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Some years ago I obtained a "barn find" vehicle that still had some 1970s leaded gasoline in the tank. After much work getting things ready to run, I decided th

Some years ago I obtained a "barn find" vehicle that still had some 1970s leaded gasoline in the tank. After much work getting things ready to run, I decided the best thing to do with the old gasoline was to install a disposable fuel filter and just run it through the engine. The scent of leaded gas is something entirely different from modern products. Sweet-smelling and rather pleasant, it triggered childhood memories I didn't know I had. Of course knowing what leaded gasoline smells like could have contributed to other issues...

gambiting 5y ago
I have a fun trivia fact to share actually - here in UK, it's one of the only remaining places in the world where you can still legally buy leaded petrol for automotive use. Only a handful of garages around the country are certified to sell it, the prices are very high, but it's the ultimate fuel for people who want to preserve their old vehicles in original factory state, without modifying anything to run on unleaded fuel. Alternatively, the sale of leaded additive is still allowed(which literally just contains TEL - tetraethyl lead - effectively turning 95 unleaded into the old 4-star leaded). This website used to list the garages still selling leaded petrol, but they have changed the whole site very recently - so you can only see the list on wayback machine: http://web.archive.org/web/20210225112828/https://fbhvc.co.uk/fuels http://web.archive.org/web/20210225112828/https://fbhvc.co.u... TEL additive: https://www.classic-oils.net/TetraBOOST-E-Guard-15 https://www.classic-oils.net/TetraBOOST-E-Guard-15
- adav 5y ago
  Is there a https://www.howmanyleft.co.uk https://www.howmanyleft.co.uk for numbers of leaded petrol cars still on the road?
  - gambiting 5y ago
    Not sure if that would be useful, as there's no way to confirm whether a vehicle that was designed for leaded fuel was converted for unleaded, or if it simply runs on non-leaded additives. Either way, there is this website, which used to really push for leaded petrol, it disappeared in 2009, but it almost reads like comedy: http://web.archive.org/web/20090101030343/http://www.leadedpetrol.co.uk/ http://web.archive.org/web/20090101030343/http://www.leadedp... " Don't forget, if your local filling station doesn't sell leaded petrol, ask them to start!" "Bayford is campaigning to have the extra duty on Leaded Petrol removed. You can help by printing this letter and sending it to your Member of Parliament"
    - derriz 5y ago
      "If you run a classic or high performance car, now is the time to throw away that can of additive, and fill up with award winning genuine leaded petrol"
- drcongo 5y ago
  In London last summer I caught a whiff of a smell that I hadn't smelled in years - 30 seconds later a vintage Jag came around the corner and I realised it was the exhaust of a car running leaded petrol. I was struck by the fact that I could literally smell it coming.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    That may have been from uncatalysed exhaust. My '66 Mustang also has a very distinctive smell, despite running an unleaded fuel.
  - pitaj 5y ago
    Sweet smell can also be from running ethanol-rich fuels.
    - rbanffy 5y ago
      Which is kind of interesting in this regard. Brazil converted a large portion of its passenger car fleet to ethanol and it seemed a better overall fuel, to the point some sportier models had only ethanol versions. Wouldn’t ethanol be an adequate substitute for avgas with property adapted engines?
      - bityard 5y ago
        Ethanol is a terrible substitute for gasoline. It has something like 70% the energy density of gas, it readily absorbs water from the air, which means it also corrosive. The main reason it works in Brazil is because they can make it cheaply from sugar cane. In the U.S., ethanol is just a highly inefficient subsidy for corn farmers.
        GekkePrutser 5y ago
