EPA confirms: No lead ban deadline looms on avgas

[IO540]

Just appeared in the US AOPA magazine.

"EPA has not established or proposed any date by which lead emissions from aircraft operating on leaded avgas would need to be reduced"...

The most bizzare admission from the EPA is this:

"In fact, EPA does not have the authority to control aviation fuels"

How much stuff has been put about in the last few years on the imminent demise of avgas... :ugh:

[IO540]

The EPA getting out of it is a great development because development of an alternative 100 octane fuel can now proceed without some stupid artificial deadline which might have resulted in a fragmentation of the fuel business into say 96UL and 100UL which would in turn lead - in Europe and much of the ROW, anyway - to the abandonment of 100UL distribution, and the resulting grounding of most fuel injected engines (like the IO540 :) )

The FAA is not going to do anything to kill off GA... especially with US AOPA on its back :)

[Johnm]

There's still no scientific evidence to justify unleaded petrol in cars never mind aeroplanes. It the cr@p science US environmental lobby that drives ignorant politicians to daft actions.

[soay]

There's still no scientific evidence to justify unleaded petrol in cars never mind aeroplanes. It the cr@p science US environmental lobby that drives ignorant politicians to daft actions.
You can't have looked very hard! For example:

Lead Poisoning: A Historical Perspective (http://www.epa.gov/history/topics/perspect/lead.htm)

It's the carbon industry funded lobbying that drives ignorant politicians to daft actions. They are employing the same tactics of sowing seeds of doubt about science that the tobacco industry successfully used for decades, before finally having to admit the connection with cancer that they had known about since 1952. They only care about their profit margin and are amoral about any adverse health effects.

[Croqueteer]

:confused:My understanding is that research has shown that the lead content in petrol is encased in carbon in the combustion process, and if inhaled subsequently, it passes through the body harmlessly. On the other habd, fumes from inleaded inhaled while refueling are highly carciogenic.

[IO540]

I don't think anybody is saying that breathing or eating lead is good for you; just that the amount emitted by GA is irrelevant, compared with the amount of lead in the environment from traditional sources for which there is no known alternative (car batteries etc).

It's a bit like the ROHS directive. Nobody is saying it is good to eat cadmium but there is no evidence that any metals are leaking into the environment in the conditions of any modern landfill, from circuit boards dumped there. But this directive has caused absolute havoc in electronics, causing many companies to scrap entire product ranges, dump entire component stocks in the skip - because the component manufacturers and distributors (who are cynical short-termist b*astards) used the opportunity to force product redesign, achieved simply by not introducing lead-free variants of some components (like processors ;) ). If it was not for some handy ROHS exemptions (like "control and monitoring" equipment) whose swathes of smaller companies would have shut down. Of course the manufacturers and distributors are now openly lobbying the EU to close these exemptions.... hey have we seen this before somewhere? (think of the letter "N" ;) ).

[Johnm]

Soay makes my point better than I did.

We've known for a very long time that lead is a cumulative poison, however there's also the question of how much lead you can ingest in a life time and what the carrier vehicle might be and how close you are.

My generation probably ingested more lead from chewing the paint on our cots than we'd ever get from exhaust fumes even in a crowded city. The examples quoted in the article are all about damage caused by concentrated exposure over significant timespans.

The really annoying part is that unleaded petrol is carcinogenic because of the complex benzine compounds but nobody ever mentions that except Croqueteer.

BTW my ancestors were lead miners who generally lived to a reasonable age for the time!

[Miroku]

My generation probably ingested more lead from chewing the paint on our cots

And don't forget the Dinky toys! Lovely taste.

[neilgeddes]

The really annoying part is that unleaded petrol is carcinogenic because of the complex benzine compounds...

That's why one of my instructors refused to sniff the (Avgas) fuel sample during the preflight walkround.

[lotusexige]

Don't forget the handiest way to carry the pellets for you air rifle was in your mouth.