[HN Gopher] Alice Hamilton waged a one-woman campaign to get the...
___________________________________________________________________
Alice Hamilton waged a one-woman campaign to get the lead out of
everything
Author : Hooke
Score : 385 points
Date : 2025-02-18 23:22 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.smithsonianmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.smithsonianmag.com)
| djmips wrote:
| I still wonder about all the hobbiests, including occasionally
| myself who might not be treating leaded solder with the caution
| it deserves. I use unleaded solder but I also fix older gear.
| rasz wrote:
| Solder is not the problem, soldering fumes do not contain
| vaporized lead as that would require >400C. They might and
| often do contain vaporized flux/colophony/resin. You
| reaaaaaaallllyyyy dont want to breath that thus fume extractors
| are a must.
| kevindamm wrote:
| Agree with this but also want to stress the importance of
| washing your hands after handling solder, to be sure. And any
| affected surfaces in your work station / area.
|
| You don't want to accidentally ingest tiny bits of lead from
| the solder, and this probably goes for solder without lead
| too.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| one of my soldering irons regularly glows cherry red hot when
| under usage. So far past 400 C. I don't use that every time I
| solder, but sometimes I do
|
| That being said, I think the impact of the lead may be tiny
| compared to the rosin fumes. The real issue is someone in a
| factory who may handle leaded solder ever single day. The
| accumulated exposure over a lifetime is a big deal
| dicknuckle wrote:
| There's something extremely wrong with that iron. I've had
| a Tenma soldering station to that once, caused by a bad
| thermocouple that was lying to the controller.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| thermostat burned out not longer after I bought it. Good
| iron design, bad thermostat design. It works great for
| soldering pipe and bar stock together. Don't leave it
| plugged in for very long.
| Blackthorn wrote:
| Solder is absolutely a problem. The life cycle of your part
| doesn't just include when you solder it. It includes anyone
| who has to handle it in the future, and it includes the
| E-Waste dump in an impoverished country that it inevitably
| ends up in.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Not really, metallic lead is pretty inert. Its lead
| compounds and lead dust that are dangerous.
| ta988 wrote:
| recycled PCBs are often turned into dust.
| smcin wrote:
| Not just due to the Pb dust though, also Al, Fe, Cu,
| fiberglass:
|
| "Mineralogical analysis of dust collected from typical
| recycling line of waste printed circuit boards" https://w
| ww.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09560...
| ta988 wrote:
| Yes and Cu and fiberglass and the resins are especially
| toxic too
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I have a big spool of lead solder probably from the 1980s and
| I store it like treasure. It's so much better than modern
| solder.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| You can just buy SnPb solder today, probably with better
| fluxes than whatever they were using in the 80s. Non-Pb
| solders also work fine for almost everything (I keep a
| little bit of SnPb around but do most of my work in lead-
| free), the big thing is to have a good iron and good tips.
| Makes way more difference than the solder composition.
| Aurornis wrote:
| I have good news for you. Leaded solder never went away.
| It's still available.
|
| Modern solder and fluxes are also likely to outperform 40
| year old solder.
| rasz wrote:
| You can still buy brand new solder intended for medical/mil
| use made in Europe/Poland by Cynel
|
| https://www.cynel.com.pl/en/?view=article&id=99:sn60pb40-pr
| o...
|
| Fun fact - Rambo knows his stuff and uses Cynel sn60pb40
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3XRrPZRJEw&t=11
| CarVac wrote:
| Solder spatters everywhere even if it's not vaporized. The
| resulting lead-bearing powder gets everywhere.
| mrob wrote:
| This is especially true of hand soldering. Hand soldering
| requires regular cleaning of the soldering iron tip. Both
| the common methods (brass wool and damp sponge) produce
| many tiny balls of solder that roll and bounce easily. They
| can end up caught in clothing then fall into food.
| kragen wrote:
| Leaded solder _in electronics_ is not a significant source of
| human exposure. In jewelry, maybe, but it 's unusual to use it
| there, and in plumbing.
| saagarjha wrote:
| For most people or specifically among those who touch
| electronics for a living?
| kragen wrote:
| Even among those who touch electronics for a living. There
| are occupations that do get significant lead exposure (as
| the article points out), but electronics technicians have
| never been among them, even before fume extractors were
| common for soldering. Metallic lead is sufficiently hard to
| oxidize that even most people with lead bullets embedded in
| their bodies don't get lead poisoning, and, at soldering
| temperatures, lead's vapor pressure is not sufficient to
| reach a toxic dose, even taking into account lead's
| horrific tendency to bioaccumulate.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| I concur. Recommending unleaded software to hobbyists makes
| people irrationally hostile. I have a theory of why...
| Aurornis wrote:
| I know you're joking, but leaded solder is significantly
| easier to work with on a hobbyist level.
|
| As long as you're washing your hands properly and avoiding
| contact contamination it's not an issue.
|
| I'm always amazed when I see people using lead-free solder
| for "health reasons" who then inhale all of the fumes from
| their flux, though.
| CarVac wrote:
| It's significantly easier if you have grossly inadequate
| soldering equipment.
|
| This is 2025, you can get properly temperature-controlled
| soldering irons for dirt cheap now.
| murderfs wrote:
| Temperature control isn't usually the real problem, it's
| insufficient power to heat the board up to the liquidus
| temperature of the solder. This is an especially annoying
| pain in the ass when you're desoldering components from a
| board with non-thermal relief pads connected to gigantic
| copper pours, where you basically have to either use hot
| air or a board preheater.