        The moisture thing alone would be a deal-breaker for avgas. You really don't want to have engine trouble mid-flight and avgas has special anti corrosion compounds afaik. We always topped up the aircraft tanks every time to minimise condensation.
- acchow 5y ago
  Can someone who understands the political history around this explain why this is still legal in the UK? It's my understanding that no level of lead exposure is safe.
  - astronautjones 5y ago
    corruption. its use in aviation - and use of other chemicals involved in their engines - is not safe at all either - https://www.latimes.com/projects/toxic-chemicals-planes-covid-19-travel-woes/ https://www.latimes.com/projects/toxic-chemicals-planes-covi... https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-51633897 https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-51633897
    - namibj 5y ago
      oil-in-cabin-air issues are solved by not using bleed air for cabin pressurization.
      - compressedgas 5y ago
        I think that has problems which prohibit it from being implemented. I think a better option to just pass the air through a filter to remove oil particles before the air is used in the cabin.
        namibj 5y ago
        IIRC it's not particles, but combustion/decomposition products. And no, it's not an issue with using non-engine air for cabin pressurization taking too much weight/power: even a large airplane needs only little actual airflow.
  - tialaramex 5y ago
    Lobbying from interested parties. In this case, the Classic Car enthusiasts. The government most likely judged that allowing a dispensation for commercial sale would not in fact result in widespread continued use of leaded fuel due to the commercial realities of selling such a niche product, but it was worth the effort to say they supported this niche - and that's exactly how it turned out. The original 1999 UK legislation envisions retailers will be given a maximum quota on how much leaded they can sell, a permit holder could sell 0.5% of volume per month for example. But as anticipated ordinary motorists just put unleaded in the tank and carried on as before so the quota system was pointless. If your "quota" is 10 000 litres of leaded fuel per month and you sold a total of 45 litres to one bloke in that time, you not only don't need a bigger quota, you won't order any more of that fuel from your supplier. If perhaps, the next summer, a motorist in a Victorian outfit driving a 1926 Chevrolet enquires about the leaded fuel you tell them "Sorry mate, we're out of stock" and most likely they put unleaded in the tank, but either way they're not wasting your time and money with this weird "leaded" fuel nobody buys. Which is why there was an archive.org link above -- the actual site for the FBHVC now tells you that you probably can't get leaded fuel, and even if you could you shouldn't bother, even though that's the organisation identified in the legislation itself as asking for this exception. I assume it's still technically legal for whoever actually bothered to have a permit - but the actual emissions involved must be pretty tiny.
xyzzy21 5y ago
All European gasoline used to smell like that not so long ago. It's one of the major memories of my first trip to European as a teen.
- avian 5y ago
  "Not so long" must be somewhere in early 90s. Most of Europe phased out leaded gasoline by 2000. From my experience the thing that affects the exhaust smell more than leaded/unleaded is whether the engine has a catalytic converter. A car without the converter running on unleaded will have the same sweet smell the parent is talking about.
  - cmrdporcupine 5y ago
    The gas stations themselves used to have a different smell. I remember as a child (in Canada) somehow enjoying the smell when my parents filled up on gas. Which is kind of terrifying in retrospect.
    - bluGill 5y ago
      I remember that. I also remember unleaded had the same smell. Though this was 40 years ago so who knows if my memory is right.
    - tapland 5y ago
      I faintly remember. I'd probably be interested in having the weirdest irl meet up over a car found with a spare jug of leaded gas. Reliving old smells does so much for creativity
    - therein 5y ago
