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

61–70 of 147 posts

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

#61

Post by flaunf221 »

gertop wrote: post #51
flaunf221 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Most Dangerous Man Who Ever Lived The titles like annoy me to no end. Because Thomas Midgley was an engineer. Not overlord of General Motors. Not director. Not even a large shaholder. GM Leadership knew effects of TEL. And for decades traded everyone's health for their profits. Midgley is complicit, but he's just a small piece.

People who absolve engineers of all responsibility annoy me to no end. They're omnipresent on this forum and justify working for Facebook with things like "not my decision" or "someone else would do it" or "it's not that bad you just don't understand" or "I'm just following orders"

Good thing I didn't absolve him of "all responsibility" and even wrote explicitly that he is complicit.

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

#62

Post by dalyons »

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…

personally i think we should just stop selling the leaded version, tomorrow. alternatives exist, update your planes or dont fly, but no more leaded fuel.

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

#65

Post by jjk166 »

hyperhello wrote: post #54
gertop wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who absolve engineers of all responsibility annoy me to no end. They're omnipresent on this forum and justify working for Facebook with things like "not my decision" or "someone else would do it" or "it's not that bad you just don't understand" or "I'm just following orders"

People who say annoy me to no end annoy me no end. They’re different phrases.

They are not different phrases. "Annoy to no end" is the American English version while "annoy no end" is the British. Both are acceptable and mean the same thing.

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

#66

Post by tokai »

People like to point and laugh at the Romans at their use of lead in plumbing and wine. But they were never even close to being as stupid and callous as we managed to be the last 150 years. They are going to be shaking their head at us for thousands of year hopefully.

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

#67

Post by masklinn »

flaunf221 wrote: post #48
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 .

> The Most Dangerous Man Who Ever Lived The titles like annoy me to no end. Because Thomas Midgley was an engineer. Not overlord of General Motors. Not director. Not even a large shaholder. GM Leadership knew effects of TEL. And for decades traded everyone's health for their profits. Midgley is complicit, but he's just a small piece.

> Midgley is complicit, but he's just a small piece.

Midgley used to tour around “proving” the safety of leaded gas by pouring it on his hands. And had to be treated twice for lead poisoning.

He was very much a culprit.

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

#68

Post by tim-tday »

masklinn wrote: post #67
flaunf221 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Most Dangerous Man Who Ever Lived The titles like annoy me to no end. Because Thomas Midgley was an engineer. Not overlord of General Motors. Not director. Not even a large shaholder. GM Leadership knew effects of TEL. And for decades traded everyone's health for their profits. Midgley is complicit, but he's just a small piece.

> Midgley is complicit, but he's just a small piece. Midgley used to tour around “proving” the safety of leaded gas by pouring it on his hands. And had to be treated twice for lead poisoning. He was very much a culprit.

He washed his hands with leaded gasoline on national television to show it was safe. It was not safe. He lied and suppressed the science. Even if other people lied he was the public face of the lie.

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

#69

Post by Onavo »

aftbit wrote: post #50
gilrain wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

…but is exhausting at volume from most small aircraft you see. I say sadly, as an aviation geek; we can do better!

We're working on it, slowly but surely. This has been a known problem for a long time, at least since 2009 if not earlier. GAMI's G100UL was approved as a 100LL replacement in 2022, but there is still some controversy. Avweb has done a good series of videos on this. There were some real engineering concerns and some typical aviation conservative decision making. But really, it's a tragedy of the FAA fumbling the ball…

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 hours TBO).

https://cubcrafters.com/c/2026/07/press-release-cubcrafters-...

Pistons suffer from too many reliability issues (especially if you don't have a MX team on call like a commerical operation).

I am not sure why the aviation industry (and the FAA in particular) is obsessed with keeping around almost-a-century old lawnmower engines (Yes your Cessna Skyhawks, if you trace them back to their predecessor, are from the WWII days). Learning to "lean an engine" never made me a better pilot and there's a reason FADECs are used everywhere else.

It's a very big problem because most of the big general aviation players (Cirrus, Diamond, Continental, a bunch of others) are snapped up by Chinese conglomerates (they don't have general aviation in Asia but they have a growing number of flight schools, not sure how that works) now and they are hardly known for their expertise in piston engines. People buy Chinese EVs, nobody buys Chinese ICE cars. Diamond owners had to ground their planes for over 2 years because Diamond couldn't figure out how to do a Mercedes OEM license-built piston head properly. The Chinese-built pistons kept cracking and required boroscope engine inspections every 50 hours (notoriously expensive and not covered by warranty, they only managed to solve the cracking problem recently). So much for supposed Chinese manufacturing prowness.

Imagine buying a fancy Porsche car and only to be told that you have to keep it in the garage most of the year because the car company got bought out and the new owners don't know how to produce a proper piston. Owners would riot. Sadly general aviation operators are trained to take it up the ass like a good little pilot because the dinosaur FAA (for whom general aviation is their lowest priority, about the same importance as hot air balloons) mandated that the OEM's word is literal law and if it's grounded then too bad.

Post reply on HN