| CarVac wrote:
| I run a hobbyist open source hardware project that is
| user-assembled (PhobGCC) and even though our early boards
| had bad thermal relief a basic Pinecil is good enough to
| desolder SAC305 or SN99.
|
| But most of the issues with soldering came from people
| using uncontrolled irons that were either too hot,
| instantly burning off pads, or too cold thus not letting
| the flux punch through the oxides.
|
| When you get to big copper fills, SN63 helps, but
| ChipQuik helps more. So does a Thermaltronics TMT-1000S
| which is coming next month at $125.
|
| (love my TMT-2000S but the 1000S looks to be a steal)
| MengerSponge wrote:
| You can mitigate the risk: set up a good extraction filter and
| wash your hands when you finish work.
| foxglacier wrote:
| Extraction fans have nothing to do with it. You don't get
| lead gas or floating particles in the air when you're
| soldering.
| userbinator wrote:
| This is just an anecdote, but I know someone who worked with
| leaded solder since he was a young teen, and he sometimes holds
| the solder in his mouth(!) when working on tricky joints. He is
| in his early 90s now and still very healthy.
| soupfordummies wrote:
| working on tricky solder joints in your NINETIES is kinda
| wild on its own!
| userbinator wrote:
| I suspect there are far more people like that, and we just
| don't hear about them because they keep to themselves. This
| Youtuber is an exception:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40519095
| buildsjets wrote:
| I wonder how much lead a solder sucker aerosolizes.
| relaxing wrote:
| It doesn't.
| buildsjets wrote:
| The fine coating of solder dust on my workbench suggests
| that you are wrong.
| relaxing wrote:
| How do you know the dust is solder?
|
| How is the solder getting out of the sucker? Let alone
| turning into a fine powder?
|
| How much desoldering are you doing??
|
| There are far more likely sources of particulate matter,
| such as flux which we know does get aerosolized.
| coryrc wrote:
| Metallic lead isn't especially bioavailable.
|
| Lead in paint is not metallic:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_paint
|
| You don't use solder in a place where it's exposed to friction
| (like window sashes with lead paint) which makes a dust, nor do
| you put it places where it's exposed to food or drink (again,
| hopefully) like with pewter or lead glass (crystal).
| garbagewoman wrote:
| Lead compounds that are formed from common reactions between
| metallic lead and other compounds are, on the other hand,
| incredibly bioavailable, and very common
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| Reading the headline I was imagining the euphemistic "get the
| lead out" and wondered if this would be about handling
| procrastination. It is not. :-)
| brianbreslin wrote:
| Getting lead out of our environments (housing stock, schools,
| etc) would do wonders to improving quality of life for so many
| people globally. Not just for those directly poisoned by it. [1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis
| MrVandemar wrote:
| Meanwhile PFAS is in everything, including some paper and
| carboard (so don't burn it) and very little sign of it being
| regulated, much less stopped.
|
| See: - https://www.propublica.org/article/3m-forever-chemicals-
| pfas...
|
| - https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-contaminants/dan...
|
| ... or just use the search engine of your choice.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Minnesota has enacted some pretty strong and broad bans on PFAS
| already in effect with more to be phased in over the next 7
| years. Food packaging, firefighting foam, cookware, and a broad
| selection of consumer products.
|
| https://www.pca.state.mn.us/air-water-land-climate/2025-pfas...
| phtrivier wrote:
| "How dare they enfringe on the free speech of corporations
| using their free speech to freely sell freedom-pfas to
| American citizens ? I hope the agency overseeing this
| communist-woke crusade against free speech is going to get
| DOGEd out of existence" /sarcasm (but, barely)
| smcin wrote:
| 3M's decades-long litigation about PFAS:
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?q=PFAS+3M
|
| And even after the settlements ever get resolved and it's no
| longer being produced in developed countries, economics says
| they'll just ship the waste to LDCs.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| I hear it's more _efficient_ to not worry about these things.
| rrmm wrote:
| Allison Hayes is another person who campaigned against lead--this
| time in vitamin supplements--which lead to a change in FDA rules.
| She was a frequent actor in Roger Corman's B-movies which is
| where I first encountered her. She suffered disability from the
| lead in Calcium supplements.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allison_Hayes
| whycome wrote:
| > which lead to a change in FDA rules.
|
| This seems like a relevant typo.
| whycome wrote:
| > She broke gender barriers in the broader sciences that opened
| stodgy male-dominated fields to women. And her approach to social
| justice--combining evidence-based research, interdisciplinary
| collaboration and community engagement--remains the blueprint for
| nearly all public health and policy fights today, from the
| smallest neighborhood disputes to global battles over pollution,
| natural resources and climate change.
|
| You might say that we all follow her lead. (She led the way)
| louthy wrote:
| You're plumbing new depths of humour there.
| gregw2 wrote:
| Plumbing? I think of it a /refining/ the presentation of the
| argument. Or /distilling/, if you will...
| CalRobert wrote:
| Any chemists here able to comment on the recent lead test kits
| around? Eg lumetallix.com and detectlead.com. I have one and like
| it but don't know how accurate it is.
|
| Had some leaded Pyrex among other things
| amluto wrote:
| I'm not a chemist, but:
|
| As I understand it, the biggest source of lead that gets inside
| people is paint, especially where windows rub against it. And
| sometimes lead paint has been painted over but can still become
| airborne when abraded. I would be surprised if these tests can
| detect it.
|
| Get an XRF test instead -- this will quantify the amount of
| lead at or even under the surface. You can do this by getting a
| lead testing contractor to come over, and a friendly one will
| test as many spots as you like in a single visit. Or I suppose
| you could try to buy the machine, but it isn't cheap.