      I remember that as well. I remember talking about it with my parents relatively recently as well. They had claimed they used to enjoy the smell of gasoline in their youth and that it became repugnant only after they reached a certain age. I thought that was a reasonable explanation back then. Similar to developing a taste for certain food ingredients. However in hindsight, the transition from leaded to unleaded gasoline actually explains this better.
pomian 5y ago
There are a lot of issues with the leaded replacement gasolines. Lead was at least heavy, and "fell" close to it's point of use. The BTEX components added to gasoline after removing the lead, are carcinogenic. They are also volatile. They go everywhere, and affect everyone. Overall, neither the biological or human ecology are better off. The politics behind the leaded gasoline change is fascinating, as most of the other environmental decisions are, when studied from the point of view of toxicology and environmental science.
- hammock 5y ago
  Where can I read more about this?
  - tapland 5y ago
    Yes this seems like a very interesting, important and overlooked issue.
    - nawgz 5y ago
      I also think the fellow stating that we are not better off for having unleaded fuel is overstating the matter. Lead in fuel was quite strongly correlated with crime rates, no?
      - namibj 5y ago
        Yeah, but also general societal changes. Correlation is not causation.
        nawgz 5y ago
        Sure, but lead has multiple known mechanisms which would indeed cause individuals to be more likely to commit crime, and serious efforts to get lead out of fuel correlated pretty strongly with a maxima in crime rates that had been steadily increasing for decades. [0] While it is clear to me that there were other legislative and possibly environmental changes that also contributed to this drop, I think that applying 'correlation is not causation' here while applying no scrutiny to the argument that "removing lead from fuel didn't do shit" is pretty facile. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis
clukic 5y ago
Interesting to note that unleaded gas also has lead about 0.05g per gallon which is a lot when you consider how much gas is burned in a typical big city everyday. Aviation gas has 2 grams per gallon, so if you live near an airport you're probably getting a pretty steady diet of lead.
- axiak 5y ago
  The actual amount of gallons of gas burned in planes using AVGas is extremely small compared to the gallons of gas burned by cars or by planes using jet fuel. Unless you were on the tarmac with prop planes running, I doubt you'd smell the lead.
  - Johnny555 5y ago
    What about the ground water near popular general aviation airports? Granted, there aren't nearly as many airplanes as cars, but over years, contamination can accumulate. I remember a small lake in San Francisco that had to be decontaminated due to lead pollution from cars: https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Workers-pour-poison-into-Mountain-Lake-begin-5888355.php https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Workers-pour-poison-i... "Lead from car emissions seeped into the water for decades until leaded gasoline was phased out beginning in the 1970s. The lead combined with pesticides flowing in from the golf course to form a toxic stew."
- nate_meurer 5y ago
  The EPA limits unleaded gasoline to 0.5 g/gal, but that doesn't mean your gasoline actually contains that much. The regs are meant to forgive some amount of cross-contamination from facilities that also handle avgas. I don't have any information on what values are typically encountered. You're right, 0.5 g/gal is a lot of lead.
- lostlogin 5y ago
  > 2 grams per gallon I’m from a fully metric land, is the above a common way to express a ratio? It certainly stuck out to me but it’s a pretty tidy measure.
AtomicOrbital 5y ago
As a child I grew up in a 200 year old house which had many coats of exterior lead paint ... evidently the lead paint chips are sweet tasting ... my parents have memories scolding us kids to stop eating the paint chips
kova12 5y ago
It's quite telling how long did this gas last while still being capable of powering engine. Modern gas won't last a year with or without stabilizer

