[HN Gopher] The history of the elimination of leaded gasoline
___________________________________________________________________
The history of the elimination of leaded gasoline
Author : tjr
Score : 106 points
Date : 2022-04-14 14:38 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blogs.loc.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (blogs.loc.gov)
| smm11 wrote:
| Not related, but CA has banned gas-powered lawn equipment
| (mowers, weed destroyers, blowers). Sort of the "small airplane"
| thing first.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| While they're writing regulations about it, I wish they'd
| mandate a standard for rechargeable batteries for the lawn
| equipment. As it stands, we get proprietary standards like
| cordless power tools where batteries have something like 90%
| margins.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| I have a Greenworks leaf blower, trimmer, and chainsaw. They
| all take the same battery cartridge, and they sell their
| tools without batteries so you only have to buy one battery
| and swap it around as needed. There are third party battery
| packs that will work as well.
| cptskippy wrote:
| > I wish they'd mandate a standard for rechargeable batteries
| for the lawn equipment.
|
| This has never occurred to me but that seems obvious. I
| wonder if it's just not something on lawmaker's radar.
|
| We know that all tool makers will scream and say "how can we
| be sure 3rd party batteries won't explode in our tools?" I
| wonder if there could be some sort of certification for both
| batteries and tools that would mitigate such an issue.
| mikestew wrote:
| _This has never occurred to me but that seems obvious. I
| wonder if it 's just not something on lawmaker's radar._
|
| It appears to _kinda_ be. I 've got the following equipment
| from Lowe's (U.S. home improvement store) Kobalt brand:
|
| 1. Mower
|
| 2. Weed trimmer
|
| 3. Electric snow shovel
|
| ...all of which take the same battery. But the same battery
| from Lowe's that (as others point out) probably has a 90%
| margin. And I think it is a fair question on the part of
| the manufacturers to ask, "how _do_ we know those other
| batteries aren 't going to go 'pop'?" The standard would
| have to be segmented as well. I don't to drag around a
| drill that is using the same battery as the lawn mower; my
| forearms aren't in _that_ good shape.
|
| All of that said, it is nice to just pull a battery off the
| lawn equipment charger and not worry about which battery
| goes where.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > all of which take the same battery
|
| It's very effective. Almost 100% of my cordless power
| tools are DeWalt, for exactly that reason. E.g. I'm in
| the market now for a cordless air compressor, and it
| turns out that DeWalt makes one that takes the 20V
| batteries just like the other tools I carry. Of course
| it's first on the list.
| bluGill wrote:
| If the lawmakers would just make 4 standards: 2 milwaukee
| (12 and 18 volt), 2 DeWalk (12v and 20/60 flex) it would
| cover most people who care about keeping their existing
| tools and be good enough for everything.
| bombcar wrote:
| They might bitch and moan but they'd take it up to force
| everyone to upgrade tools to "fit the new batteries".
|
| As it is if you care you can get adapters on eBay/Amazon
| for cheap.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > As it is if you care you can get adapters on
| eBay/Amazon for cheap.
|
| In my experience, that's usually from one proprietary
| format to another (e.g. I have an adapter to use older
| "18V" DeWalt batteries in newer "20V" tools. But I
| haven't had much luck finding an adapter that would let
| me use 18650s in my cordless drills.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > "how can we be sure 3rd party batteries won't explode in
| our tools?"
|
| Hopefully the response to that would just be laughter.
|
| IIRC, many of the proprietary batteries used in power tools
| today use commodity cells internally, either 18650s or
| 20650s. Not many (any?) are developing their own
| proprietary cells. Their secret sauce is the plastic shell
| and connector shape.
|
| What we need, IMO, is standardized sizes and quick-
| connectors for batteries that are about 10-20x the capacity
| of an 18650. Big enough for the kind of power a tool needs,
| small enough that there's not much excuse for a hand tool
| or lawn mower not to fit them.
| adolph wrote:
| > Their secret sauce is the plastic shell and connector
| shape.
|
| And load leveling, over/under current protection,
| metering UI, etc etc. Also, not all 18650s have the same
| characteristics for dis|charge rates, and capacity.
| jandrese wrote:
| I was glad CA did this, because suddenly every big box store is
| selling electric lawn equipment that was designed in this
| century. Just a few years ago I went looking for an electric
| lawnmower and they were still using 6v lead acid batteries for
| 20 minutes of runtime on a 12" blade and cost a small fortune.
| Two years ago suddenly everybody has affordable lithium powered
| modular battery systems. Granted, they're all made out of cheap
| plastic, but getting people actually buying them is the most
| important first step in getting good and affordable equipment.
