Only piston-engined aircraft use leaded gas. That rules out almost 100% of commercial passenger and military aviation.
Unlikely that there's enough of this type of exposure to be a real factor. Even this study finds that it affects children living within 500m of a civilian airport and that the level of lead detected was "not especially large."
There may be an argument for phasing out leaded avgas, as no amount of lead exposure is good, but it's not likely to have an impact on overall violence in an area, even assuming that lead has anything to do with that in the first place.
Over the last 25 years lead has been phased out of paint, automobile gas and plumbing fixtures, but aviation gasoline, or "Avgas" remains leaded and is the number one source of airborne lead in the United States [0].
It frustrates me that the primary source of airborne lead stems from a mostly recreational source. Most planes that use Avgas are privately owned piston-engine/prop planes.
Most planes don't need leaded gas. Jet-A / Diesel etc can also be used in planes. And yes, I understand small, old GA planes may be impacted, but this has been on the radar for decades now.
This comment makes me think you don't actually understand the situation. The vast majority of aviation fuel used IS Jet-A, which does not contain lead.
Small piston engine general aviation aircraft are the only ones that use leaded gas, and most of those can not use anything else that exists currently.
I too have a pregnant wife and a young child, but I worry far, far more about residual lead paint exposure than I do about avgas. Both get tested regularly and show no detectable levels (<2ug/dL), so that makes me feel like the risk exposure is acceptable. Yes, your quote about "no known safe level" is true, but at undetectable levels I'm confident it's in the noise along with all other environmental factors we don't know about.
If you're worried about lead exposure, are you testing?
> Sources outside the home include avgas which is the largest source for lead in the atmosphere
In the atmosphere, sure (as it is not naturally occurring in the air). But how large is this source? And what harm does it actually cause?
There are indications that the levels of lead around airports are very low - even the article linked said that ~2.5% of children around the airport had "detectable" levels of lead. But it doesn't provide enough data to tell if the contamination came from the air. If this was significant, wouldn't many more children around the airport have high (not only detectable) levels of lead? Everyone has to breathe, but not everyone has the same contamination sources.
From Wikipedia:
> Final results from EPA's lead modeling study at the Santa Monica Airport shows off-airport levels below current 150 ng/m3 and possible future 20 ng/m3 levels.[108] Fifteen of 17 airports monitored during a year-long study in the US by the EPA have lead emissions well below the current National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for lead.[109]
To be safe, obviously we want to reduce all exposure to zero.
Avgas was changed in formulation to reduce lead.
There are alternatives to avgas - in Europe, avgas is already hard to find. Automotive gasoline conversions are available for some widely used engines. The problem is that you can't just take it to a shop and covert it - the airplane was originally certified with one engine type. If it is changed, it is no longer certified. No company is willing to eat the costs to re-certify - for the planes that are still in production. Let alone planes made by companies that no longer exist.
In the 'experimental' category, there are many types of engines that can directly burn either avgas or "mogas".
Some manufacturers, like Diamond, can use "jet fuel" (essentially, diesel) in their piston engines (as they have their own engines, based on diesel car engines). But even they will have avgas-burning versions (with Lycoming engines) for the US market.
Then you have competing agencies dragging their feet. There's the EPA, which should be issuing regulations. Then there's the FAA that needs to come up with a solution with the certification issue - they are pretty underfunded so it's unlikely they will. One agency points the finger to the other, none take action. I'm probably missing other agencies. There are alternatives in development - without a full government push, progress is slow.
Meanwhile, planes (and many helicopters) in the US keep spewing lead. Many of which provide important services.
Is there any correlation now between violence and proximity of airports? Aviation still uses leaded gas, and there have been studies finding that children near airports have elevated lead levels [1].
The article says that lead in aviation fuels (and in solder) is a far smaller contribution to current lead levels than remaining lead paint. In the grand scheme of things, there just isn't that much avgas used, and it gets dispersed widely as opposed to concentrated where people live.
I think the real problem is the big aviation piston engine companies (e.g. Lycoming and Continental) that seem to have no incentive to develop modern engines that can run on unleaded fuel. Newer engine manufacturers (e.g. Rotax, Jabiru) run fine on auto fuel, but they have a much smaller market. (It's sort of ironic that users of those engines, who should not be run on leaded gas, have a hard time finding unleaded gas at airports in the US.)
Yeah, while there's no "safe" level of lead ingestion, not only do we not use leaded gas in cars, commercial aviation (with very few exceptions) does not use it either, and the private/general aviation piston-engine planes are emitting it several thousand feet in the air, not at street level around houses and people. We should get rid of lead in aviation fuel, but it's not a substantial source of environmental lead these days.
Adults and children in the US today today are still being poisoned by leaded fuel. Aviation fuel, or "Avgas" is still leaded, and is a major problem around municipal airports. Leaded aviation fuel is used by planes which use internal combustion engines instead of cleaner, more powerful, and more expensive jet engines. Most of these small planes are for personal use.
In 2011, 483 tons of lead were emitted so a small group of prosperous people can enjoy private air travel. EPA data from the same year shows airports as the top source of lead emissions in 42 states [0].
I think the costs of lead abatement should be included in the price of AvGas, or its use should be discontinued entirely.