gambiting 5y ago

I have a fun trivia fact to share actually - here in UK, it's one of the only remaining places in the world where you can still legally buy leaded petrol for automotive use. Only a handful of garages around the country are certified to sell it, the prices are very high, but it's the ultimate fuel for people who want to preserve their old vehicles in original factory state, without modifying anything to run on unleaded fuel. Alternatively, the sale of leaded additive is still allowed(which literally just contains TEL - tetraethyl lead - effectively turning 95 unleaded into the old 4-star leaded). This website used to list the garages still selling leaded petrol, but they have changed the whole site very recently - so you can only see the list on wayback machine: http://web.archive.org/web/20210225112828/https://fbhvc.co.uk/fuels http://web.archive.org/web/20210225112828/https://fbhvc.co.u... TEL additive: https://www.classic-oils.net/TetraBOOST-E-Guard-15 https://www.classic-oils.net/TetraBOOST-E-Guard-15

adav 5y ago
Is there a https://www.howmanyleft.co.uk https://www.howmanyleft.co.uk for numbers of leaded petrol cars still on the road?
- gambiting 5y ago
  Not sure if that would be useful, as there's no way to confirm whether a vehicle that was designed for leaded fuel was converted for unleaded, or if it simply runs on non-leaded additives. Either way, there is this website, which used to really push for leaded petrol, it disappeared in 2009, but it almost reads like comedy: http://web.archive.org/web/20090101030343/http://www.leadedpetrol.co.uk/ http://web.archive.org/web/20090101030343/http://www.leadedp... " Don't forget, if your local filling station doesn't sell leaded petrol, ask them to start!" "Bayford is campaigning to have the extra duty on Leaded Petrol removed. You can help by printing this letter and sending it to your Member of Parliament"
  - derriz 5y ago
    "If you run a classic or high performance car, now is the time to throw away that can of additive, and fill up with award winning genuine leaded petrol"
drcongo 5y ago
In London last summer I caught a whiff of a smell that I hadn't smelled in years - 30 seconds later a vintage Jag came around the corner and I realised it was the exhaust of a car running leaded petrol. I was struck by the fact that I could literally smell it coming.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  That may have been from uncatalysed exhaust. My '66 Mustang also has a very distinctive smell, despite running an unleaded fuel.
- pitaj 5y ago
  Sweet smell can also be from running ethanol-rich fuels.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    Which is kind of interesting in this regard. Brazil converted a large portion of its passenger car fleet to ethanol and it seemed a better overall fuel, to the point some sportier models had only ethanol versions. Wouldn’t ethanol be an adequate substitute for avgas with property adapted engines?
    - bityard 5y ago
      Ethanol is a terrible substitute for gasoline. It has something like 70% the energy density of gas, it readily absorbs water from the air, which means it also corrosive. The main reason it works in Brazil is because they can make it cheaply from sugar cane. In the U.S., ethanol is just a highly inefficient subsidy for corn farmers.
      - GekkePrutser 5y ago
        The moisture thing alone would be a deal-breaker for avgas. You really don't want to have engine trouble mid-flight and avgas has special anti corrosion compounds afaik. We always topped up the aircraft tanks every time to minimise condensation.
acchow 5y ago
Can someone who understands the political history around this explain why this is still legal in the UK? It's my understanding that no level of lead exposure is safe.
- astronautjones 5y ago
  corruption. its use in aviation - and use of other chemicals involved in their engines - is not safe at all either - https://www.latimes.com/projects/toxic-chemicals-planes-covid-19-travel-woes/ https://www.latimes.com/projects/toxic-chemicals-planes-covi... https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-51633897 https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-51633897
  - namibj 5y ago
    oil-in-cabin-air issues are solved by not using bleed air for cabin pressurization.
    - compressedgas 5y ago
      I think that has problems which prohibit it from being implemented. I think a better option to just pass the air through a filter to remove oil particles before the air is used in the cabin.
      - namibj 5y ago
        IIRC it's not particles, but combustion/decomposition products. And no, it's not an issue with using non-engine air for cabin pressurization taking too much weight/power: even a large airplane needs only little actual airflow.
- tialaramex 5y ago
  Lobbying from interested parties. In this case, the Classic Car enthusiasts. The government most likely judged that allowing a dispensation for commercial sale would not in fact result in widespread continued use of leaded fuel due to the commercial realities of selling such a niche product, but it was worth the effort to say they supported this niche - and that's exactly how it turned out. The original 1999 UK legislation envisions retailers will be given a maximum quota on how much leaded they can sell, a permit holder could sell 0.5% of volume per month for example. But as anticipated ordinary motorists just put unleaded in the tank and carried on as before so the quota system was pointless. If your "quota" is 10 000 litres of leaded fuel per month and you sold a total of 45 litres to one bloke in that time, you not only don't need a bigger quota, you won't order any more of that fuel from your supplier. If perhaps, the next summer, a motorist in a Victorian outfit driving a 1926 Chevrolet enquires about the leaded fuel you tell them "Sorry mate, we're out of stock" and most likely they put unleaded in the tank, but either way they're not wasting your time and money with this weird "leaded" fuel nobody buys. Which is why there was an archive.org link above -- the actual site for the FBHVC now tells you that you probably can't get leaded fuel, and even if you could you shouldn't bother, even though that's the organisation identified in the legislation itself as asking for this exception. I assume it's still technically legal for whoever actually bothered to have a permit - but the actual emissions involved must be pretty tiny.

xyzzy21 5y ago

All European gasoline used to smell like that not so long ago. It's one of the major memories of my first trip to European as a teen.

