Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016)

smithsonianmag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 428 posts

Re: Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016)

#121

Post by R0b0t1 »

jrockway wrote: post #110
R0b0t1 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those problems were solved for cars, they can be solved for planes. We shouldn't use it. Bioaccumulation of heavy metals was understood very early. Everything has a cost, spraying lead everywhere should be higher than what we are willing to pay. I am guessing it's still allowed because people who fly planes can afford to lobby. I was astounded to find TEL was still allowed in aviation fuels. Rates of cancers etc are…

> Rates of cancers etc are higher near military bases due to fuel handling incidents. Avgas is only used in piston engines, and the military mostly flies turbines, which use ordinary jet fuel (which does not contain lead). They have some , but I think if you told the military "jets and turboprops only" it wouldn't be a big problem. (Not sure how they would train new pilots, however.) If you're looking for disease/dam…

Jet fuel is carcinogenic and causes other problems, I didn't say this was just about lead.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/973128/ as an example.

Re: Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016)

#122

Post by matheusmoreira »

air7 wrote: post #6

> The most compelling option was actually ethanol. But from the perspective of GM, Kitman wrote, ethanol wasn’t an option. It couldn’t be patented and GM couldn’t control its production. And oil companies like Du Pont "hated it," he wrote, perceiving it to be a threat to their control of the internal combustion engine. I'm generally an avid beliver in free markets as an agent for positive change, so these types of "r…

> perceiving it to be a threat to their control of the internal combustion engine

Absolutely. In my country, the engines of nearly all cars run on any mix of gasoline and ethanol. I always have the option to choose. I've even seen cars running on natural gas, seems to be the only thing keeping things profitable for Uber drivers these days.

Corporations should have no control over anything to begin with. Monopolists ruin everything. The damage they've done to the western world cannot be calculated.

> What governing system would have mass produced ethenol as the best antiknocker with no regard to the interests of top players?

My country did that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_Brazil

Re: Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016)

#123

Post by ByteJockey »

wpietri wrote: post #26
warning26 wrote: post #2

Interesting, I had assumed they just didn’t know that lead was bad back then. What’s even weirder is how there are still people today who insist that banning leaded gasoline was an key example of government overreach. Someone once was arguing this point to me and I just had to drop the topic because it was such a baffling stance.

America has two radically different concepts of freedom that travel under the same name. Both start with "I should be free to do as I want". One ends with "as long as I don't harm others". The other ends with "regardless of harm to others". You were dealing with the latter. It of course sounds insane when you say it baldly like this, which is why it rarely gets stated openly. But a lot of traditional societal structu…

There's also an entire spectrum of what constitutes "enough" harm to others to be limited (in addition to how direct the harm is).

Re: Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016)

#124

Post by [deleted] »

air7 wrote: post #6

> The most compelling option was actually ethanol. But from the perspective of GM, Kitman wrote, ethanol wasn’t an option. It couldn’t be patented and GM couldn’t control its production. And oil companies like Du Pont "hated it," he wrote, perceiving it to be a threat to their control of the internal combustion engine. I'm generally an avid beliver in free markets as an agent for positive change, so these types of "r…

[deleted]

Re: Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016)

#125

Post by tialaramex »

R0b0t1 wrote: post #28
Aloha wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TEL (tetraethyl lead) had and has other advantages over ethanol beyond patentability - Unlike TEL, ethanol is hydrophilic, which makes gasoline blended with it more apt to be contaminated with water, and other water containing contaminants, this is particularly relevant for aviation uses and also reducing incidences of vapor lock. TEL is also (more) rubber and seal friendly, other than the (very) high risk of lead to…

Those problems were solved for cars, they can be solved for planes. We shouldn't use it. Bioaccumulation of heavy metals was understood very early. Everything has a cost, spraying lead everywhere should be higher than what we are willing to pay. I am guessing it's still allowed because people who fly planes can afford to lobby. I was astounded to find TEL was still allowed in aviation fuels. Rates of cancers etc are…

Politically the rationale is likely that this constituency is small and so forcing them will have a relatively small benefit compared to the main policy goal; but they really care. If you fly a piston prop, you likely don't have $1M spare (you could use that to trade your piston plane for a small jet) for Washington lobbyists, but you do have a vote and you care about banning the only fuel you are authorised to use enough that you're going to use that vote and you're going to be loud about it.

A previous article about Leaded Petrol caused me to read how the UK exempted some very old cars which could not be effectively modified. There's actually a waiver so that, in theory, every fuel station in the country can do paperwork to get a small amount of leaded gasoline (a tiny fraction of their total fuel sales) and sell it for this purpose. The politicians were thus able to tell their constituents we did not screw you, just ask your local supplier to set aside fuel for you.