| yabones wrote:
| Honestly, a way better approach is to just stop having lawns
| that need mowing. More people need to plant native species that
| actually belong there instead of a monoculture of invasive
| plants. And, much more importantly in some drought-prone areas,
| plants that need little or no irrigation.
| Stevvo wrote:
| I'm all for that idea if only for noise abatement on lazy
| Saturday mornings.
| david422 wrote:
| Got an electric mower a few years ago for a small lawn. Quiet,
| cordless, zero maintenance.
|
| Moved houses and got a bigger lawn. Got an electric riding
| mower - a big one - to make sure it could handle the lawn in 1
| go. It was expensive, but again zero maintenance, no gas, oil
| etc, always charged and ready to go.
|
| I have been impressed so far. Next up electric car.
|
| Got solar panels to charge my electric devices. I'm aiming for
| the long game - hoping it'll pay off in the long run both in
| cost and environmental.
| Maursault wrote:
| One can compare lead added to gasoline with carcinogens added to
| cigarettes. Both were introduced to make the use of the product
| smoother, and with it came massive health issues, and both
| industries funded fraudulent studies to create the false
| impression the product was safe. While carcinogens are still
| added to cigarettes, and will be forever since while the
| government's case against Big Tobacco revealed the practice,
| banning the practice was not included in the settlement for
| inexplicable reasons, and most of the massive fine was ultimately
| forgiven by the early naughts. Oddly, health issues are not the
| reason why leaded gasoline was phased out; it was phased out
| because leaded gas fowled catalytic converters, which were
| mandated to reduce emissions.
| [deleted]
| polymerist wrote:
| This is kind of crazy since the technology to move away from
| leaded gasoline or fuels has been around for DECADES. The fact
| that anyone is still using tetraethyl lead as a fuel additive is
| horrendous. We can hit right around 100% octanes right now too
| from a synthetic chemistry perspective.
| sokoloff wrote:
| At this point, this is much more of a regulatory hurdle than a
| chemistry hurdle.
| hristov wrote:
| Is there a country by country list as to when they banned leaded
| gasoline?
| s_dev wrote:
| There's a good one in the article!
| baud147258 wrote:
| there's a partial one on wikipedia:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead#Phaseout_and_ba...
| pastor_bob wrote:
| It took 26 years to remove a simple additive from automotive
| gasoline in the US. Talk about slow walking a change. Under a
| similar bureaucracy, it'll probably take a 100 years plus to
| phase ICE cars entirely
| asdff wrote:
| Pretty sure 100 years plus is the plan anyhow
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| Depending on how you measure it, the first concerns over global
| warming and the "greenhouse effect" were penned what is already
| _over_ 100 years ago (though regarding coal, not gasoline), and
| scientists have been aware of the growing magnitude of the
| issue for around half a century.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_climate_change_scie...
| jhallenworld wrote:
| I was wondering which generation was the most poisoned by the
| lead: well it's Gen-X:
|
| "Researchers found that estimated lead-linked deficits were
| greatest for people born between 1966 and 1970, a population of
| about 20.8 million people, which experienced an average deficit
| of 5.9 IQ points per person."
|
| https://news.fsu.edu/news/health-medicine/2022/03/08/fsu-res....
| ncmncm wrote:
| > _Now, we do not have to worry that our IQ will be lowered, at
| least not by lead from vehicles emissions, anymore._
|
| Now by Twitter and Facebook, instead.
| cbg0 wrote:
| While this is a very facile jab to throw, social media is
| mostly a channel for the spread of stupid, but not the reason
| why people are stupid.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/05/30/twitter-
| hur...
| cbg0 wrote:
| So the investigation says they made half of the students
| use Twitter to analyze a novel by posting quotes and their
| own reflections & commenting on tweets written by their
| classmates, while the others relied on traditional
| classroom teaching methods.
|
| The winner is visible from a mile away, but the takeaway
| for me is that using the wrong tool for the job is stupid,
| not that Twitter itself makes you dumb.
| ncmncm wrote:
| You seem to suggest you think that Twitter is the right
| tool for some job. Using it had, manifestly, the observed
| effect, regardless of what other tool might or might not
| be deployed elsewhere. Using another tool simultaneously
| enabled quantifying that effect.
| colmmacc wrote:
| Not linked from the article for some reason is a great, and very
| readable, paper "The U.S. Experience with the Phasedown of Lead
| in Gasoline" https://web.mit.edu/ckolstad/www/Newell.pdf . I
| found it a fascinating and inspiring story of everything that
| went into the transition, including setting up dedicated public
| banks to help refineries manage the investments they would need
| to make.
| chaxor wrote:
| Does anyone know how to get in touch with media outlets to run
| these stories? I can't help but notice how some of the issues
| brought up by John Oliver made decent progress after they ran an
| episode on it. They have an episode on lead, but it was focused
| on Flint.
