never necessary to combat
| the problem. Ethanol's anti-knock properties at a blend of 85%
| gasoline 15% ethanol were well known, and issues with corrosion
| in fuel lines had been dealt with. However, that meant giving
| farmers (the only ethanol producers) 15% of the profits, and the
| famously monopolistic Rockefeller didn't like that. Indeed, about
| that whole Rockefeller-financed ethanol temperance movement, and
| Prohibition in general...
|
| In addition, alkylation strategies in World War II by Shell
| produced 100-octane aviation gas for prop engines, with no lead.
| It's been reintroduced it seems (wiki):
|
| Shell Unleaded 100-Octane Fuel
|
| "In December 2013 Shell Oil announced that they had developed an
| unleaded 100 octane fuel and will submit it for FAA testing with
| certification expected within two to three years. The fuel is
| alkylate-based with an additive package of aromatics. No
| information has yet been published in its performance,
| producibility or price. Industry analysts have indicated that it
| will likely cost as much as or more than existing 100LL."
|
| In the long run though, electric airplanes look far more
| attractive for the short-haul prop-driven world.
| missedthecue wrote:
| A Tesla battery weighs as much as a Cessna 172. I don't know
| how practical a battery powered GA aircraft with competitive
| range would be.
| ohazi wrote:
| > In the long run though, electric airplanes look far more
| attractive for the short-haul prop-driven world.
|
| In the interim, the Rotax 912/914 series is a nice, modern,
| reliable powerplant for smaller/lighter airplanes that will
| happily burn autogas.
| nso95 wrote:
| Gasoline is poison in general though
| inglor_cz wrote:
| It is fairly trivial to avoid drinking gasoline. For example, I
| managed it 100 per cent of the time so far, and I am 43.
|
| It is not as trivial to avoid breathing in lead when you live
| around cars that use leaded gasoline.
| mcguire wrote:
| Never had an old Kawasaki KLR650 with a leaking gas tank, eh?
| :-)
| whatshisface wrote:
| Toxic fumes from burning unleaded gasoline are actually a big
| problem and your car has a lot of expensive catalytic stuff
| to limit them.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| How many of the toxic fumes from unleaded gasoline
| bioaccumulate though? As far as I know, CO and NOx do not
| bioaccumulate. The other stuff, partially burned/unburnt
| hydrocarbons, I don't know about.
| nso95 wrote:
| Sure. I totally agree. That doesn't mean it's not poison
| though.
| sonthonax wrote:
| Refined oils aren't that poisonous. You could probably drink a
| gulp of pure octane and suffer no more than alcohol like
| effects and an upset stomach.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Lol no you will throw up everything in your stomach violently
| until it is completely empty and go to ER mostly likely. Then
| the doctor will have you stick around for a few hours and
| make sure you are okay and let you sleep off the headache.
| Ask me how I know (I was stupid and 10 and trying to siphon
| gas for my mini motorcycle for the first time, DM for me more
| for more details).
| sonthonax wrote:
| It sounds like you had a very upset stomach and a bad
| hangover.
| userbinator wrote:
| You're probably thinking of mineral oil, which is indeed used
| as a laxative. But it's much less volatile since it consists
| of much higher alkanes than the C8, octane, in gasoline.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_paraffin_(drug)
| space_rock wrote:
| Ingestion of gasoline US CDC
|
| "350 g (12 oz.) can result in death for a 70 kg individual.
| As little as 10 to 15 g (less than one-half ounce) may be
| fatal in children. Symptoms of intoxication by ingestion of
| gasoline can range from vomiting, vertigo, drowsiness and
| confusion to loss of consciousness, convulsions, hemorrhaging
| of the lungs and internal organs, and death due to
| circulatory failure. Ingestion can cause irritation to the
| gastrointestinal mucosa and can be complicated by pulmonary
| aspiration, resulting in chemical pneumonitis."
|
| https://wwwn.cdc.gov/TSP/MMG/MMGDetails.aspx?mmgid=465&toxid.
| ..
| [deleted]
| sonthonax wrote:
| 350g of gasoline (for a 70kg person) is a huge amount to
| accidentally ingest. That's an LD50 of 5g per kilo, which
| to put into perspective isn't really that toxic compared to
| ethanol which has an LD50 of about 7g per kilo.