|
| (Wirecutter says the main ingredient in these fluorescence
| tests is methylammonium bromide.)
| CalRobert wrote:
| Unfortunately I couldn't find anyone to show up with an XRF
| kit - nobody in Europe seems to take lead paint seriously.
| rrmm wrote:
| Was lead paint as widespread in Europe as it was in North
| America?
| CalRobert wrote:
| It varied by region. The Netherlands banned it almost a
| century ago. Ireland in the early 90's IIRC.
| logifail wrote:
| > nobody in Europe seems to take lead paint seriously
|
| Do you live in an older property or do you think there
| might be a significant amount of lead-containing paint in
| your living/working environment?
|
| (Not suggesting lead isn't a problem, but I've dealt with a
| bunch of much, much more toxic substances [full disclosure:
| PhD Chem])
|
| FWIW, the UK banned lead paint over 30 years ago, lead
| water pipes 55 years ago, and leaded petrol 25 years ago.
|
| There's a paper suggesting lead pollution may be
| approaching natural background levels
| https://cen.acs.org/articles/94/i40/Lead-pollution-
| approache...
| CalRobert wrote:
| Yes, and we owned a 200 year old cottage in Ireland that
| definitely had leaded paint, and I needed to take paint
| chips and mail them to the US to get them tested because
| nobody in Ireland took me seriously. I had a newborn at
| the time, too.
| logifail wrote:
| > we owned a 200 year old cottage in Ireland that
| definitely had leaded paint [..] I had a newborn at the
| time, too
|
| Not a great combo.
|
| "In the home, lead pipes, red lead paint on metal work,
| leaded paint on windowsills, bannisters, door frames and
| doors can still exist. Lead paint was common before the
| 1970s and although lead paint has not been used after
| 1992, prior to this UK paint may have contained up to 50%
| lead by weight (500,000 mg/kg), which is potentially
| capable of causing lead poisoning in a small child if
| they eat just a single flake. Leaded paint at these
| concentrations may still be found in non-remediated
| Victorian properties, often below newer non-leaded
| paint."
|
| https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/lead-
| poisoning-ad...
|
| and
|
| https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/lead-exposure-
| in-...
|
| Although one shouldn't underestimate potential lead
| contamination in soils, too. As an undergrad I recall
| doing a lab in which we had to look for heavy metal
| contamination in the soil in a nearby public park,
| starting at the edge of the park right next to a busy
| road, and then taking samples towards the centre of the
| park. Unsurprisingly there was measurably higher
| contamination close to the road, falling away with
| distance from the road.
| DANmode wrote:
| Nobody there will be wanting to tell ye about mycotoxins
| produced by water-damaged building materials over 35%-50%
| indoor humidity, either.
| CalRobert wrote:
| We did a lot to address that issue, at least.
| someothherguyy wrote:
| Because there is no evidence that they harm the majority
| of people in real environments? That is, they typically
| never reach concentrations high enough to be a concern.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| You could probably mitigate that with an oil-based primer
| and then oil- or water-based topcoats depending on the
| compatibility of the primer. I've gotten good adhesion on
| old oil-based paints just washing them with TSP
| substitute and then priming over the top without scuff-
| sanding.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Surprising, since the EU near-total ban on lead.
| im3w1l wrote:
| I think this extends beyond lead. Americans love tests, and
| Europeans are more like the person that is scared of going
| to the doctor because who knows what they will find.
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| In France we have obligatory 'diagnostic' of house sold,
| including many thing like asbestos but also lead paint.
|
| We use a 20 000EUR machine with radioactive material to
| measure the amount of lead, so not everyone can get it but
| you can definitely ask a technician to do it.
|
| Cost around 300EUR, depends of the house size and he checks
| every single part of every single room that can contain
| lead paint. Very tedious.
|
| I know that the same laboratory we send asbestos for
| measurement also did lead measurement.
|
| If you got only a few place you are concerned, you could
| scrape it yourself and sent it to them.
|
| Otherwise it's considered that lead in paint is only
| dangerous when the paint is old and it fall down, so that
| kids could eat it or if you're repainting the window and
| you scrub it without mask.
|
| To my knowledge, the lead pipe are much more dangerous
| because there is nothing you can do. It's all city property
| and even if you don't drink city water, you still get
| poisoning from factory and restaurant using that water to
| make food.
| amluto wrote:
| > We use a 20 000EUR machine with radioactive material
|
| I'm reasonably confident that these machines use
| electrically powered X-ray generators and that no
| radioactivity is involved.
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| you are reasonably wrong then. my device has a cadmium
| 109 source, emitting 740 MBq when i bought it.
| vladms wrote:
| Lumping up all "Europe" into one is quite misleading. For
| example in France when buying/selling a property a detailed
| lead investigation performed by a professional is
| obligatory. To the level of what wall has what
| concentration. Plus all explanation of potential risks,
| etc.
|
| How carefully you read and understand a report depends on
| multiple factors, but definitely there are many people in
| Europe that take lead paint seriously.
| tdb7893 wrote:
| I'm also not a chemist but I've heard that at least some lead
| test kits are meant only for paint. I recently was looking for
| lead free solder and I ran into a lot of reviews about how the
| solder triggered a lead test but apparently the strips people
| were using also reacted with copper (which was supposed to be
| in the solder)
| logifail wrote:
| > I recently was looking for lead free solder [...]
|
| I went looking for _leaded_ solder(!) recently.
|
| Turned out it's got quite hard to buy in the EU, but I was
| able to purchase it online from a US supplier and have it
| shipped.
