[zodo123]

Private aviation in the US is still, somehow, allowed to use leaded avgas for small planes. It’s a small market but still enough to have an impact on the communities near airports. The FAA has shown little interest in the impact of the problem, and one can only hope the EPA will step in at some point. https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/leaded-gas-wa...

[toomuchtodo]

Post: "FAA, do your damn job"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30943466

https://www.avweb.com/insider/faa-do-your-damn-job/

Can your Congressional rep and the FAA and ask why this isn't done yet.

[dougalm]

Is it worth trying to apply pressure at the local level? I read that Santa Clara County banned 100LL in January.

I have young kids. We live near Hanscom Field and spend a lot of time near Barnstable Airport. Should we try writing our local airports/cities/counties?

At Barnstable Airport, the big operator is Cape Air. They make a big show of being green, so maybe they'd want to be early adopters of G100UL. Does anyone know if the existing G100UL STC applies to Cape Air's fleet? Could they switch to it if they wanted to?

[thetinguy]

It’s especially crazy because because all the major engine manufacturers have already certified many of their leaded gas engines for high octane unleaded. Some of them are just waiting on FAA rubber stamps. https://www.aopa.org/advocacy/100-unleaded-avgas

[imoverclocked]

“Allowed”… I think you mean “forced.”

If you have to fly certain small planes, there is no legal alternative in most places.

[shadowgovt]

Correct. The FAA is set up to be default quite conservative (small c... "Reluctant to change things without a lot of work"). This makes a lot of sense given what they do (an amortized cost to public health over decades is a lot less likely to get people fired than a private plane falling out of the sky into the middle of an elementary school because the engine failed mid-flight due to a new fuel changing the mean time between failure in an unexpected way), but it does mean that even when things are understood to be safe and proven safe, simple inertia can keep the FAA from certifying them until someone lights a damn fire under them.

Although on this specific topic, I almost wonder if you could make a case that the unleaded avgas is safer not for public health, but for the private pilot and therefore the public in terms of the FAA's main understanding of safety (IE don't let planes crash). How much is a pilot's reasoning capacity compromised by chronic lead poisoning due to the necessary handling of avgas and breathing in fumes that they must do in operation of their plane?

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

Who is forcing them to fly this plane? I'm going to have to side with the rights of the people to not have lead dumped into their air over the right of someone to fly their own plane.

[Melatonic]

I thought we had an alternative gas that has been produced and works but is just not yet fully certified and tested?

[geoffeg]

Don't most of the more popular aircraft have STCs that allow them to run on automotive gas?

[colechristensen]

I'd like to see a risk comparison to measure the effects of living near an airport with heavy avgas users in units of tuna-sandwich-equivalents per month.

Yes exposure isn't zero and effects from that exposure aren't zero, but let's get a good idea of how big the effect size is, because it really seems like some people have an out-of-proportion idea of what the risk actually is.

I'm much more concerned about the heavy metal exposure from nearby coal plants than I am by general aviation fuel.

[MaxBarraclough]

It's detectable, [0] but it's not the top cause of lead poisoning. That honour goes to lead-based paints. [1]

[0] https://news.sccgov.org/news-release/study-commissioned-coun...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_poisoning#Paint

[sfblah]

I agree with this methodology. People should use a different sort function for their outrage. It's like how people fail to compare the number of cancers caused by radioactive release from coal plants vs nuclear plants. The latter seems like it would be more of a problem, but actually the former is far far worse.

[535188B17C93743]

What do we want? G100UL! When do we want it? As soon as possible!

[MaxBarraclough]

Until then, here's a good podcast episode interviewing George Braly, the man behind G100UL. [0]

Incidentally I recall a later episode mentioning that a couple of decades ago someone was able to get an unleaded fuel approved for aviation in, iirc, Sweden. Unsure why that didn't get much traction.

[0] https://aviationnewstalk.com/tag/unleaded-fuel/

[_moof]

Surely you mean "as soon as practicable." :)

[TedDoesntTalk]

Lead byproducts are spewed all over the neighborhoods surrounding small airports.

[giantg2]

"an area where 2.5 percent of children under 6 years old who were tested had detectable levels of lead in their blood"

"The presence of this fuel means the areas near these airports are often inundated with tiny lead particles"

I agree that we should find lead free alternatives (some exist, so it sounds like this is purely bureaucracy). There's really no reason to keep using it.

That said, it seems there is some fear mongering going on in this article. If the air is truly inundated, why is it that only 2.5% of the kids have a detectable level? If it's in the air and everywhere, then it should be detectable in vastly more children in that area. The biggest question in my mind is, why is this area so low when 50% of US children have detectable lead levels?

[Melatonic]

There is finally a replacement gas being developed / made so we might actually be rid of this crap soon while still keeping private aviation alive