|
| Highly refined gasoline that you can buy in pharmacies as
| mineral oil is safe to put on babies skin. It's not toxic
| in the order of magnitude that Tetraethyl-lead is.
| kaladin-jasnah wrote:
| I'm going to take a wild guess and assume that leaded gasoline
| is much worse.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| I like a little bit in my coffee in the morning, however.
| andi999 wrote:
| Is this really the full story? Why did then the whole world
| follow suit (in using TEL instead of e.g. ethanol)? Here it seems
| the reason was production cost of TEL was lower than ethanol:
| https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-a-brief-history-...
| Also, since there were less cars when this was decided and
| supposedly low dosage risk of lead was only known in the 60s, the
| original article seems to follow a bit of a narrow narrative.
| (For the workers the high risk was probably known though)
| paulkrush wrote:
| I guess we live on the shoulders of nastiness and things get
| better. So TEL was part of our boot sequence. What nastiness are
| we subjecting ourselves to today?
|
| BTW: The guy that invented TEL also invented CFCs! See Thomas
| Midgley Jr: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr.
|
| This guy who invents awesome working chemicals that are
| tragically bad for people on a worldwide scale manages to exit
| life dues to his own inventions, unrelated to chemistry... Kind
| of Ironic! Thomas Midgley, Jr. (1889-1944) was an American
| engineer and chemist who contracted polio at age 51, leaving him
| severely disabled. He devised an elaborate system of ropes and
| pulleys to help others lift him from bed. He became accidentally
| entangled in the ropes and died of strangulation at the age of
| 55. However, he is better known for two of his other inventions:
| the tetraethyl lead (TEL) additive to gasoline, and
| chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).
| [deleted]
| api wrote:
| Fossil carbon, loads of food additives, and the way the
| military industries generate much of technological innovation
| all come to mind.
| smnrchrds wrote:
| > _Midgley 's legacy has been scarred by the negative
| environmental impact of leaded gasoline and Freon.
| Environmental historian J. R. McNeill opined that Midgley "had
| more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in
| Earth's history", and Bill Bryson remarked that Midgley
| possessed "an instinct for the regrettable that was almost
| uncanny"._
| rsync wrote:
| "What nastiness are we subjecting ourselves to today?"
|
| I have a suspicion that slathering typical consumer sunblock
| agents (and spraying the out of aerosol cans, and breathing the
| sunblock, etc.) is going to seem unwise to future us.
| haimez wrote:
| Well... maybe. I mean, certainly we could find out that was
| the case and that there was a safer sunblock alternative we
| might have been using if we had only known about it- but
| compared to what we definitely know today about sun exposure
| I think this is a bit of a different story, especially for
| light skinned people.
| afavour wrote:
| > What nastiness are we subjecting ourselves to today?
|
| Maybe an overwrought comparison but I genuinely do feel like
| we'll look back on this age of social media and disinformation
| in the same way we did leaded gas. The people making money knew
| exactly how dangerous it was and the problems it caused but
| they did everything in their power to cover it up in the name
| of profit. Originally it felt like a social annoyance and not
| much else but in this era of vaccine denialism, election fraud
| conspiracy theories, even body image issues from touched up
| photos, there's little doubt in my mind that society is
| suffering and that the problem will likely get worse before it
| gets better.
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| > Maybe an overwrought comparison
|
| Yes, I assert that comparing _social media_ to a deadly
| substance is overwrought, hyperbolic, and not lucid enough to
| be helpful.
|
| Lead causes brain damage and kills people.
|
| What we call social media is an advertising business offering
| free channels of shallow discourse as incentive. The business
| has delivered.
|
| Consider social media to be a test of the education system
| and of democracy in general. If society has failed the test,
| the test has been useful indeed.
| markdown wrote:
| > Lead causes brain damage and kills people.
|
| With all the deaths caused by anti-vaxxers, one could argue
| that social media also causes brain damage and kills
| people.
| rl3 wrote:
| Likewise with disinformation's role in electing officials
| that don't take climate change seriously, or who roll
| back EPA protections.