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| I needed leaded solder recently too for a vintage audio
| project, I'm in the UK and while it was a bit of a faff to
| track it down initially I was able to order some locally.
| Might get better shipping buying from the UK next time!
| LM358 wrote:
| I don't know where you guys are looking - both Farnell
| and RS Components, which are UK based and among the
| suppliers I use the most at work, stock leaded solder.
| There are other suppliers more local to me that stock it
| as well.
|
| It's not like it's banned or anything, it's just not
| allowed to be used in (most) consumer electronics.
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| That's odd I remember checking Farnell because I use them
| myself, I guess I must have forgotten my coffee that day
| and missed it.
| logifail wrote:
| There have been reports of RS Online having refused
| orders from UK consumers saying that:
|
| "It is restricted to professional users and cannot be
| supplied to the general public (non-trade customers)"
|
| Are RS Online gold-plating the regulations? Probably. I
| bought from Digikey USA instead.
| lgats wrote:
| i've used a similar test but found it has false positives with
| zinc -- and so many things have zinc
| lazide wrote:
| A _lot_ of Zinc plating (almost all galvanizing) has lead in
| it. It's a common component of lead /zinc alloys (many Zamac
| alloys).
|
| Lead in general is also a common component of 'impure' zinc
| (from the mine/foundry).
|
| So chances are, your tests are correct.
| bluGill wrote:
| Zamac alloys do not contain lead, except as a tiny amount
| of impurity (because we don't know how to completely remove
| it). Zamac is often confused for the more general "pot
| metal", which is a anything goes if it melts in a pot (that
| is on your kitchen stove!), lead often is in these, but the
| goal of people who use pot metal is cheap and don't worry
| about quality, such alloys make be as much as 50% lead
| because nobody cares (there is an upper limit, but defined
| more by it will no longer make it past the warranty).
|
| Please keep your terms correct. Zamac is a very useful
| thing to look for in hobby metal casting because you can
| buy ingots for fairly cheap that will melt in your kitchen
| (I would still do it outside) and have useful known
| properties thus ensuring good results. Pot metal is a low
| quality product that you could also work with in your
| kitchen, but you have no idea what the results will be.
| scq wrote:
| It seems to be quite sensitive, down to the nanogram level.
| This paper has some more details:
| https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acs.est.3c06058
|
| Some of the authors of that paper founded Lumetallix.
| jmyeet wrote:
| In the US, crime basically kept increasing until the 1990s and
| have been on a downward trend ever since. If you've fallen for
| the modern crime panic, it's completely manufactured. Look at any
| graph that goes back 40+ years and then tell me what the trend
| is.
|
| The reason for this is hotly debated.
|
| One theory is that it coincides with being 18 years or so after
| abortion was legalized [1]. The argument is that not forcing
| people to be parents who don't want to be and aren't equipped to
| be as well as this skewing to lower socioeconomic status. The
| link between poverty and crime has been well-established going
| back to Ancient Greece. In some ways, this is an uncomfortable
| argument because it's basically eugenics. In support of this,
| abortion access varied state-to-state by up to several years and
| the trends tend to follow that.
|
| But this is a US-specific argument and I believe the trend was
| present in other countries.
|
| The second big argument is removing lead from gasoline (in
| particular, but also water because of lead pipes) [2].
|
| I really wonder what societal problems and public health
| incidents in the future will come down to micro-plastics.
|
| [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalized_abortion_and_crime_e...
|
| [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis
| lordgrenville wrote:
| My pet theory is the proliferation of digital entertainment
| options, and gaming / online culture. There are a lot more ways
| to keep yourself occupied inside, so less reason to go out and
| get into trouble.
| cubefox wrote:
| Pretty sure I heard this theory held by social scientists as
| well.
| jandrese wrote:
| Not just digital, this trend started back in the analog TV
| era. Gaming consoles certainly contributed as well.
|
| Note that the decrease in crime coincides with a decrease in
| teen pregnancy, but also a decrease in fertility rates in
| general.
| mcmoor wrote:
| And there's claim that lead is maybe overrated after all
| https://www.cremieux.xyz/p/who-gets-exposed-to-lead
| cubefox wrote:
| Thanks for this analysis. It says:
|
| > With all said and done, it is abundantly clear that the
| effect of lead on IQ is overestimated and studies claiming
| that there's no lower-bound for negative effects have not
| been adequately testing their hypothesis. Instead of effects
| of lead, what they've really been testing has largely been
| stratification of lead exposures by various causes of
| variation in IQ.
| Anotheroneagain wrote:
| It's because people learned that alcohol damages the fetus.
| Merrill wrote:
| 1990s was the time that the AIDS epidemic took hold. Lots of
| needle-sharing addicts died, reducing the number of crimes
| needed to support their habits. AIDS also affected the prison
| population, further reducing the number of active criminals.
| tonetegeatinst wrote:
| I'm pretty sure a lot of small to y planes use leaded gas....
|
| Correct me if I'm wrong though cuz iv always wondered how bad the
| fumes would be to a community thats near a busy airport.
|
| Iv always hear jokes about how lead is the miracle element....its
| great for so many things and pushing efficiency in many
| areas....but the human body just can't stand it at all.
| djmips wrote:
| Indeed, I live near a seaport and there are many a day where
| the wind blows the fumes in our direction. I do know that the
| larger seaplanes use lead free fuel but the smaller planes do
| as I understand it.
| someothherguyy wrote:
| Go sample the air and find out, be a hero
| lazide wrote:
| There were many, many studies.
|
| Answer: minimal, but measurable, compared to other sources.