|
| Everyone here should send an email to the address at the bottom
| of "FAA, do your damn job" and to one of the writers of John
| Oliver. That may get people to apply the right pressure for a
| change.
| s_dev wrote:
| When people look to solutions of the free market this is an
| interesting example.
|
| We knew lead from petrol was poisoning everything -- deformed
| babies, ruined ecosystems etc. and yet the price incentive
| ensured it would never be dropped as a consumer product -- people
| kept buying leaded petrol as the cost would always be
| externalized somewhere else. The government had to step in and
| and ban the practice. Why didn't the free market solve this
| particular problem?
|
| Neil DeGrasse Tyson looked at Clare Patterson's work (the
| whistleblower of leaded petrol being harmful) in an episode of
| Cosmos. Highly recommend it -- very interesting episode.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > Why didn't the free market solve this particular problem?
|
| Information asymmetry & greed. And consumers who would fail the
| marshmallow test.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| I sense that you're using "marshmallow test" as shorthand or
| euphemism for essentially calling people stupid, or
| undisciplined. Basically saying that as long as people have
| some agency to avoid a consequence, experiencing that
| consequence is their choice and fault.
|
| Anyway these things and more are part of "the market" too. If
| a market framework can't find effective solutions in the
| presence of real people with human faults and weaknesses,
| then what value is it to us?
| [deleted]
| para_parolu wrote:
| I think there is a way to solve it within market but without
| hard regulations. Everyone who lives near airport where leaded
| fuel is used should go to court and ask for large sum as
| compensation for possible health problem. And amount should be
| so bug that selling this fuel would become very unprofitable.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| > Why didn't the free market solve this particular problem?
|
| What (categories of) problem(s) do folks generally think
| markets solve?
| [deleted]
| grammers wrote:
| It's often the case: Make profit, externalize the costs.
| Fracking is another very good example.
|
| Actually, the more you think about it many of very profitable
| companies do profit by externalizing the costs. That's also why
| they put so much money into lobbying: So no one will change the
| system.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Basically every consumer protection and environmental
| regulation fits this pattern.
|
| Why people would think these things don't need regulation is a
| better question.
|
| Upton Sinclair's the Jungle is one famous example:
|
| https://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/bria-24-1-b...
|
| > Almost as an afterthought, Sinclair included a chapter on how
| diseased, rotten, and contaminated meat products were
| processed, doctored by chemicals, and mislabeled for sale to
| the public. He wrote that workers would process dead, injured,
| and diseased animals after regular hours when no meat
| inspectors were around. He explained how pork fat and beef
| scraps were canned and labeled as "potted chicken."
|
| > Sinclair wrote that meat for canning and sausage was piled on
| the floor before workers carried it off in carts holding
| sawdust, human spit and urine, rat dung, rat poison, and even
| dead rats. His most famous description of a meat-packing horror
| concerned men who fell into steaming lard vats:
|
| > . . . and when they were fished out, there was never enough
| of them left to be worth exhibiting, --sometimes they would be
| overlooked for days, till all but the bones of them had gone
| out to the world as Durham's Pure Leaf Lard!
| godelski wrote:
| > When people look to solutions of the free market this is an
| interesting example.
|
| I think it is weird that people are still all for Laissez-Faire
| economics, considering we've tried it several times in history
| and it has always failed miserably (in before the
| ~~communists~~ say "but that wasn't _real_ Laissez-Faire). We
| literally saw it lead to quazi governments (meaning it
| literally destroys itself). I do believe capitalism has a lot
| of advantages, but no system is perfect. There probably is no
| global optima for the solution space. Worse, the solution space
| is dynamic! Good news is that we do know that multi-agent
| reinforcement games are pretty good at finding local optima
| (though they can often get trapped in local optima that we
| don't want). I think if you understand this it is clear that we
| need a body that can react to the dynamic nature of both the
| environment and desires (of the people) that can continually
| optimize and update the rules. I do think there's debate of how
| to do this, but I think it is very clear that too heavy of a
| hand isn't good and neither is too light of a hand. A pure
| competitive system can't account for externalizes or better
| yet, tragedy of the commons. As our world becomes even more
| complex and interconnected, and as we understand more about our
| environment and consequences of our actions, it is imperative
| that we think about these issues in a far more nuanced way and
| avoid thinking there are "correct" answers (as opposed to "good
| enough").
| paxys wrote:
| Nothing "interesting" about it. Every free market system is a
| victim of the tragedy of the commons. This is exactly why
| regulation is needed.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Well, the solution proposed 100 years ago was to blend ethanol
| in with the gasoline. Ethanol has one oxygen atom leading to
| more even combustion (less explosive, less 'knock', more
| complete combusyion) in an ICE. You have to blend in ~10%.