|
| If anything social media has a capacity for indirect harm
| that is in some cases greater than the original harm in
| question.
| botverse wrote:
| That is unfortunately not trying to see the problem from
| the future hindsight. Which is the exercise that GP is
| suggesting.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > even body image issues from touched up photos,
|
| Body image issues from advertising was an issue that existed
| way before the advent of Instagram, though - even before the
| first line of Photoshop was coded. Ultra-thin, half starved
| and sometimes drugged models were the norm for way, _way_ too
| many years.
| dchichkov wrote:
| CO2 could be candidate. Perhaps the effect will be even at a
| grander scale than leaded gas.
| cwp wrote:
| Yeah, the analogy between toxic media and toxic chemicals is
| pretty good. However, I'd put they blame for that somewhere
| you might find surprising: influencers.
|
| Everybody likes to hate on "big tech" these days, but if
| there's anyone that knows the dangers and all the ill effects
| but ignores them to make a profit, it's content creators.
| They are hyper-attuned to the way people respond to their
| content, and they'll do _anything_ to get a reaction, the
| more intense the better. And if that means siccing a mob on
| somebody, so be it. If it means doing stunts that endanger
| people in the real world, fine. And polarization is the best
| technique they 've stumbled onto yet: say stuff that enrages
| people to get them to engage with the post, and then pick up
| followers among those that watch the rage with glee.
|
| Just about every successful influencer has done a post about
| how hard it is to be internet-famous. It's almost always
| about how the negative effects of their work get reflected
| back at them. They know how the things they say harm people,
| they just want the negativity to be directed elsewhere.
|
| There's a lot of debate about how social media companies
| should be regulated, how much censorship should be allowed,
| how much platforms should subsidize legacy media etc. But
| none of it will matter if we don't rein in what's considered
| acceptable in the creator economy.
| adambard wrote:
| Sure, it's the influencers pumping the oil, but it's social
| media networks running the pipelines, and they're splitting
| the profits.
|
| Unfortunately, toxic content is a lot harder to regulate
| than toxic chemicals, when one man's truth is another man's
| fake news.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _Everybody likes to hate on "big tech" these days, but if
| there's anyone that knows the dangers and all the ill
| effects but ignores them to make a profit, it's content
| creators._
|
| This is like blaming smokers instead of Philip Morris.
| hazbot wrote:
| I think your analogy is pretty apt. However, even though
| I don't think you can give corporations a free ride just
| because 'people could choose not to use the product',
| this is not an absolute! 'People could choose not to use
| the product' does hold a lot of truth.
| version_five wrote:
| This may be a "don't hate the player hate the game" type
| situation. Influencers or aspiring influencers are doing
| what they do because they are working inside a construct
| that's set up to reward them for it. They are not
| blameless, but they are not conspiring to create that
| damage that social media had done to society, they are in s
| sense being put up to it by the platforms and users (who by
| the way I don't think should get a free pass either - PSA:
| delete twitter)
| bobthechef wrote:
| I think there are always people around, more than we care to
| admit, who will do things they know are bad to make a buck
| and to wield power (and frankly, most of us, sadly, have a
| price; look at the widespread participation of people in tech
| in the aforementioned industries and companies even though
| they and we all know the bad stuff they're doing). So I
| wouldn't treat this as some exception. I think people are
| extremely good at quietly repressing knowledge they're rather
| not have interfere with their desires.
|
| > this era of vaccine denialism
|
| Not central to your point, but this isn't really that
| widespread. 98% of Americans have the full regime of
| vaccines. The whole "antivax" scare is largely fiction and
| has been whipped by journalists afraid of people asking
| questions. Now, where the covid vaccine is concerned, that's
| different. People who aren't skeptical of vaccines qua
| vaccines are skeptical about this _particular_ vaccine or
| whatever you want to call it because of the obscene level of
| politicization around it masquerading as "science". So I
| wouldn't conflate the two.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| On the contrary, I think it's dangerous to ignore the very
| close link. Yes, they've switched talking points from
| mercury to spike proteins but it's the same playbook. The
| meme just got more viral when it hitched a ride on
| politics.
| ngvrnd wrote:
| "Forever chemicals" perhaps?
| stefan_ wrote:
| Wood heating remains improbably popular (and favorably
| regulated). Not to mention the stupidity of diesel cars:
| trading a little bit less CO2 for actively poisoning the lungs
| of your immediate environment.
| 3grdlurker wrote:
| I can only wish that more people realized that we didn't have
| to start with something so destructive before we could "get
| better eventually".
