The fatal attraction of lead
bbc.com
The fatal attraction of lead
1–10 of 73 posts
Re: The fatal attraction of lead
#2In Romania they used to still use lead plumbing until the early 2000s! As a kid, I loved that stuff, so maleable, you could do so many things from it, and it melted so easily. I loved to melt it and cast into into various shapes.
Re: The fatal attraction of lead
#3I wonder if leaded gasoline is playing any kind of role in the continued unrest in the Middle East? FTA:
Chronic lead exposure causes depression, headaches, aggression and memory loss. ....
[M]any academics now believe leaded petrol was responsible for a global crime wave that peaked in the 1990s. ...
Amazingly, a handful of countries - Iraq, Yemen, Burma, North Korea - continue to use leaded petrol.
Re: The fatal attraction of lead
#4Surprisingly, the fuel used in piston-powered aircraft generally still contains lead: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avgas
Wikipedia says that the amount of lead in 100LL avgas is "about 4 times what was in pre-1975 leaded automotive grade gasoline."
As a private pilot, yes I do feel a bit guilty that my hobby adds lead to the environment ...
Re: The fatal attraction of lead
#5I'm still impressed by the seemingly high correlation between gasoline lead exposure and violent crimes.
Re: The fatal attraction of lead
#6Surprisingly, the fuel used in piston-powered aircraft generally still contains lead: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avgas Wikipedia says that the amount of lead in 100LL avgas is "about 4 times what was in pre-1975 leaded automotive grade gasoline." As a private pilot, yes I do feel a bit guilty that my hobby adds lead to the environment ...
Thankfully, the general aviation industry in the US is moving away from leaded avgas.
http://www.aopa.org/News-and-Video/All-News/2014/September/0...
Re: The fatal attraction of lead
#7And it tastes so so sweet...
When my friends and I were children we found pieces of lead while dumpster diving. Probably 5 pounds of it. We taught ourselves how to make plaster-of-paris molds and tried to counterfeit the most important thing to us - video game tokens from the local arcade.
We made only a handful of tokens before we realized the effort was more than the payoff. We had to rebuild the mold each time and break it with a hammer to pull out the token.
We never even tried the tokens. And I think the lead fumes from melting it on a bunsen burner from my Christmas chemistry set probably didn't help us in the long run...
Making nitrogen tri-iodide in high-school had a much better payoff, even if we had to steal the solid iodine from the chemistry class supply closet. This was before the internet and so we learned this one from the anarchist's cookbook. My cat hated walking in the basement after each batch.
Did anyone else experience the purple acrid smoke at the back of your throat?
Re: The fatal attraction of lead
#8Surprisingly, the fuel used in piston-powered aircraft generally still contains lead: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avgas Wikipedia says that the amount of lead in 100LL avgas is "about 4 times what was in pre-1975 leaded automotive grade gasoline." As a private pilot, yes I do feel a bit guilty that my hobby adds lead to the environment ...
A large proportion of piston-powered aircraft are relatively old — many are general aviation aircraft, and the hours put on the airframes are small compared with most commercial aircraft, so most predate the ban of leaded automotive fuel.
There's a lot of resistance to changing anything around aviation, especially when it comes to engines. Many (or most?) piston-powered aircraft are single-engined aircraft, where a single failure makes the plane a glider.
Re: The fatal attraction of lead
#9Surprisingly, the fuel used in piston-powered aircraft generally still contains lead: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avgas Wikipedia says that the amount of lead in 100LL avgas is "about 4 times what was in pre-1975 leaded automotive grade gasoline." As a private pilot, yes I do feel a bit guilty that my hobby adds lead to the environment ...
Piston aircraft operate under more challenging conditions and many old craft even have a manual fuelmix adjuster on the dash. I EXPECT detonation resistance to be a much bigger deal for them
Re: The fatal attraction of lead
#10I'm still impressed by the seemingly high correlation between gasoline lead exposure and violent crimes.
Mother Jones had a very interesting story about the topic a while ago:
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-li...