| Tetra-ethyl-lead does the same thing but at a concentration of
| 1% or so IIRC, with lead serving the same role as oxygen. Later
| on, a compound called MTBE (methyl-tert-butyl-ether) which
| contains oxygen was used, but has been mostly phased out in the
| USA due to serious groundwater contamination issues related to
| leaking storage tanks.
|
| The basic market reason ethanol wasn't used originally is that
| it was produced by farmers not by oil distillers, so this meant
| taking profits away from the oil sector and giving them to the
| agricultural sector. There's some evidence that one reason the
| JD Rockefeller pushed Prohibition in the USA was to lock
| farmers out of the automobile fuel business. Since 2003 in
| California at least, ethanol is the major fuel additive that's
| replaced TEL and MTBE.
|
| Markets are not free in the energy sector, they're highly
| controlled and monopolized, and basically always have been.
| This is why many counties have chosen to essentially
| nationalize their energy production and distribution systems.
| All other market activity relies on a stable energy supply,
| it's similar to water in that respect.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > Tetra-ethyl-lead does the same thing but at a concentration
| of 1% or so
|
| A gallon of gas weighs around 3.8kg. TEL concentrations for
| most of the period of auto use were 2-3g/gal (so under 0.1%
| by mass).
|
| The current spec of 100LL avgas has a maximum of 2.12g/gal
| (~0.056%)
| the_optimist wrote:
| The actual, current discussions on regulation in the field make
| clear that the primary impediment to adoption is in fact
| government.
| whatshisface wrote:
| The free market obviously didn't work because it was a third
| party being harmed - unless you're in a capitalist anarchy like
| Snowcrash with gangs for hire there is no market-based
| mechanism for representing the interests of anyone not party to
| a sale. The real question is why the liability plus liability
| insurance system (the actual alternative to regulation) did not
| work. Why did those companies not fear litigation when it
| started becoming known that they could be subject to a class
| action with the size of the entire population?
|
| Who was protecting them, and how?
| indymike wrote:
| The problem here was the regulator injected into the process
| has gone full snail speed on approving unleaded for aviation
| use. Oh, and as far a liability goes, that would be the FAA
| that held things up, not the engine manufacturers, gas
| producers or plane owners. So the regulator was the problem.
| jandrese wrote:
| > Why didn't the free market solve this particular problem?
|
| The Free Market doesn't care about externalities. Whichever
| solution produces the desired results for the lowest amount of
| money wins. If it happens to destroy the environment in the
| process the market has no idea because the environment isn't on
| the market. This is the reason regulation exists, and why
| sometimes regulation causes companies to go out of business,
| because the regulation can't be applied globally and if there
| is somewhere else in the world where the environment can be
| destroyed to produce the product more cheaply then that is what
| will happen. It is a tragedy that we apply environmental
| regulation locally when the environment is a shared global
| resource.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| I think it is more timescales. The effects aren't
| externalized from the market, they are externalized to some
| point in the future. Eventually the market will collide with
| the massive pile of externalities laying in its future path.
|
| Lead gas would eventually reach the point of doing so much
| damage that people wouldn't want to use it anymore, even if
| it was cheaper. Even if it didn't get to this point,
| eventually it would be killing/debilitating so many people
| that it phases itself out.
| jandrese wrote:
| Yes, if an aspect of the product doesn't directly affect
| its price on the market today then it is invisible.
|
| This is why pure market solutions don't work. But at the
| same time markets are by far the most efficient way to
| distribute limited resources so you want to use them as
| much as you can. You just have to remember that they are no
| good for solving problems you can't put a price on and you
| may have to artificially weight the market to account for
| side effects.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| >Yes, if an aspect of the product doesn't directly affect
| its price on the market today then it is invisible.
|
| I'm saying that there is no invisible effect, just so
| small it can't (initially) be detected. But it is
| inherently additive, and one day (days, years, centuries,
| millennia) the market will correct for it.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| > Lead gas would eventually reach the point of doing so
| much damage that people wouldn't want to use it anymore,
| even if it was cheaper. Even if it didn't get to this
| point, eventually it would be killing/debilitating so many
| people that it phases itself out.
|
| For that to be the case:
|
| (a) you'd have to be able to make the causal link between
| societal damage and lead from vehicle fuel, which isn't
| something most people are capable of doing as individuals
|
| (b) you'd have to have a choice in the matter as an
| individual consumer, which you didn't have for cars,
| because automakers produced engines that (they said)
| required lead gasoline, and the situation is similar for AV
| fuel
| [deleted]
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Here is how a free market can solve problems like these:
|
| Lead pollution in the air damages people's property. The
| owners of that property can then sue the lead emitters for
| damages.