avian 5y ago
"Not so long" must be somewhere in early 90s. Most of Europe phased out leaded gasoline by 2000. From my experience the thing that affects the exhaust smell more than leaded/unleaded is whether the engine has a catalytic converter. A car without the converter running on unleaded will have the same sweet smell the parent is talking about.
- cmrdporcupine 5y ago
  The gas stations themselves used to have a different smell. I remember as a child (in Canada) somehow enjoying the smell when my parents filled up on gas. Which is kind of terrifying in retrospect.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    I remember that. I also remember unleaded had the same smell. Though this was 40 years ago so who knows if my memory is right.
  - tapland 5y ago
    I faintly remember. I'd probably be interested in having the weirdest irl meet up over a car found with a spare jug of leaded gas. Reliving old smells does so much for creativity
  - therein 5y ago
    I remember that as well. I remember talking about it with my parents relatively recently as well. They had claimed they used to enjoy the smell of gasoline in their youth and that it became repugnant only after they reached a certain age. I thought that was a reasonable explanation back then. Similar to developing a taste for certain food ingredients. However in hindsight, the transition from leaded to unleaded gasoline actually explains this better.

pomian 5y ago

There are a lot of issues with the leaded replacement gasolines. Lead was at least heavy, and "fell" close to it's point of use. The BTEX components added to gasoline after removing the lead, are carcinogenic. They are also volatile. They go everywhere, and affect everyone. Overall, neither the biological or human ecology are better off. The politics behind the leaded gasoline change is fascinating, as most of the other environmental decisions are, when studied from the point of view of toxicology and environmental science.

hammock 5y ago
Where can I read more about this?
- tapland 5y ago
  Yes this seems like a very interesting, important and overlooked issue.
  - nawgz 5y ago
    I also think the fellow stating that we are not better off for having unleaded fuel is overstating the matter. Lead in fuel was quite strongly correlated with crime rates, no?
    - namibj 5y ago
      Yeah, but also general societal changes. Correlation is not causation.
      - nawgz 5y ago
        Sure, but lead has multiple known mechanisms which would indeed cause individuals to be more likely to commit crime, and serious efforts to get lead out of fuel correlated pretty strongly with a maxima in crime rates that had been steadily increasing for decades. [0] While it is clear to me that there were other legislative and possibly environmental changes that also contributed to this drop, I think that applying 'correlation is not causation' here while applying no scrutiny to the argument that "removing lead from fuel didn't do shit" is pretty facile. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis

clukic 5y ago

Interesting to note that unleaded gas also has lead about 0.05g per gallon which is a lot when you consider how much gas is burned in a typical big city everyday. Aviation gas has 2 grams per gallon, so if you live near an airport you're probably getting a pretty steady diet of lead.

axiak 5y ago
The actual amount of gallons of gas burned in planes using AVGas is extremely small compared to the gallons of gas burned by cars or by planes using jet fuel. Unless you were on the tarmac with prop planes running, I doubt you'd smell the lead.
- Johnny555 5y ago
  What about the ground water near popular general aviation airports? Granted, there aren't nearly as many airplanes as cars, but over years, contamination can accumulate. I remember a small lake in San Francisco that had to be decontaminated due to lead pollution from cars: https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Workers-pour-poison-into-Mountain-Lake-begin-5888355.php https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Workers-pour-poison-i... "Lead from car emissions seeped into the water for decades until leaded gasoline was phased out beginning in the 1970s. The lead combined with pesticides flowing in from the golf course to form a toxic stew."
nate_meurer 5y ago
The EPA limits unleaded gasoline to 0.5 g/gal, but that doesn't mean your gasoline actually contains that much. The regs are meant to forgive some amount of cross-contamination from facilities that also handle avgas. I don't have any information on what values are typically encountered. You're right, 0.5 g/gal is a lot of lead.
lostlogin 5y ago
> 2 grams per gallon I’m from a fully metric land, is the above a common way to express a ratio? It certainly stuck out to me but it’s a pretty tidy measure.

AtomicOrbital 5y ago

As a child I grew up in a 200 year old house which had many coats of exterior lead paint ... evidently the lead paint chips are sweet tasting ... my parents have memories scolding us kids to stop eating the paint chips

kova12 5y ago

It's quite telling how long did this gas last while still being capable of powering engine. Modern gas won't last a year with or without stabilizer