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Implying we would know about all possible destructiveness at
| time of invention.
| [deleted]
| 3grdlurker wrote:
| I think that that's just an excuse, considering how we
| didn't stop when we finally knew.
| bbreier wrote:
| Isn't the article's primary claim exactly that?
| magila wrote:
| Sort of. As the saying goes: the dose makes the poison.
| The article itself presents a quote stating that the low
| level of lead exposure caused by TEL in gasoline was
| thought to be safe at the time.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| They knew. They chose to do it anyway because it was the
| better deal for them. Couldn't care less about the people
| they harmed.
|
| In my country, this is called criminal imprudence. If this
| isn't a crime in the US, it should be.
| nemacol wrote:
| >What nastiness are we subjecting ourselves to today?
|
| Among the list of nasty things we are doing, fracking stands
| out. Fresh water is scarce in much of the world. Ground water
| is drying up and massive aquafers are eroding.
|
| Simultaneously we are pumping cancer directly in the ground,
| breaking up rocks, and mixing the cancer stuck in the rocks
| into the ground water. Pumping that cancer back out and ... god
| only knows what is really happening to it.
|
| My town, which relied on well water for as long as it has been
| a town, had city water installed in 2005~. Right around the
| time all the well heads were going up. I would guess that my
| well is no longer safe/usable - though I have never had it
| tested.
|
| Seems a real shame and extremely short sighted.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > though I have never had it tested.
|
| Unless neighbors had theirs tested, there's no reason to
| assume there are issues with your well's water quality or
| that fracking caused them. Testing it if you plan on using it
| again is reasonable, though.
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| Well consider what EPA managers are up to in terms of
| suppressing science about newly introduced chemical and their
| risks based on science.
|
| https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/attacks-on-science/epa-lead...
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| > What nastiness are we subjecting ourselves to today?
|
| I'm gonna go with overfishing. Anyone who has been shopping
| since the 1990's has seen fish diversity decline and prices
| skyrocket beyond inflation (not to mention a sharp increase in
| farmed and faux-colored fish like salmon). Illegal fishing is
| impossible to combat.
|
| See China's illegal fleets:
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27412691 [2]
| https://twitter.com/epineyro_ok/status/1378112721628114947
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| My dad used to tell me stories about how when he was a kid,
| during the drive down to Grand Isle, you would see cars lined
| up on both sides of the highway for as far as the eye could
| see because families would park on the curb, set out some
| outdoor chairs, and fish for speckled trout, flounder, and
| redfish in the marsh. It was common when they were biting to
| bring home an ice chest of fish to eat.
|
| Commercial fishing also had no hard limits back then, and so
| we eradicated the redfish population and most of the specks.
| We now have pretty substantial limits on how many of each we
| can keep when we go fishing, to the point where you're doing
| it just for the experience because you won't catch enough to
| recoup the gas money.
| hansvm wrote:
| Hypothetically, what would happen if we (USA) banned all fish
| imports and greatly restricted domestic catches for a few
| years? For the sake of argument assume there's no economic
| impact on local fishermen (e.g., through grants), but would
| that be enough of a catalyst to make China's illegal fleets
| economically inviable and allow the oceans to recuperate a
| bit, or are more drastic measures necessary?
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| PFAS and phthalates are 2 of the biggest things. An working
| federal government would have banned these decades ago.
|
| Also, plastics touching food ever. "Food grade" plastic is a
| myth sold to us by the plastics industry. This one is going to
| take longer though.