|
| This has practical problems when the externality is very
| small for each emitter and each damaged party, but that's the
| principle.
|
| Typically modern regulations kills this recourse, since if
| you've followed the regulations, you can't be sued for it.
| Then the emitters sooner or later capture the regulator, and
| things go bad anyway.
| mcguire wrote:
| " _Lead pollution in the air damages people 's property.
| The owners of that property can then sue the lead emitters
| for damages._"
|
| Rather difficult to demonstrate _any_ harm to an
| individual, no? In a case, the damage from lead would be a
| hypothetical: my child would have had a higher IQ if she
| weren 't exposed to lead, and that exposure is due to its
| use as a motor fuel.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Yes, that is what I meant by the "This has practical
| problems.." part.
|
| CO2 emissions is the extreme case of this difficulty.
| Almost everyone contributes a tiny part to the problem,
| and almost everyone is also a potential victim of it.
|
| Because of that, I'm not categorically opposed to
| regulation handling these difficult situations. But I
| also note that airplane fuel IS regulated, and that has
| NOT solved the problem!
|
| The best solution to CO2 emissions is some form of carbon
| tax, but that has proven politically impossible in most
| jurisdictions.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| We can certainly stipulate how things should work in a
| fantasyland where everyone behaves rationally and courts
| produce principled decisions. But that isn't the world
| where we actually live. And this is where most of capital-L
| Libertarian ideology falls apart.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| This system has a long track record of working pretty
| well in the real world.
|
| I don't deny there are many unrealistic dreamers on "my"
| side. But that's endemic across all ideological sides.
| mcguire wrote:
| Do you have a source for this long track record?
| Specifically, dealing with externalities?
| SamBam wrote:
| How many times has someone successfully sued for some
| fractional externality that harms them, and was the suit
| ever enough to effect change?
|
| Even if there are one or two cases, that's hardly a "long
| track record" compared to the inability of private
| citizens to sue to enact meaningful change in climate
| change, asbestos, leaded gas, fracking, polluted oceans,
| acid rain, deforestation, lead in the water, chemicals in
| our food supply, etc etc etc.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| Option 1: require long drawn out court cases that may or
| may not reward sufficient damages to deter the practice
| even when successful.
|
| Option 2: Just pass a law to ban it.
|
| > Then the emitters sooner or later capture the regulator,
| and things go bad anyway.
|
| I'm unaware of any evidence that this is the case for
| leaded gasoline.
|
| Sometimes the market just isn't magic.
|
| Solutions that work in practice >> solutions that work in
| theory.
| bombcar wrote:
| It's not just the "free market" it's human nature; unless
| presented with an immediate pressing issue, people will not
| choose the "best option" in many cases. Smoking is a perfect
| example, and it goes downhill from there.
| crowbahr wrote:
| Yes but Ayn Randian free market capitalists insist that the
| only issue we face is regulation.
|
| The point is that no, you cannot live in a utopia _and_
| have an unregulated market. The market will greed itself
| into non-existence.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| _Why didn 't the free market solve this particular problem?_
|
| Because consumers don't give a shit. As long as they can still
| go to Walmart and buy their feed, they don't care.
| zodo123 wrote:
| Private aviation in the US is still, somehow, allowed to use
| leaded avgas for small planes. It's a small market but still
| enough to have an impact on the communities near airports. The
| FAA has shown little interest in the impact of the problem, and
| one can only hope the EPA will step in at some point.
| https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/leaded-gas-wa...
| Melatonic wrote:
| There is finally a replacement gas being developed / made so we
| might actually be rid of this crap soon while still keeping
| private aviation alive
| imoverclocked wrote:
| "Allowed"... I think you mean "forced."
|
| If you have to fly certain small planes, there is no legal
| alternative in most places.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Correct. The FAA is set up to be default quite conservative
| (small c... "Reluctant to change things without a lot of
| work"). This makes a lot of sense given what they do (an
| amortized cost to public health over decades is a lot less
| likely to get people fired than a private plane falling out
| of the sky into the middle of an elementary school because
| the engine failed mid-flight due to a new fuel changing the
| mean time between failure in an unexpected way), but it does
| mean that even when things are understood to be safe and
| proven safe, simple inertia can keep the FAA from certifying
| them until someone lights a damn fire under them.
|
| Although on this specific topic, I almost wonder if you could
| make a case that the unleaded avgas is safer not for public
| health, but for the private pilot and therefore the public in
| terms of the FAA's main understanding of safety (IE don't let
| planes crash). How much is a pilot's reasoning capacity
| compromised by chronic lead poisoning due to the necessary
| handling of avgas and breathing in fumes that they must do in
| operation of their plane?
