Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016) • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by s1artibartfast » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 9:27 PM UTC

ck2 wrote: post #42

mh- wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. For others reading this though: virtually all piston-engine GA aircraft in the US today are still burning 100LL (leaded), and there are nearly 200,000 of them actively flying. There is a timeline to transition to UL, but very low collective confidence it'll happen by the 2030 goal. edit: to the commenter that fired off the reactionary reply and deleted it before I could help you. No, not because "[rich peopl…

the amount of lead that is acceptable is ZERO ZERO, thirty years ago when there was definitive proof is it forever and irreversible all lead exhaust aircraft should have been phased out a decade ago if not two decades ago if they cannot be converted again, there is no acceptable amount, imagine it being sprayed on you, your car, everywhere your body tries to process it like calcium and stores it forever how much dama…

You say that like it is a fact.

The acceptable amount of lead is non-zero, just like the acceptable level of deaths are non-zero.

The amount of lead I am willing to expose my family to so that prop planes can keep flying is also non-zero.

That doesnt mean progress cant be made on the issue.

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

#102

Post by b-kf » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 9:28 PM UTC

embedding-shape wrote: post #33

louky wrote: post #11

The major proponent was also known as Thomas Midgley Jr.: Accidentally The Most Dangerous Man Who Ever Lived[0] Leaded gas, CFCs, and accidentally created a machine that ended his own existence.[1] [0] https://allthatsinteresting.com/thomas-midgley-jr [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr .

I had one purple link on that second Wikipedia page, which (macabre as it sounds) was very interesting to read through: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_inventors_killed_by_th... Also leads to another great list-of-lists; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_unusual_deaths

Even more macabre (I should not admit to this publically...): I can't help but find this one (from your first link) quite... hilarious https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Reichelt.ogv

Elaborate contraption, jumps, falls like a stone, is dead. The end.

Imaginary person: "But he had balls and believed in his own theories."

Me: "Ehm but... how difficult would it have been to throw a wooden puppet instead... or run scaled down experiments first,... than to just immediately jump..."

And Edit: He did run dummy experiments and they clearly showed he shouldn't have jumped https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Reichelt#Experiments

Edit 2: That article is very interesting, regarding the jump: "Initial reports speculated on Reichelt's state of mind: none assumed he had been suicidal, but many called him discombobulated in the brain. [...] interview with one of his friends, who claimed that the tailor had felt pressured into giving a dramatic demonstration to attract sponsors, without whom he could not expect to make a profit before any patent expired." (So human nature at play. Financial pressure, wanting to will something to work, guts in the wrong places. An heroic last ditch stunt, combined with a not quite sane state of mind)

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

#103

Post by jghn » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 9:30 PM UTC

edelbitter wrote: post #75

jghn wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asbestos gets a bit of a bad rap. There's an enormous difference from e.g. asbestos tiles and siding in a house vs loose clumps of insulation at mass scale in large factories and such. But at some point people decided that any asbestos was an immediate ticket to mesothelioma and had to eradicate it altogether.

I guess some forms of asbestos are fine to use in residential development.. as long as houses never burn or get damaged in earthquakes or suffer flood damage or need extensive renovations.. and as long as we do not care about some unimportant landscapes and river systems in (ideally, canada or russia or something of the sort) and all of its current and future inhabitants.

Even then, it's overblown. The fibers embedded in the cement siding that was common for a while as an example, that's just never going to be friable to a degree that matters. Not to mention the issue is really more of a long term exposure thing. You'd need to be quite an unlucky person to take one whiff of some asbestos fibers and get mesothelioma decades later.

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

#104

Post by jaapz » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 9:34 PM UTC

vorticalbox wrote: post #71

hunmernop wrote: post #70

Gas itself is poison. Just take a deep huff at the gas station. EVs are the only way to go. At least the pollution is localized, not down every inner city street with exhaust and other vapors.

Maybe you can enlighten me. My question that once you mined the materials for the car + battery, shipped that somewhere to be built, then shipped that to be sold. Then you have the added waste battery once it not longer hold enough charge. Is it actually better for the environment? If we add all this extra pull on the grid we need to generate the power for that too.

Yes, electric cars are better for the environment over their entire lifespan. And yes clean energy will be needed to power them.

ICE's are actually shockingly bad at efficiently converting fossil fuel into movement. They mostly produce waste heat and exhaust gasses.