|
| So worth getting rid of eventually, but not a major priority.
| louwrentius wrote:
| Scott Manley has a very detailed video[0] about usage of lead
| in aviation fuel, for smaller piston aircraft.
|
| From my perspective, it's absolutely ludicrous that we still
| allow lead to be used in any kind of fuel at all.
|
| [0]: https://youtu.be/8zfIy17q9sE?si=f9K31eeecOde_YzO
| Retric wrote:
| It's disappointing but predictable. Lead use by a subset of
| small piston aircraft is several orders of magnitude less
| than when cars used leaded gas. So the general public doesn't
| care that much, but aircraft owners care a great deal.
|
| That's a voting block which often ends up being appeased in a
| democracy.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Small aircraft owners would happily pay a slight premium to
| get rid of leaded gas because doing so would eliminate the
| biggest avenue by which Karens complain about them.
|
| The FAA is the big hurdle. IIRC they recently just approved
| some fuel as a replacement but I'm not sure if it was a "go
| start selling it" type of approval or if it's some sort of
| intermediary approval and there's further ring kissing to
| be done before people can actually buy it.
| Retric wrote:
| There was a huge amount of lobbying in the 1970's which
| says otherwise.
|
| The small Aircraft market is tiny and diverse as aircraft
| last a long time and many past manufacturers have failed.
| So, there wasn't a viable alternative for many airplanes
| owners who couldn't just swap to some other fuel or
| certified engine at the time. It's been 50 years and
| people are still making the same arguments.
| hwillis wrote:
| Uh, no. It's because when plane engines break they fall out
| of the sky onto things. They break when they aren't
| correctly modified to take the new fuel. It is not very
| realistic to mandate conversions for all of the (often
| quite old) planes today- like from manufacturers going out
| of business. It is not trivial to convert an engine, fuel
| system etc. and also meet the same performance so that
| things like stall and thrust and altitude are still
| accurate across the important ranges.
|
| In practice, it's a choice between:
|
| 1. Banning or buying out older planes at not-insignificant
| cost 2. Swapping fuels and doing your best to get people to
| fix their planes, causing crashes 3. Playing it slow,
| requiring new planes to be compatible with lead-free fuel,
| building new lead-free infrastructure, and gradually
| encouraging people to transition
|
| Currently we're doing 3 until it's determined that 1 is
| cheap enough to do. That said the FAA could certainly be
| doing more, but that's much more (IMO) on them not taking
| the issue seriously than on voters being appeased. Its a
| national agency, not the local school board.
| Retric wrote:
| Lead in cars was banned in the 1970's, any actual
| transition would have long been played out by now. A
| "this will be outlawed in 30 years" would have hit in 20
| years ago.
|
| Instead the people convinced regulators to simply wait
| until some hypothetical perfect alternative could be
| made.
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| Until I saw that video, I had no idea about the level of
| compatibility required to change over to a new fuel type.
| Since the lead-free fuel would need to be compatible with the
| plane you're putting it in (e.g. seals, pipes) as well as
| other fuels that it could be mixed with.
| flyinghamster wrote:
| If by "toy" you mean R/C aircraft, that's usually not even
| gasoline, but a mix of methanol and nitromethane, no lead in
| sight (and these days you'll find a lot more R/C stuff that's
| battery-powered instead). But when you move over to the general
| aviation world, yes, leaded gas is still the rule rather than
| the exception. While 100 LL has less lead than the older
| 100/130, it still has far more than even now-phased-out leaded
| auto gas. There are some aviation diesels that run on jet fuel,
| but they're few and far between (and sometimes vaporware), and
| aviation engines certified for auto fuel aren't very common,
| either.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| Methanol? Yikes!
| jandrese wrote:
| He's referring to glow fuel[1]. I would not suggest
| drinking it.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glow_fuel
| dweekly wrote:
| The good news is we in GA are finally getting reasonable
| 100LL replacements like G100UL and Swift 100R - and not just
| in the lab, but rolling out at airports. The best time for
| this to have happened would have been two decades ago: the
| second best time is this year.
| bluGill wrote:
| Busy airports tend to imply jets which use lead free fuel.
| While small airplanes that use lead fuel can land at those
| large busy airports, they avoid it. Those airports have high
| landing fees and because of the amount of traffic are harder to
| navigate. (there are lots of other issues - as a pilot)
|
| Small airports that are not busy compared to the large ones
| above can still see a fair amount of traffic and that is likely
| to be lead fueled.
| richwater wrote:
| Look up GAMI100UL.
|
| Slowly the industry is moving but it requires an STC for both
| the engine and the airframe. It's an expensive and slow
| process.
|
| Plus it's only available at like 3 airports right now
| giorgosts wrote:
| What about the use of lead in car batteries? Even if there are
| requirements for recycling, it is still a burden for the
| environment and the people that have to deal with the material is
| its various stages.
| GJim wrote:
| The last time I checked, one wasn't at risk of ingesting or
| inhaling the lead from a car battery. Furthermore, it is simple
| to recycle safely.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Not a serious concern because they're such a concentrated
| source of lead that they're lucrative to recycle.
| camkego wrote:
| I am not sure why we are taping lead onto pickleball paddles
| where it can fall off in the gyms where children play on the
| floors.
| cjrp wrote:
| Especially when alternatives like tungsten tape exist.
| s_dev wrote:
| The whole lead poisoning scandals are really great examples of
| how capitalism/free markets have serious limits to what they can
| achieve. They should should be seen as a useful tool to help make
| certain markets more efficient and not as an ideology to embraced
| without limitations.
|
| Even when consumers understood that leaded petrol for example was
| contaminating the air and water with carcinogens that harmed many
| many people especially babies and small children the market still
| had demanded leaded petrol and that demand was catered to by
| companies making huge profits and scientists deemed that there
| was no safe threshold.
|
| It's been speculated that the fall of the Roman Empire can be
| partially attributed to prevalence of lead pipes and leaded
| drinking vessels. When a critical mass of elites/rulers have lead
| poisoning there was a subsequent collapse of those societies.
|
| In short it's basically a national security issue even if it does
| make fuel cheaper and more effective.
| amelius wrote:
| What if your elites/rulers have symptoms of lead poisoning
| without exposure to lead?