| Melatonic wrote:
| I thought we had an alternative gas that has been produced
| and works but is just not yet fully certified and tested?
| funkaster wrote:
| that is the definition of "no legal alternative"
| Melatonic wrote:
| My bad - should have restated that - I thought it was
| certified for a lot of planes and airports but not all
| (that it can potentially be certified for) and that there
| is a lot of potential there as a fix
| geoffeg wrote:
| Don't most of the more popular aircraft have STCs that allow
| them to run on automotive gas?
| buildsjets wrote:
| In addition to the above, the STC requires that automotive
| gas with 0% ethanol be used. In many parts of the country,
| that is extremely difficult to find. In my area, the only
| place to buy it is one farm co-op that is way out in the
| country. In some places, it is not available at all.
| Luckily there's a website to find it, but places that carry
| it have been getting fewer and fewer. So the MoGas STC is
| not a long-term 100LL workaround.
|
| https://www.pure-gas.org/
| iamtheworstdev wrote:
| 1. The "MoGas STC" costs money per plane to buy
|
| 2. It only applies to low compression engines, which is a
| lot of engines, but which also rules out most airplanes
| made since the 70s. There's a few exceptions, but not
| significant in terms of manufactured numbers to matter.
| (the STC you're likely talking about is the one that let
| engines run on 80 octane)
|
| If the MoGas STC mattered then pilots would have adopted it
| because rec fuel (ethanol free gasoline) is significantly
| cheaper than AvGas
| sokoloff wrote:
| 1. The cost of the STC rounds to $0. I think when I
| started flying it used to be $1 per horsepower; it looks
| like it's still under $1000, which represents no barrier.
|
| #2 and the low availability of mogas at airports is the
| reason for a lack of adoption fleet wide.
| iamtheworstdev wrote:
| re: #2... because... ? Because they aren't going to stock
| a fuel that only applies to a handful of airplanes. The
| demand for it is near nil.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Exactly. You can barely sustain a fuel farm on the fuel
| that services 100% of the piston GA fleet. It's
| incredibly difficult to make the economics work to add a
| second fuel farm that serves only 30% of the gasoline
| sold, cannibalizing sales from your other fuel farm.
|
| That's the premise/promise of G100UL: it can serve all
| the spark-ignition piston aircraft.
| mcronce wrote:
| Demand would be a lot higher if the leaded alternative
| weren't allowed.
| sokoloff wrote:
| No, it wouldn't be that much higher for mogas (typically
| a 91-ish octane unleaded, E0 (ethanol-free) gasoline).
|
| If there were an unleaded 100-ish octane fuel legally
| available as a substitute, _that_ would have demand if
| 100LL were banned. Over 70% of the avgas burned is burned
| in airplanes that are not eligible for the STC* to allow
| them to burn mogas (typically as a result of having lower
| worst-case detonation margins as a result of being turbo-
| charged, super-charged, high-compression, or some
| combination).
|
| * - Supplemental Type Certificate - an airplane
| modification, in this case a mostly [entirely for most
| airframes] paperwork modification, to their original type
| certificate.
| sokoloff wrote:
| It covers about 80% of engine models, but only about 30% of
| total fuel purchased for those engines per year. (The high
| power airplanes fly more hours per year, resulting in a
| large spread between "engines" and "gallons per year"
| eligible.)
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Who is forcing them to fly this plane? I'm going to have to
| side with the rights of the people to not have lead dumped
| into their air over the right of someone to fly their own
| plane.
| cpncrunch wrote:
| Air taxis, fire suppression, medevac, flight training,
| search and rescue, geomapping, aerial application, police,
| etc.
|
| Very few of these high compression, high HP planes are
| flown by people just "flying our own plane". Most of us fly
| small planes that can easily burn unleaded.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| You can understand my confusion when GP specifically says
| 'private', that doesn't immediately call to mind fire,
| police, and medevac.
|
| The rest don't sound like particularly good reasons to
| keep showering people with lead.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "an area where 2.5 percent of children under 6 years old who
| were tested had detectable levels of lead in their blood"
|
| "The presence of this fuel means the areas near these airports
| are often inundated with tiny lead particles"
|
| I agree that we should find lead free alternatives (some exist,
| so it sounds like this is purely bureaucracy). There's really
| no reason to keep using it.
|
| That said, it seems there is some fear mongering going on in
| this article. If the air is truly inundated, why is it that
| only 2.5% of the kids have a _detectable_ level? If it 's in
| the air and everywhere, then it should be detectable in vastly
| more children in that area. The biggest question in my mind is,
| why is this area so low when 50% of US children have detectable
| lead levels?