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| Re. "food grade": I think maybe some plastics _might_ be ok,
| but, when I 've recently done some projects involving plastic
| parts, I've been shocked to learn how little _is_ food-grade.
| Like, almost nothing with any dye, especially any black dye.
| Yet how often does one see black plastic cutlery and plates,
| or microwave dinner trays? Then they have this legalese on
| them like "do not reheat". WTF? Rubbermaid containers don't
| seem to be food-grade either.
|
| I'd bet that some small minority of plastic really is food
| grade, that the rest hides behind legalese, that consumers
| can't tell one from the other, and that both are routinely
| used for food, certainly within the home, and probably also
| commercially.
|
| Also: There are a bunch of dirty political tricks that
| industry could pull to "problematize" concern about endocrine
| disruptors. Think of the famous "crying Indian" ad that
| started the recycling scam, but with hip 2021 sensibilities.
| I think we're going to have to be ready for that trick.
| "Those right-wingers! It's like that scene in Dr. Strangelove
| -- always concerned with their precious bodily fluids." You
| can see how it'll work.
| WalterBright wrote:
| When I was a kid I never liked plastic cups and glasses
| because it made the drink taste "plasticy".
| ManuelKiessling wrote:
| ,,"Food grade" plastic is a myth" - do you know any reliable
| sources where I could read up the details?
| DenisM wrote:
| - Sugar. - Social networks. - The coddling of the
| mind.
|
| I think you will find that all three have vicious cycles built
| into them.
| nofinator wrote:
| Sugar is an excellent example.
|
| In fact, the sugar industry has been behind the effort to
| deflect blame to fat for the last 50 years.
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
| way/2016/09/13/493739074...
| lovecg wrote:
| It's kind of hard to discern from the article, so is fat
| good and was unfairly blamed? Or fat and sugar are both
| bad, but they emphasized the fat part?
| DenisM wrote:
| FWIW, my reading of the tea leaves is that fat alone is
| fine, sugar alone is bad, and sugar+fat maybe worse.
|
| The basic logic of the anti-sugar sentiment is this:
|
| Excess of blood sugar is toxic and so it triggers a shot
| of insulin, intended to drain sugar from the blood and
| hide it in various places: the muscle tissue, the liver,
| and last resort - the fat cells. Normally it works just
| fine, but sometimes the system gets overwhelmed with a
| big sugar rush and starts producing too much insulin,
| draining too much sugar, overshooting the target, causing
| hunger, craving for more sugar, and eating more sugar.
| The human then goes into the infinite loop of sugar
| binging accumulating fat on the go.
|
| Now if you add dietary fat into the mixture it's possible
| that the fat cells will suck it up too. That I don't know
| for sure.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| What is "the coddling of the mind"?
| DenisM wrote:
| The term came from https://www.thecoddling.com/ but here I
| refer to a specific aspect:
|
| Suppose your reaction to discomfort is to retreat or
| isolate yourself from it. Having done so you will find that
| your calibration of comfort has changed and things you
| previously found at the fringe but normal now became
| clearly uncomfortable. If you repeat this process several
| times you will find that the field of acceptable things to
| do has narrowed itself to a single fine line of propriety
| that is surrounded by a vast field horrors and
| misdemeanors. Worse yet, the narrower the range of
| acceptable things, the more anxious you will be and the
| harder you will lash out at those recently (but no longer)
| normal things.
|
| For a tame example, I have a number of friends who as they
| got richer retreated into more and more comfortable
| suburbs. Perfectly reasonable right? Well, they are now
| afraid _to visit_ downtown because crime, dirt, and
| homeless. Not at all reasonable anymore.
|
| I'm sure you can come up with more examples. In fact now
| that I told you, you can't escape seeing them.
| streamofdigits wrote:
| For every Thomas Midgley Jr. [0] there is a Clair Patterson [1] -
| and thats the problem.
|
| Artistic talent seems to have strong correlation with empathy and
| a sense of social responsibility. Scientific and technical (STEM)
| talent much less so.
|
| While the very pinnacle of science (people like Einstein) display
| (or convincigly fake) deep humanistic traits, the army of
| scientists / engineers that got educated since the early 20th
| century are basically just run-of-the-mill willing executioners,
| cogs in the machine, eager to turn in the prevailing direction,
| support whatever power structruce exists, with no strong
| conviction as to what "good" looks like.
|
| How digital technology has been developed and used is just the
| latest manifestation of this amoral stance. If we consider areas
| like biotech, the risks those over-eager idiot-savants help bring
| to life are potentially existential.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clair_Cameron_Patterson
| azinman2 wrote:
| > A significant body of research links lead exposure in children
| to violent crime, he writes.