[0] U.S. EPA. Calculating Piston-Engine Aircraft Airport Inventories for Lead for the 2011 National Emissions Inventory. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, EPA-420-B-13-040, 2013. Page 5
There are also piston powered diesels that burn either jet-A or regular automotive diesel, neither of which have lead. They are becoming more common.
Leaded avgas is for older gasoline piston aircraft. There’s still many around but overall it’s not that significant and is slowly on its way out. The exhaust is mostly released high in altitude where there is ample time for extreme dilution.
The concern is mostly for people who work at small airports, live near them, or work with these aircraft as mechanics etc.
I think there’s an unleaded 100 octane formulation in testing that will probably replace leaded gas but the general aviation industry is small and slow moving.
> Public safety agencies, however, which account for one-quarter of piston-engine planes registered with the Federal Aviation Administration, are “likely to consume more than half of all the avgas used by the fleet,” according to the January National Academy of Sciences report. These agencies often include law enforcement and firefighting aircraft that need to reliably stay aloft through rapid changes in temperature, pressure and altitude. Personal and recreational flyers make up the remaining three-quarters of planes and consume the other half of leaded gas.
So roughly 50% of the leaded fuel is used in personal/leisure flights in the US. I wouldn't consider the other 50% anywhere close to "the vast majority", and from the source, and it's largely safety and rescue.
Moreover, demand is expexted to grow precisely because of leisure and high net-worth personal use[0].
Now, unless you include business trips of rich people as "money making business", there are very few commercial fights otherwise, serving mostly remote, low demand areas.
Leaded fuel is still used in av gas for small planes. Avgas 100 has a high lead content.
Where I live there is a secondary airport that mostly flies Cessna's etc where people go to learn to fly.
It's surrounded by residential and depending where you live planes every three minutes endlessly doing circuits, quite low in some places. At one stage I think it was the busiest airport in the world.
I avoid living in the suburbs under the approach, seems to be a dirty secret about the fuel.
Children living close to the airport serving leaded avgas were found to have a small but tangible increase in blood lead levels. General aviation itself has been on the decline for the past few decades and alternative fuel seems to be finally getting approved at last, so the problem seems to be a well managed one.
For the public it's a relatively minor issue except where you have both high levels of traffic and low level flights of the kinds of planes that use leaded av gas. Without that combination the effect on real gas levels are minor. Ideally we have no lead emissions of course but the effects are tiny if you don't have those two factors.
It's scary to think that the transition to unleaded aviation fuel, or avgas, only began a couple years ago, and is scheduled for 2018 [0].
Currently, Avgas, which is different than jet fuel in that it's mainly used by private single-engine planes (ICE instead of turbine), can still contain up to 2.12 grams of lead per gallon [1]. Surprisingly, this 2.12 grams of lead/gal is termed 100LL, for 100-octane "low-lead". Up until the 1970's avgas could contain up to 4 grams of lead per gallon.
I believe that lead exposure caused by the widespread use of avgas is a serious public health concern. Unfortunately most private plane owners are strongly against it due to the higher price of unleaded fuel. I really hope that the EPA succeeds in meeting their deadline.
Continued use of leaded avgas is unacceptable, and frankly we've known that it's unacceptable for decades. It's surprising that only now are jurisdictions that contain airports where it's used realizing that they have the power to solve the problem on a local scale by banning those airports from operating, but it's not surprising or unreasonable that they're choosing to do so now that they've realized the problem exists.
If a plane can't be safely flown without leaded avgas, that just means it can't be safely flown. The foot-dragging on this topic is unbelievably shameful on the part of everyone involved, but particularly the FAA. If this kills general aviation, so be it, I'm sure it will light a fire under a lot of asses to get some new airframes and engines certified. If a couple 10s of people die in airplane crashes before all of the kinks are ironed out, so be that as well. That's a trivial amount of harm compared to the harm of airdropping lead on children, and unlike the victims of leaded avgas, everyone who gets in a personal aircraft voluntarily accepts the risks.
AvGas is only used by small, piston powered aircraft.
Jets fly on Jet-A which is basically high-grade kerosene and AFAIK, lead free.
The only airports that could be giving off lead would be very busy, general aviation airports like Van Nuys, not commercial airports like LAX or JFK. Even then, the effect is barely detectable.
True but leaded fuel for cars has been eliminated years ago. So this is now a major remaining source of environmental lead especially around small airports.
I used to fly 172s and I worried about inhaling the lead fumes and getting sprayed with it during the fuel drain checks. Lead exposure is cumulative and can lead to serious neurological problems later in life. And I've already had a fair share with my electronics hobby (soldering)
Yes and there's some areas near popular flight schools with significantly elevated lead levels because there are constantly planes flying overhead using leaded Avgas. It was a special carveout because recertifying every engine that was designed to use leaded gas is a pretty big lift and has significantly higher safety implications when the engine is in a plane instead of a car. It is only for some types of engines but those are more common on the older more affordable planes.
Unlikely that there's enough of this type of exposure to be a real factor. Even this study finds that it affects children living within 500m of a civilian airport and that the level of lead detected was "not especially large."
There may be an argument for phasing out leaded avgas, as no amount of lead exposure is good, but it's not likely to have an impact on overall violence in an area, even assuming that lead has anything to do with that in the first place.
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