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Lead byproducts are spewed all over the neighborhoods
| surrounding small airports.
| colechristensen wrote:
| I'd like to see a risk comparison to measure the effects of
| living near an airport with heavy avgas users in units of tuna-
| sandwich-equivalents per month.
|
| Yes exposure isn't zero and effects from that exposure aren't
| zero, but let's get a good idea of how big the effect size is,
| because it really seems like some people have an out-of-
| proportion idea of what the risk actually is.
|
| I'm much more concerned about the heavy metal exposure from
| nearby coal plants than I am by general aviation fuel.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| It's detectable, [0] but it's not the top cause of lead
| poisoning. That honour goes to lead-based paints. [1]
|
| [0] https://news.sccgov.org/news-release/study-commissioned-
| coun...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_poisoning#Paint
| sfblah wrote:
| I agree with this methodology. People should use a different
| sort function for their outrage. It's like how people fail to
| compare the number of cancers caused by radioactive release
| from coal plants vs nuclear plants. The latter seems like it
| would be more of a problem, but actually the former is far
| far worse.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Post: "FAA, do your damn job"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30943466
|
| https://www.avweb.com/insider/faa-do-your-damn-job/
|
| Can your Congressional rep and the FAA and ask why this isn't
| done yet.
| dougalm wrote:
| Is it worth trying to apply pressure at the local level? I
| read that Santa Clara County banned 100LL in January.
|
| I have young kids. We live near Hanscom Field and spend a lot
| of time near Barnstable Airport. Should we try writing our
| local airports/cities/counties?
|
| At Barnstable Airport, the big operator is Cape Air. They
| make a big show of being green, so maybe they'd want to be
| early adopters of G100UL. Does anyone know if the existing
| G100UL STC applies to Cape Air's fleet? Could they switch to
| it if they wanted to?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I would complain to anyone who will listen. The health
| effects of lead exposure are well known, and a suitable
| replacement is available. Any continued combustion of
| leaded avgas is out of apathy and laziness. The FAA is
| dragging their feet because there is no cost to them to do
| so.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| I know nothing of the technical details, so you are
| saying, no one would need to change anything with their
| engines etc and just switch to leadfree gasoline?
| sokoloff wrote:
| Yes, but it's "switch to a lead-free gasoline, but one
| that is different from the currently sold lead-free
| gasoline used in cars."
|
| https://gami.com/g100ul/GAMI_Q_and_A.pdf
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| That is my understanding.
|
| https://www.avweb.com/insider/faa-do-your-damn-job/
|
| > To scrub the playhead forward, last summer at Oshkosh,
| to great fanfare, the STC approving G100UL was announced.
| It applied to a limited number of engines and GAMI was
| tasked with additional testing and data work to expand
| the engine list. This it did. The Wichita Aircraft
| Certification Office duly sent a letter to FAA HQ
| reporting that GAMI met all the test requirements--best-
| run program they had ever seen, or words to that effect--
| and was entitled to an STC-AML with every single spark
| ignition engine in the FAA database approved to use
| G100UL.
|
| ...
|
| > At a press conference, Lawrence said he thought PAFI
| had been "a great success." I simply cannot agree. I
| don't know how anyone in the industry could think this.
| PAFI was supposed to yield an unleaded drop-in
| replacement for 100LL. It did not. It was an abject
| failure and now, even though the FAA has an STC in hand
| awaiting approval for a fuel that has been proven, ad
| nauseum, to work in all engines, it wants more money for
| more testing. While the PAFI program--that was Piston
| Aviation Fuels Initiative--supposedly produced data,
| accessing it is all but impossible.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Cape Air's piston fleet is Cessna 402Cs, using the TCM
| TSIO-520-VB engines. Those engines are not on the G100UL
| STC Approved Model List.
|
| https://download.aopa.org/advocacy/2021/SE01966WI_AML-
| Amd1.p...
|
| https://gami.com/g100ul/GAMI_Q_and_A.pdf
|
| Adding to the data above some of my personal _opinion_ ,
| which was informed by visiting GAMI's Ada, OK facility,
| taking the APS course (taught by the GAMI principal
| engineer), and having seen the fuel demonstrated on the
| higher-strung TIO-540 Navajo engine: that the 402C's
| engines would run just fine on G100UL without operational
| limitations, but as above they cannot legally do that
| today.
| dougalm wrote:
| That's very helpful. Thanks for explaining! It looks like
| the Lycoming O-540 engines on Cape Air's new Tecnam
| Travellers aren't on the list either.
|
| I'm glad you think that G100UL should work in the Cessna
| engines and it's "just" a bureaucratic issue. Do you have
| any sense of what the current blocker to approval is? I
| found Paul Bertorelli's AVweb article a bit hard to
| follow.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I can't fairly represent the FAA's point of view here.