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

#105

Post by Onavo » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 9:51 PM UTC

aidenn0 wrote: post #92

aftbit wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it, a big part of the problem is that the general aviation market is too small to justify the expense of getting new designs certified. Also, it seems baked into the regulations that the old design was "good enough", so it still is today, even though technology has moved on. When people are building experimental class piston airplanes with better features, reliability, and performance than the certifi…

I believe liability is an issue too. In aviation (as compared with autos) the manufacturer is often found partially liable for an accident, so they can be on the hook even if it was mostly the fault of the operator.

It's worse now, people are doing "51% Build Assists" (most famously Vans and Sling aircraft) to save money where the factory would give you an IKEA plane kit and you will maybe put in a few screws and decals and install the avionics panel and you will sit in the room and watch them assemble the rest of the plane "under your supervision". Then the whole thing will get penciled whipped as an Experimental Owner-Built aircraft and if anything goes wrong it's entirely the fault of the owner and not the factory, because the layman hundred hour PPL pilot is supposed to be a master of aerospace engineering.

I think MOSAIC is the only thing the FAA got right in the recent years when it comes to general aviation.

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

#106

Post by vorticalbox » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 9:55 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #91

vorticalbox wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you can enlighten me. My question that once you mined the materials for the car + battery, shipped that somewhere to be built, then shipped that to be sold. Then you have the added waste battery once it not longer hold enough charge. Is it actually better for the environment? If we add all this extra pull on the grid we need to generate the power for that too.

This is a very stale set of talking points.

Uninformed maybe, I’ve not looked into it as Evs not high my list of things to read about hence the questions that came to mind.

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

#107

Post by vorticalbox » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 9:57 PM UTC

wolvoleo wrote: post #93

vorticalbox wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you can enlighten me. My question that once you mined the materials for the car + battery, shipped that somewhere to be built, then shipped that to be sold. Then you have the added waste battery once it not longer hold enough charge. Is it actually better for the environment? If we add all this extra pull on the grid we need to generate the power for that too.

Lithium batteries can be recycled really well. That's why there's so much effort going into tracking them. So they don't end up in a landfill.

That’s good to know. This was one of my thoughts.

If the evs end up generating a tonne of material that we can’t do anything with that would be a short term gain.

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

#108

Post by vorticalbox » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 9:59 PM UTC

kevstev wrote: post #73

vorticalbox wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you can enlighten me. My question that once you mined the materials for the car + battery, shipped that somewhere to be built, then shipped that to be sold. Then you have the added waste battery once it not longer hold enough charge. Is it actually better for the environment? If we add all this extra pull on the grid we need to generate the power for that too.

Is this a real question? ICE cars have a battery too.

Sure Is! I’m largely uninformed on the topic. Asking questions even stupid ones means you get to not be stupid after.

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

#109

Post by Onavo » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 10:00 PM UTC

schmookeeg wrote: post #82

Onavo wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A better way would be to switch to mogas and authorize cheap fuel system retrofits and maybe mandate dual FADECs on engines similar to the ADS B requirements. Your modern general aviation pistons can easily handle mogas. An even better way would been to encourage the migration to turbines and deprecate pistons entirely. Jet A (diesel) for the win. The new turbotechs regenerative turbines are a lot more reliable (3000…

I actually hope the turbotech holds up under actual use. I'd love to toss my IO-550Cs for Jet-A.

Ah, a Skywagon enjoyer?

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

#110

Post by marcosdumay » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 10:01 PM UTC

edelbitter wrote: post #75

jghn wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asbestos gets a bit of a bad rap. There's an enormous difference from e.g. asbestos tiles and siding in a house vs loose clumps of insulation at mass scale in large factories and such. But at some point people decided that any asbestos was an immediate ticket to mesothelioma and had to eradicate it altogether.

I guess some forms of asbestos are fine to use in residential development.. as long as houses never burn or get damaged in earthquakes or suffer flood damage or need extensive renovations.. and as long as we do not care about some unimportant landscapes and river systems in (ideally, canada or russia or something of the sort) and all of its current and future inhabitants.

Asbestos in safe forms does not become dangerous from fire or earthquake or flood damage.

It does becomes dangerous from badly done demolition work. And they are harmful to the people mining and manufacturing them.

But for a long while, almost every material was extremely harmful for the people mining and manufacturing them. It really took a while to determine that asbestos is actually worse than fiberglass or gypsum.