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

smithsonianmag.com

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

#191

Post by sokoloff »

tialaramex wrote: post #145
xyzzyz wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think most "small charter operations" would be General Aviation (unless I understand what's being chartered here?) and although most GA planes are pistons that's not part of the definition. What matters is why you're flying, not what you fly. The categories (for non-military use) are generally Scheduled or Air Transport (any time you buy tickets for a flight, that's the category, you don't know or care who is…

GA is non-commercial, non-military, non-aerial-work (application, survey, etc). The pilots can be paid employees and have it still be GA. (Your sheik A320 example would be considered GA, not commercial, as would business operators, fractional operators, and of course private operations.)

Don’t confuse the commercial certificate[“license”](which is required to be paid for flying) with commercial operations (typically holding out to the public for air transport).

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

#192

Post by bobthechef »

afavour wrote: post #140
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…

> What nastiness are we subjecting ourselves to today? Maybe an overwrought comparison but I genuinely do feel like we’ll look back on this age of social media and disinformation in the same way we did leaded gas. The people making money knew exactly how dangerous it was and the problems it caused but they did everything in their power to cover it up in the name of profit. Originally it felt like a social annoyance a…

I think there are always people around, more than we care to admit, who will do things they know are bad to make a buck and to wield power (and frankly, most of us, sadly, have a price; look at the widespread participation of people in tech in the aforementioned industries and companies even though they and we all know the bad stuff they're doing). So I wouldn't treat this as some exception. I think people are extremely good at quietly repressing knowledge they're rather not have interfere with their desires.

> this era of vaccine denialism

Not central to your point, but this isn't really that widespread. 98% of Americans have the full regime of vaccines. The whole "antivax" scare is largely fiction and has been whipped by journalists afraid of people asking questions. Now, where the covid vaccine is concerned, that's different. People who aren't skeptical of vaccines qua vaccines are skeptical about this particular vaccine or whatever you want to call it because of the obscene level of politicization around it masquerading as "science". So I wouldn't conflate the two.

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

#193

Post by dehrmann »

nemacol wrote: post #155
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…

>What nastiness are we subjecting ourselves to today? Among the list of nasty things we are doing, fracking stands out. Fresh water is scarce in much of the world. Ground water is drying up and massive aquafers are eroding. Simultaneously we are pumping cancer directly in the ground, breaking up rocks, and mixing the cancer stuck in the rocks into the ground water. Pumping that cancer back out and ... god only knows…

> though I have never had it tested.

Unless neighbors had theirs tested, there's no reason to assume there are issues with your well's water quality or that fracking caused them. Testing it if you plan on using it again is reasonable, though.

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

#194

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

pope_meat wrote: post #115
throwawayboise wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 50% of Americans don't hold stock in any form Maybe we should address that problem -- it's one of the best long term ways for anyone to build wealth. Why aren't we educating people about this in school?

It's not really a matter of education, I'm in the bottom 50% and after rent and bills I'm left with very little. It's a highly competitive system, with winners and losers.

Wouldn’t something like requiring their employers to pay into a pension fund that is invested in a safe mix of stocks and other assets allow more of the population to share in corporate profits? (Ignoring social security for the moment, but assuming the policy was implemented as a similar sort of thing; but perhaps not as a deduction from the nominal wage).

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

#195

Post by nate_meurer »

jabl wrote: post #180
nate_meurer wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a myth. Lead has no lubricative value in engines, and in fact causes damage. From https://www.shell.com/business-customers/aviation/aeroshell/... : "The temperature for Lead deposits to form tend to be favourable around the spark plugs (as the whole mixture is quite cool before the flame starts to propagate) and on the exhaust valve stem (as the mixture cools after combustion). The problem is that the deposit…

Late in WWII very high octane 115/145 aviation gasoline (read: lots and lots of TEL) became available for Allied frontline fighters, giving a performance boost. When cruising, pilots had to periodically rush the engines to full power in order to burn off the lead deposits on the spark plugs. And the spark plugs had to be replaced after every flight.

Wow, I didn't know that. The engine in my favorite airplane (Fairchild P-47) had 36 spark plugs. That's a hell of a maintenance requirement.

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

#196

Post by ijidak »

bmitc wrote: post #64
Symmetry wrote: post #3

I've got a sneaking suspicion we ought to go through everything else Thomas MIdgley Jr. invented and ban it, just to be sure. Leaded gas, CFCs, and the contraption he killed himself with is a worrying pattern. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr .

> However, within the first two months of its operation, the new plant was plagued by more cases of lead poisoning, hallucinations, insanity, and five deaths. > On October 30, 1924, Midgley participated in a press conference to demonstrate the apparent safety of TEL, in which he poured TEL over his hands, placed a bottle of the chemical under his nose, and inhaled its vapor for 60 seconds, declaring that he could do…

> Environmental historian J. R. McNeill opined that Midgley "had more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth's history"

I can't stop laughing when I read this.

But it is shocking that one human can have such an impact on Earth.

It's actually kind of scary.

What's to stop the next nut, perhaps in a country outside the reach of international law, from causing the same?

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

#197

Post by nitrogen »

R0b0t1 wrote: post #42
bombcar wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Military planes just kerosene/JP-8 which contains no lead as far as I know.

The fuel itself is toxic to the environment and animals. The fuels can have really harsh things in them like benzene, iirc.

Not too different from ordinary gasoline.

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

#198

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

eutectic wrote: post #152
LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 differ…

Organic compounds burn up, lead just accumulates.

You're free to inhale as much as you want to.

It's just something I won't do.

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

#199

Post by kubanczyk »

thatguy0900 wrote: post #40
sircastor wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neil deGrasse Tyson said in an episode of Cosmos that even the Romans understood lead was dangerous, but it was a convenient metal to work with, so they used it anyway

Roman's also knew asbestos was bad. It was well documented that sending a slave to work in asbestos mines meant they would get lung sickness, and some slaves tried using masks made of pig bladder when mining.

Citation needed. Seems that the few available Roman primary sources do not support it: Rachel Maines "Asbestos and Fire" pp. 27-28 https://books.google.com/books?id=5r2jEGLvxP4C&pg=PA28

AFAIK work in any Roman mine was considered a death sentence in the long run.

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

#200

Post by jdgoesmarching »

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #190
wpietri wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's a strawman. There's literally no-one on earth saying "I should be free to do as I want regardless of harm to others".

“I should be free to profit regardless of harm to others.”

Better?

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