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Basically all the boomers grew up huffing leaded car exhaust.
| The ones who didn't become statistical fodder for the lead
| crime hypothesis are running the world right now. The quality
| of leadership in the west will probably improve overall as
| the boomers and early gen X get to kicking the bucket.
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| > It's been speculated that the fall of the Roman Empire can be
| partially attributed to prevalence of lead pipes and leaded
| drinking vessels. When a critical mass of elites/rulers have
| lead poisoning there was a subsequent collapse of those
| societies.
|
| I agree with the other part of your text but this lead
| contributing to downfall of roman society is not spoken about
| by serious historians.
|
| Plagues, societal evolution, mass migration, change of climate
| are what caused downfall of Roman empire.
|
| As far as I know, lead would be marginal at best.
| bluGill wrote:
| He said speculated. I've heard that speculation many times,
| enough to say it is true that people speculate about it.
|
| However as you say, there is no reason to believe it is true.
| People should stop speculating about it.
| haizhung wrote:
| My personal stance on this: Capitalism is extremely good at
| hill climbing within a certain constraint set. Almost like a
| constraint satisfaction algorithm.
|
| However, if the constraints are ill-posed (eg. it is possible
| to externalize certain costs, by outputting co2, using lead,
| etc.) it WILL eventually do that.
|
| IMHO capticalism CAN work but it needs a strong government that
| sets the constraints to the benefit of its people. And updates
| those constraints once new information becomes available.
|
| This is in stark contrast to the often seen ,,just deregulate
| everything and line goes up" stance. This will just create a
| degenerate solution (monopolies, climate change, financial
| crises, etc).
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| You're correct. Without strong externally-imposed restraint,
| capitalism will happily externalize its costs and crush some
| people.
| api wrote:
| That can be said for every system. They are tools. They all
| become pathological when transformed into ideologies and used
| to try to solve every problem in one way.
| dennis_jeeves2 wrote:
| >capitalism/free markets have serious limits to what they can
| achieve
|
| Why do you have to take shots at capitalism/free markets?
| Capitalism/free markets does not automatically imply that you
| can harm someone health. Capitalism/free markets solely implies
| financial/trade freedom.
| bluGill wrote:
| > Why do you have to take shots at capitalism
|
| Capitalism was a straw-man invented by Marx to take shots at.
| Of course he has to take shots at it, that is the whole
| point.
|
| Mean while what people really do is far more complex and not
| suitable a 30 second pot shot. The real people doing
| "capitalism" are too busy doing to try to make sense of just
| how complex human behavior is, and so don't have time to
| defend it in philosophy.
| dennis_jeeves2 wrote:
| >Capitalism was a straw-man invented by Marx to take shots
| at. Of course he has to take shots at it, that is the whole
| point
|
| Make perfect sense indeed...
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Capitalism is more than just free trade. Trade happens
| between two parties. Capitalism happens between three
| parties. The additional party is the capitalist who neither
| produces the traded goods nor consumes them, but is entitled
| to a share of control/profit due to some kind of abstraction
| (e.g. property rights).
|
| It's pretty directly related lead poisoning because in the
| case of mere trade both parties are close enough to the lead
| to have incentives to avoid it. It's quite plausible that the
| dynamics change significantly when you add a third party at
| sufficient remove to feel safe from the hazard, yet who still
| has a controlling stake in the transaction.
| dennis_jeeves2 wrote:
| I cannot even relate to your line of reasoning - a simple
| concept stretched beyond it's simple original intent.
| immibis wrote:
| A quip that may be simple enough to work: Capitalism is
| to capital as monarchy is to monarch.
| relaxing wrote:
| Take some time to think it over. You've been fed the idea
| that it's integral to your livelihood, but never asked to
| consider the dictionary definition, let alone the far-
| reaching effects.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I'm not aware of any stretching. That's just what the
| word means.
|
| Why bother create a whole new word unless you meant
| something other than "free trade". Wouldn't they have
| said "free trade" if that's what they meant?
| dennis_jeeves2 wrote:
| That is a fair enough point. Most likely the way it is
| got this way to do with it's history and perhaps its
| marketing or specifically it's anti-marketing by the
| communists/socialists. A free market sounds less
| threatening so they do not use that term.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I have to imagine that when they term was coined in the
| 1700s, they avoided using "free markets" because they
| didn't have a problem with free markets. They aimed to
| criticize capitalists specifically since it was
| capitalists and not free markets that we're causing the
| problems.
|
| Not propaganda, but criticism targeted enough to be
| constructive. To oppose something as broad as free
| markets would be pointless.
| dennis_jeeves2 wrote:
| >I have to imagine that when they term was coined in the
| 1700s, they avoided using "free markets" because they
| didn't have a problem with free markets. They aimed to
| criticize capitalists specifically since it was
| capitalists and not free markets that we're causing the
| problems.
|
| While they targeted the 'capitalists' they had an agenda
| to push: socialism. Free market in itself cannot be an
| agenda, it's too vague and simple.