But economics does the rest, at first those retailers see sales of leaded fuel are very low. Those who love classics maybe decide to set aside the option for a year or two and see how it goes, everybody else stops selling leaded fuel. The wholesalers now see that sales of leaded fuel are tiny, so they don't bother making it, it becomes a special order, which then further increases the pressure not to bother stocking it. Today enthusiasts will just mail order the lead additive and pour it into their tank after a refill or they use a substitute additive which these days works well enough, the politicians didn't have to lift a finger.

Re: Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016)

#126

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

Aloha wrote: post #100
bleachedsleet wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will be over, but it’s not over yet. Your link says that it will both take a while for it to come to market and also be more expensive to produce…an expense that will likely be balked at by the airlines until forced to use it at which point it will be the customers that pay.

Airlines (outside of bush planes) are not using AvGas in any substantive quantity, and have not been since the early 60's. The amount of AvGas used a year is dwarfed (several times over) by the amount of Jet Fuel (Jet A does not have TEL in it). AvGas (which uses TEL) is used by general aviation exclusively.

That doesn't make jet fuel any better. Just search for 'Toxicologic assessment' or 'profile of jet fuel' and focus on the 'A1',

which is the one used for commercial aviation.

Then there is the elephant in the room nobody wants to talk about, the military which is using the 'JP-X' variants all over the world,

some of them even for their cars and trucks, because, hey, it's just better Diesel, why would we stock different fuels if we don't have to?

What a logistic nightmare!1!!

Re: Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016)

#127

Post by xyzzyz »

Aloha wrote: post #100
bleachedsleet wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will be over, but it’s not over yet. Your link says that it will both take a while for it to come to market and also be more expensive to produce…an expense that will likely be balked at by the airlines until forced to use it at which point it will be the customers that pay.

Airlines (outside of bush planes) are not using AvGas in any substantive quantity, and have not been since the early 60's. The amount of AvGas used a year is dwarfed (several times over) by the amount of Jet Fuel (Jet A does not have TEL in it). AvGas (which uses TEL) is used by general aviation exclusively.

For people not familiar with terminology, “general aviation” does not mean “regular airplanes”, but, to a first approximation, “small piston-engined airplanes”, operated by hobbyists or small charter operations.

Re: Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016)

#128

Post by garavanting »

pyrale wrote: post #94
air7 wrote: post #6

> The most compelling option was actually ethanol. But from the perspective of GM, Kitman wrote, ethanol wasn’t an option. It couldn’t be patented and GM couldn’t control its production. And oil companies like Du Pont "hated it," he wrote, perceiving it to be a threat to their control of the internal combustion engine. I'm generally an avid beliver in free markets as an agent for positive change, so these types of "r…

> Perhaps the government should open companies [...] that are good for the people but bad for business? Perhaps the government should close companies that are good for business but bad for the people instead. In France after WW2, the companies that had participated in the German war effort, or to collaborate were simply confistated. When I see this kind of revelation, which show a complete breakage of corporate overs…

>I wonder whether the easiest solution may be to void existing stocks, have the government take over the board and re-auction the company once the management structure has been cleared.

That's precisely what Norway did in its own financial crisis:

>In the last years of the 1980s, there was a major financial crisis in Norway and by 1991 the bank had used up all capital. To save the bank, the Government of Norway took over the bank and gave it new capital, rescuing it from bankruptcy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christiania_Bank

It's a good idea: the shareholders, who boast that their returns come from the risk they're taking, should bear that risk. If the business is too big to fail, well, then it should just be brought under government control when it would otherwise fail.

Re: Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016)

#129

Post by xyzzyz »

formerly_proven wrote: post #62
letitbeirie wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kerosene/JP-8 is great in a jet but it's not going to get you very far in a piston prop.

There is no particular reason why you can't put a diesel engine in a plane and indeed there are a number of diesel engines certified for just that.

There are few technical reasons, to be sure, but there are plenty of economic and business reasons. The most popular engines in general aviation are Continental/Lycoming ones, and these are based on what, 50+ years old basic designs? Automotive industry have developed significantly better piston engines in last few decades, in terms of power to weight ratio, fuel efficiency, MTBF and service interval. However, the nature of the field, its relative niche quality, and regulatory framework make it difficult to adapt and adopt them in general aviation. There has been recent attempt to do it, with diesel engines from German automotive industry, but they are facing a lot of very real problems, for example, lack of maintenance infrastructure.

Re: Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016)

#130

Post by 3grdlurker »

paulkrush wrote: post #91

I guess we live on the shoulders of nastiness and things get better. So TEL was part of our boot sequence. What nastiness are we subjecting ourselves to today? BTW: The guy that invented TEL also invented CFCs! See Thomas Midgley Jr: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr . This guy who invents awesome working chemicals that are tragically bad for people on a worldwide scale manages to exit life dues to his…

I can only wish that more people realized that we didn’t have to start with something so destructive before we could “get better eventually”.
Post reply on HN