|
| I thought this was actually correlation vs causation, and it's
| been shown that the methods that keep citing this aren't very
| good but it's out in the zeitgeist anyway so everyone keeps
| citing the same discredited work?
| [deleted]
| warning26 wrote:
| Interesting, I had assumed they just didn't know that lead was
| bad back then. What's even weirder is how there are still people
| today who insist that banning leaded gasoline was an key example
| of government overreach.
|
| Someone once was arguing this point to me and I just had to drop
| the topic because it was such a baffling stance.
| wpietri wrote:
| America has two radically different concepts of freedom that
| travel under the same name. Both start with "I should be free
| to do as I want". One ends with "as long as I don't harm
| others". The other ends with "regardless of harm to others".
| You were dealing with the latter.
|
| It of course sounds insane when you say it baldly like this,
| which is why it rarely gets stated openly. But a lot of
| traditional societal structures depend on harm to others, so
| there's a big constituency for the suffering of others when it
| benefits the speaker.
| leoc wrote:
| Mind you, leaded gasoline was (AFAIK) approved everywhere
| else too, so this isn't just a story about US attitudes,
| specifically.
| ithacaman wrote:
| The complexity is in proving what harm is being done and to
| whom.
| wpietri wrote:
| Not generally. It mainly gets complex when the latter side
| wants to deny the harm. Then it's an ocean of motivated
| reasoning and endless arguments. We still have people
| arguing today that American slavery was good for the
| slaves.
| [deleted]
| artificial wrote:
| Excellent! Together we can ban fast food and sugar
| consumption for the greater good. Heart disease and
| diabetes from the scourge of empty calories finally
| eliminated. Hundreds of thousands saved each year from
| poor choices. Up next: sedentary lifestyle enablers :).
|
| It's such a rabbit hole, who should know best?
| Klinky wrote:
| Are you saying it's not worthy of deeper inspection? I
| mean you kind of make an excellent point, the fast food
| and processed foods industries create a lot of waste
| selling an unhealthy product while paying unlivable
| wages. Their product increases healthcare costs while
| enabling a sedentary and stressful commuter lifestyle.
| clusterfish wrote:
| You can harm yourself with junk food and lack of exercise
| all you want, it doesn't affect others the same way
| pouring poison into our shared environment does. What
| you're doing is called whataboutism. Trying to muddy
| clear waters by bringing in muddy issues that aren't
| directly related, just for the sake of muddying.
| artificial wrote:
| All of these increase healthcare costs for everyone
| involved.
| tialaramex wrote:
| In my country drinks with _added sugar_ are taxed extra.
| So, for example, all the no sugar Coke or Pepsi variants
| are one price, but "classic" Coke or Pepsi with sugar in
| it are more expensive in the same quantities. A small
| nudge. And I already noticed it impacts bars and
| restaurants. If you're only going to bother stocking one
| cola beverage, why carry the one with sugar, which costs
| extra, when a customer asks for "A Coke" it's no harder
| to train staff to say "Pepsi Max OK?" than "Pepsi OK?".
|
| As to "Who should know best?" that's exactly what we're
| paying our politicians to be on top of.
| ByteJockey wrote:
| There's also an entire spectrum of what constitutes "enough"
| harm to others to be limited (in addition to how direct the
| harm is).
| Rexxar wrote:
| To make things more complex, some (small) harms are
| legitimate: If you open a new store you "harm" other store
| owners because they have less customers. When you
| build/repair your home there is some noises and dusts that
| can annoy other people but it's considered as a legitimate
| temporary problem. So the question is more where is the limit
| ?
| bckygldstn wrote:
| Are there any freedoms fought over in America that truly do
| no harm to others? Most discussions revolve around tradeoffs
| between harm and benefit.
|
| It seems like "as long as I don't harm others" means "I
| consider the small harm to others worthwhile for the
| benefits". And "regardless of harm to others" is using the
| same approach to come to a conclusion you disagree with.
|
| There's a lot of different ways to approach freedom, but I
| don't think "I don't care about others" and "I would never
| inconvenience others" is an accurate binary taxonomy.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| That's a strawman. There's literally no-one on earth saying
| "I should be free to do as I want regardless of harm to
| others".
| jdgoesmarching wrote:
| "I should be free to profit regardless of harm to others."
|
| Better?