|
| I suspect they did have a problem with free markets,
| though it was never explicitly stated: A true free market
| causes enormous differences in wealth. (though everyone
| is better off). A difference in wealth is a big social
| motivator for resentment regardless of how well off the
| bottom most rung of society is.
|
| Also notice the comment I responded to - the poster used
| the term 'capitalism/free markets' - so the poster knew
| exactly the connotation of capitalism ( i.e of free
| market).
| jijijijij wrote:
| Sometimes the overall trend in quality-of-life improvements
| (democratization, healthcare, education, ...) are attributed to
| capitalism, when in reality almost all of these positive
| developments happened _despite_ the capitalistic influences, at
| best, but usually in grave opposition to it. Capitalism has
| never brought us public infrastructure and education,
| environmental, food and workplace protections, social welfare,
| or universal healthcare. All these have been heavily fought for
| against capitalist interests, paid for with suffering, blood
| and tears. Where regulation is weak, life is hell. Outspoken
| free market absolutists /apologists tend to be people, who
| think of themselves as top predators, entitled to power and
| influence, always privileged, yet sooo unfairly treated in a
| more egalitarian system. (Everybody is gangster until they get
| punched in the face...) I think, these days political economy
| is, contrary to popular belief in entrepreneurial circles,
| mostly in agreement about the dynamics at work here: For the
| general case, free markets don't work without regulation. The
| most important markets (existential goods) are prone to natural
| monopolies.
|
| This shouldn't be surprising really, since profit doesn't
| relate to broader human welfare directly, how could putting
| selective pressure on this single metric directly cause
| prosperity?! It's coincidence or human confounding
| factors/intervention leading to good outcomes, _despite_ any
| free market ideology. Without the causal link, any argument
| about efficiency or stability is void. Ideological capitalism,
| or free market absolutism is the Torment Nexus of Goodhart 's
| Law.
|
| Case in point, while politically we're perpetually negotiating
| the extent of social darwinistic fallout of the capitalistic
| order, knowingly, but below the radar of affect, we're spending
| our planet, our long-term existential foundation three times
| over. Now, you don't need an academically forged "capitalistic
| system" in place to get self-inflicted crisis, as any
| preindustrial culture which transformed their prosperous island
| into desert rock can attest (over-consumption leading to
| terminal erosion), it's the lack of informed regulation in the
| interest of humankind.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| If you think profit doesn't relate to human welfare directly
| then I welcome you to head into any economically depressed
| third world village and turn it into a utopia. Oh wait, you
| can't maintain the sizable bureaucratic structure and
| intellectual workforce when over 90% of the population is
| engaged in subsidence farming by necessity in order to not
| die of starvation.
|
| You quite literally take the productivity of capitalism for
| granted and assume that its products are simply the natural
| state of existence, and that in the absence of the evil
| capitalist you would have instant magical utopias. Such folly
| is like thinking that if you got rid of the evil and heavy
| pollution-spewing engine burdening your car, you would then
| go even faster without any of that pollution. The work being
| performed is vital, even though it is outside of your
| ideologically blinkered willful inability to understand.
|
| The rapid growth of education depended upon capitalism and
| the rise of paper-making and printing operations which
| themselves are dependent upon profit seeking and the price
| discovery mechanisms. More importantly it depended upon there
| being a _market_ for books a middle class which could
| usefully apply those results.
|
| If you find yourself wondering "why didn't revolutionary
| invention X, Y, or Z take off at this period even further in
| the past" the usual answer you get is that they lacked an
| essential prerequisite for its deployment.
| jijijijij wrote:
| You are mixing everything up and honestly seem to be a bit
| hysteric. Nobody rang the red door. Nobody is talking about
| magical utopias. You can calm down and stop barking.
|
| I made an argument for sane regulation and its role in
| history. Since you are not even addressing the direct
| casual relationship and generously conflate capitalism with
| industrialization, I won't engage further.
| enaaem wrote:
| Former libertarian here. One the principals of libertarianism
| is that you cannot do others harm and if you do so you have to
| compensate them. The issue with that idea is risk management.
| How do you compensate someone whose products and services has
| killed or handicapped someone? A life for a life? Bring back
| the Code of Hammurabi?
|
| The best thing we could come up with is that as long as you
| follow a set of risk limiting rules then you will be spared
| from the highest punishment.
| amelius wrote:
| If the toxicity of lead were discovered today, it would have been
| dismissed as a giant conspiracy.
| pjc50 wrote:
| By whom, though? The usual people who dismiss everything as a
| conspiracy? I'm sure there would be a profitable market in
| selling lead products to contrarians, but one of the big
| characteristics of the scientific policy world _since_ lead is
| investigating all the various industrial poisons people have
| been exposed to.
|
| Culminating in the EU "chemicals" regulation which basically
| assumes that everything is unsafe unless proved otherwise.
| xienze wrote:
| > "Many times ... I met men who employed foreign-born labor
| because it was cheap and submissive, and then washed their hands
| of all responsibility," she wrote. "They deliberately chose such
| men because it meant ... a surplus of eager, undemanding labor."
|
| Interesting parallels to today...
| gregwebs wrote:
| Today there is a one woman campaign against lead in consumer
| products by Tamara Rubin. [1] Unfortunately she doesn't know how
| to make a professional looking website and doesn't have a degree
| as a doctor (which would be of no value in her endeavor-
| operating an XRF tester and posting the results). She is however
| trained and certified in performing XRF tests and has probably
| done more XRF testing of consumer products than any other human
| being. Her testing has been verified independently when the CPI
| initiated recalls of for example baby bottles after her initial
| reporting.