|
| I'm not saying that to be cagey; I just haven't spent
| tons of time thinking about all of the "what could go
| wrong?" and "why is airplane certification done the way
| it's done?" It's easy to sit on the outside and say
| "that's ridiculously overly conservative!" but I suspect
| the truth is there is a mix of over-conservative and
| genuine purpose to "until you prove it via certification,
| it's not certified as true".
|
| Air-cooled engines have wildly varying operating
| conditions. Airplanes need to take off not just on a 60oF
| sea-level departure to a 3000' cruise, but also at a
| 105oF departure from 5000' with a direct climb over
| terrain to 15K feet. The fuel will sometimes be 125oF
| after baking in a tank or a wing all day. It might not be
| on the exact centerline of the specification range. It
| might be 6 months old and some of the higher volatility
| compounds present in reduced amounts. High-strung turbo
| engines with fixed timing live with pretty low detonation
| margins, especially at partial mixture settings. Pilots
| rely on the pilot-operating-handbook or airplane-flight-
| manual for performance calculations with regards to
| runway utilization, accelerate-stop/accelerate-go
| distances, all engine climb gradient and one-engine-INOP
| climb gradient. Any amount of performance degradation
| that would invalidate those figures is cause for FAA
| rejection of the STC. Having flown a handful of heavy,
| hot, and high departures where the ground isn't falling
| away from the airplane nearly as quickly as I'd like, I
| can appreciate a certain amount of conservatism here.
|
| So, I have to give the FAA some benefit of the doubt as
| I'm not an expert on certification topics. I do believe
| in the technical ability and already completed lab,
| bench, and flight testing that GAMI has done and the way
| they've set out to approach the problem, but to be fair
| and balanced, they've done some amount of "we think the
| FAA/PAFI process is fundamentally the wrong approach and
| we're going to go about it this other way that we think
| is superior." I happen to think they're right, but when
| you very publicly do that to a government agency who said
| they want the process to work this other way and you
| don't participate in their preferred process, I think
| it's reasonable to expect that you'll run into delays.
| (Even if no FAA person is acting in the least bit
| unethically; you're just trying to use a different
| process than the one they're putting their energy into
| and even if everyone has the best intentions, that will
| cause friction and slowdowns.)
| stergios wrote:
| There's an old saying that "aviation regulations are
| written in blood". If there's an FAA rule it most likely
| came about from the learning of an accident
| investigation.
| ericpauley wrote:
| Note: this is the current model list. The new proposed
| AML that the FAA is supposedly about to sign off includes
| all engines approved for 100LL.
| zenexer wrote:
| Not to mention there's a sizable bakery practically in the
| airport that ships its bread to stores throughout MA.
| Leaded bread--yummy.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Here, let me help you not sleep tonight...
|
| https://www.verywellhealth.com/spice-lead-
| exposure-5209991
| brimble wrote:
| > Brightly colored spices, such as turmeric, chili
| powder, and paprika, are the ones I'm concerned with more
| because those are the ones that are more likely to have
| lead added in as a coloring agent
|
| Holy shit. This is a "the FDA should be coming down on
| this hard _yesterday_ " kind of thing.
| thetinguy wrote:
| It's especially crazy because because all the major engine
| manufacturers have already certified many of their leaded gas
| engines for high octane unleaded. Some of them are just waiting
| on FAA rubber stamps.
| https://www.aopa.org/advocacy/100-unleaded-avgas
| 535188B17C93743 wrote:
| What do we want? G100UL! When do we want it? As soon as
| possible!
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| Until then, here's a good podcast episode interviewing George
| Braly, the man behind G100UL. [0]
|
| Incidentally I recall a later episode mentioning that a
| couple of decades ago someone was able to get an unleaded
| fuel approved for aviation in, iirc, Sweden. Unsure why that
| didn't get much traction.
|
| [0] https://aviationnewstalk.com/tag/unleaded-fuel/
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Humorously, my recollection is that President Reagan asked
| someone to do a cost benefit analysis to support his desire to
| _weaken_ controls on lead gasoline and the guy in charge did the
| opposite and his cost benefit analysis showed that we would save
| tons of money by eliminating lead, so that 's how lead gasoline
| got eliminated in the US.
|
| My recollection is this was the end of this guy's government
| career but he won some kind of award (a la Nobel Prize levels of
| money from somewhere) that let him pay cash for a house while
| working as a professor -- or something like that. I tried to do a
| search and came up with this article that fits with that
| recollection but doesn't exactly verify the details I remember
| and I have no idea how to track down the guy's name, etc etc.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1984/04/01/c...
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