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| How is that better? Can you point to a single example
| where a person made such a claim? Just a single example.
| Go ahead, I'll wait.
| yibg wrote:
| Smoking in public? Fracking?
| sircastor wrote:
| Neil deGrasse Tyson said in an episode of Cosmos that even the
| Romans understood lead was dangerous, but it was a convenient
| metal to work with, so they used it anyway
| lazide wrote:
| More than just dangerous, it was a known death sentence to be
| working in lead mining/smelting and a common poison
| [https://archive.epa.gov/epa/aboutepa/lead-poisoning-
| historic...].
|
| Like you note, it was also extremely convenient and
| relatively cheap. Pretty sure at least some of the chemicals
| we're using now in soaps or for food processing will have
| something nasty associated with them once time has passed.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| It will probably be Triclosan:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triclosan#Health_concerns
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Roman's also knew asbestos was bad. It was well documented
| that sending a slave to work in asbestos mines meant they
| would get lung sickness, and some slaves tried using masks
| made of pig bladder when mining.
| kubanczyk wrote:
| Citation needed. Seems that the few available Roman primary
| sources do not support it: Rachel Maines "Asbestos and
| Fire" pp. 27-28
| https://books.google.com/books?id=5r2jEGLvxP4C&pg=PA28
|
| AFAIK work in any Roman mine was considered a death
| sentence in the long run.
| tedd4u wrote:
| And not just and convenient metal, but a preferred food and
| wine sweetener. For real!
| masklinn wrote:
| Also an important pigment (white lead), which was not only
| widely used in paints until the 20th century (though the US
| amongst others still hasn't signed the 1923 white lead
| convention), but also hugely popular cosmetics (skin
| whiteners): lead powder, lead paints, lead/mercury,
| lead/vinegar (venetian ceruse).
| jhallenworld wrote:
| They should have used diethylene glycol, like the
| Austrians:
|
| https://www.thewinestalker.net/2015/04/austria.html
|
| I wonder which tastes better?
| heymijo wrote:
| Two beliefs became entrenched:
|
| 1. that lead is natural to the human body, and
|
| 2. that a poisoning threshold for lead existed
|
| Robert Kehoe, working for GM, was the chief advocate for leaded
| gasoline, and really the only person/lab doing research on lead
| until Clair Patterson stumbled into it while measuring the age
| of the earth. [0,1]
|
| A modern equivalent might be if Facebook was the only
| organization researching social media's impact on society,
| while being able to set the paradigm/assumptions about said
| safety for half a century.
|
| So even when Patterson's research was published in 1965, it
| took time to change the paradigm, and more time to phase out
| lead's use.
|
| Should anyone want to read a narrative about the intertwined
| lives of Midgley, Patterson, Kehoe and lead, then this Mental
| Floss article is a good read. [2]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Kehoe
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clair_Cameron_Patterson#Campai...
|
| [2] https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/94569/clair-patterson-
| sc...
| hippich wrote:
| > Someone once was arguing this point to me and I just had to
| drop the topic because it was such a baffling stance.
|
| It is also possible that two of you were arguing about
| different things despite seemingly talking about the same one.
| For example, you could be arguing that preventing people
| poisoning by lead is good, where the other person were arguing
| that people should bear more responsibility instead of pushing
| it on the third-party.
|
| I.e. I don't think the person you were arguing with was
| thinking "yeah, breathing lead is a good idea, let's fill the
| air with lead!". Perhaps I am too naive...
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| That would be a generous interpretation.
| mcguire wrote:
| Overly generous. Much if not most of the damage of lead was
| done to unrelated third parties who did not necessarily
| have any relationship with those responsible for the use of
| lead. The person who makes that argument is telling those
| unrelated people, "wear hazmat gear 24/7 because somebody,
| somewhere may be killing you."
|
| The remainder of the damage from lead was done to
| employees, where the advice boils down to "don't work
| because your employer may be killing you."
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