|
| I found her information after one of my children tested high for
| lead levels even though there are no lead paint issues in our
| neighborhood.
|
| The highest risk for severe lead contamination is still things
| from our past. Painting can still be dangerous- some houses still
| have original lead paint that has been painted on top of or they
| could have a deck that was painted with marine paint (which is
| still allowed to have lead). Another higher risk level is antique
| dishware.
|
| In modern products lead and other heavy metal contamination
| issues are still somewhat widespread, but thankful at much lower
| levels than in the past- to the point that most people won't test
| high for heavy metals. But unfortunately it's possible to
| accidentally buy the wrong products and get unsafe exposure
| levels.
|
| We only really have safety standards for products marketed to
| kids (e.g. baby bottles). If the same level of contamination
| exists on a small plate that is used by a child, it won't be
| recalled. For consumers it is often impossible to know if there
| is heavy metal contamination in a product. California's Prop 65
| warning often indicates an issue with lead, but the issue could
| just be that the company didn't want to bother testing for lead
| in their product.
|
| I think it is worthwhile to try to transition cookware and
| drinkware towards materials that are known to almost always be
| lead and heavy metal free- Stainless steel, cast iron, and clear
| glass. Additionally, this becomes another reason to eat whole
| foods since the manufacturing processes can also cause low levels
| of contamination.
|
| [1] https://tamararubin.com/
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| Wow! This is a great website. And it looks fine.
|
| And she replies in the comments. Sad quote:
|
| > If you look above in this article there is a list of 49
| things we have tested so far (49/245 published articles, and
| that is going to bump to 55 this week) that have all tested
| safe by the strictest standards - that's about 20%.
|
| https://tamararubin.com/2025/01/daves-killer-bread-thin-slic...
| jollyllama wrote:
| Note that that includes prenatal vitamins. None tested so
| far, including some of the most high-end ones on the market,
| meet the standard.
| pc86 wrote:
| I think the site UX is more a feature than a bug (though
| probably unintentional, regardless).
|
| If she had some super-slick SPA website that looked like a
| million bucks, I'd wonder where her funding was coming from.
| Whether it's true or not, this looks much more like someone who
| doesn't really know what they're doing just threw the site up
| to get the message out and cover her costs w/ some affiliate
| sales. I'm inclined to trust this more than something more
| "professional."
| autoexec wrote:
| > this looks much more like someone who doesn't really know
| what they're doing just threw the site up to get the message
| out
|
| It's a typical wordpress blog. I wouldn't expect someone who
| doesn't really know what they're doing to end up with a
| functional blog full of CSS/JS, with a comment section,
| that's also optimized for performance and SEO
|
| There are some curious design/graphics choices, but we've
| certainly come a long way from what people who didn't really
| know what they were doing were accomplishing on geocities
| (https://geocities.restorativland.org/RainForest/Vines/)
| apt-apt-apt-apt wrote:
| Lead in Sensodyne toothpaste? How does this even happen?
| autoexec wrote:
| corporate greed and a lack of adequate government regulation.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| > some houses still have original lead paint that has been
| painted on top of
|
| I was under the impression that various governmental safety
| bodies said that was safe so long as it remained undisturbed?
| relaxing wrote:
| And then the owners start renovating and disturb it.
| gregwebs wrote:
| It's unlikely to be a truly safe situation since paint wears
| down and chips off. It's most dangerous though whenever there
| is repainting which involves sanding existing paint.
| ender341341 wrote:
| those cases are usually what's called out as when it
| becomes unsafe.
|
| It's safe as long as it's on the wall but chipping needs to
| be addressed and for sanding/demo proper PPE/followup
| cleaning needs to happen. If you maintain the surface
| you're fine as far as any existing testing shows, usually
| you want to just remove any loose chips, clean the surface
| and paint over it so you don't need to deal with more in
| depth remediation.
|
| If you have particularly destructive kids/pets/people
| around you may want to do more.
| leoc wrote:
| Re-reposting this comment
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28502232 by
| https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=heymijo from the 2021 HN
| discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28500508 of this
| Smithsonian article on leaded gasoline
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/leaded-gas-poison-... .
| The MentalFloss article about Clair Patterson is especially good.
| Pasting the comment in full (again, this is heymijo's work not
| mine):
|
| > 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...
| Anotheroneagain wrote:
| _So even when Patterson 's research was published in 1965_
|
| It's a rambling article that provides no real evidence, only
| speculation about future discoveries (which never came) and
| absurd arguments why its concentration is supposed to be
| smaller.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| I would add this video from Veritasium linking lead to 800
| million lost IQ points and an increase in crime...
|
| "The Man Who Accidentally Killed The Most People In History"
|
| https://www.veritasium.com/videos/2022/4/22/the-man-who-acci...
| dmckeon wrote:
| It is worth noting that Midgely was also awarded multiple
| prizes for helping invent Freon, which reduced our earth's
| ozone layer.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr.#Freon
| sweeter wrote:
| If this was today people would say it's your personal right to
| consume lead and use leaded gas (aka freedom fuel) and we'd never
| be able to remove it lol
| elchief wrote:
| and yet
|
| One in Four US Households Likely Exceed New Soil Lead Guidance
| Levels
|
| https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024GH00...
| londons_explore wrote:
| One would probably assume that there are lots of derelict lead
| mines everywhere since the world decided to stop using lead...
|
| Unfortunately, lead mining today is pretty much stable[1], with
| only slight decreases in production volumes.
|
| [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/264871/production-of-
| lea...
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