3 ms·

Not much thankfully. It's only small General Aviation piston aircraft and there aren't many of them relatively speaking. It's not like in the 60s when there wer

by foxyv 3y ago

Not much thankfully. It's only small General Aviation piston aircraft and there aren't many of them relatively speaking. It's not like in the 60s when there were thousands of car engines per city constantly pumping it out. More like 10-20. This is why the FAA wasn't in a huge hurry but at the same time they were WAY too slow. It should have been a crash priority honestly.

londons_explore 3y ago
It's likely that every kilogram of lead you atomize into the air has a far worse impact on people and the environment than a kilo of lead in, for example, electronics, paint, or flashing. Increased lead in crops grown within a few miles of airports has been noticed.[1]. As had reduced IQ's in children living near airports. [2] [1]: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/344932499.pdf https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/344932499.pdf [2]: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2353962-children-living-near-airport-found-to-have-raised-lead-levels-in-blood/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2353962-children-living...
- foxyv 3y ago
  Yeah, they should have ended 100LL a long long time ago. It's crazy how such a small amount can cause so many problems. Imagine what it was like back in the 60s. Utter insanity and they KNEW that it would cause problems.
  - londons_explore 3y ago
    Unfortunately there is growing evidence that lead stays in soils for decades or maybe centuries. I can imagine in the future that lead contamination of farmland might mean that we end up with a kinda crazy reversal - we end up growing all our food in undeveloped places like south america that never had as much lead contamination, and food from the USA and other developed countries is so lead contaminated that it gets exported to places like africa where they don't have strict regulations against contaminated food.
    - elzbardico 3y ago
      Not likely as we stopped pumping lead into the atmosphere some decades ago. Things are not going to get worse on this.
      - londons_explore 3y ago
        No, but our understanding of 'acceptable' lead levels keeps getting lower. One day, the amount of lead in our crops which we might today consider acceptable, in the future we might not. Imagine if 100 years from now, Brazil is an up and coming economic powerhouse, and economists figure out that they are doing so well because their strategists, businesspeople, scientists and engineers are all smarter because their food contains less lead than ours does. We'd quickly start outlawing high lead food, which in turn might make big swathes of our cropland unusable for food.
    - foxyv 3y ago
      Undeveloped countries stopped using lead way after the USA. Lead contamination was a huge issue in Africa and the Middle East. It wasn't until 2014 that lead use in auto fuel was ended worldwide. https://qz.com/africa/2053227/leaded-gasoline-is-now-banned-everywhere-on-earth https://qz.com/africa/2053227/leaded-gasoline-is-now-banned-... Luckily lead is very heavy and chemically active which makes it much easier to remove from soils than some of the nastier contaminants. You can essentially break it down with sulphur amendments to acidify the soil and then let the plants do the rest of the work. Eventually dilution does the rest of the work until it reaches background levels.

by foxyv 3y ago

londons_explore 3y ago

It's likely that every kilogram of lead you atomize into the air has a far worse impact on people and the environment than a kilo of lead in, for example, electronics, paint, or flashing. Increased lead in crops grown within a few miles of airports has been noticed.[1]. As had reduced IQ's in children living near airports. [2] [1]: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/344932499.pdf https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/344932499.pdf [2]: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2353962-children-living-near-airport-found-to-have-raised-lead-levels-in-blood/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2353962-children-living...

foxyv 3y ago
Yeah, they should have ended 100LL a long long time ago. It's crazy how such a small amount can cause so many problems. Imagine what it was like back in the 60s. Utter insanity and they KNEW that it would cause problems.
- londons_explore 3y ago
  Unfortunately there is growing evidence that lead stays in soils for decades or maybe centuries. I can imagine in the future that lead contamination of farmland might mean that we end up with a kinda crazy reversal - we end up growing all our food in undeveloped places like south america that never had as much lead contamination, and food from the USA and other developed countries is so lead contaminated that it gets exported to places like africa where they don't have strict regulations against contaminated food.
  - elzbardico 3y ago
    Not likely as we stopped pumping lead into the atmosphere some decades ago. Things are not going to get worse on this.
    - londons_explore 3y ago
      No, but our understanding of 'acceptable' lead levels keeps getting lower. One day, the amount of lead in our crops which we might today consider acceptable, in the future we might not. Imagine if 100 years from now, Brazil is an up and coming economic powerhouse, and economists figure out that they are doing so well because their strategists, businesspeople, scientists and engineers are all smarter because their food contains less lead than ours does. We'd quickly start outlawing high lead food, which in turn might make big swathes of our cropland unusable for food.
  - foxyv 3y ago
    Undeveloped countries stopped using lead way after the USA. Lead contamination was a huge issue in Africa and the Middle East. It wasn't until 2014 that lead use in auto fuel was ended worldwide. https://qz.com/africa/2053227/leaded-gasoline-is-now-banned-everywhere-on-earth https://qz.com/africa/2053227/leaded-gasoline-is-now-banned-... Luckily lead is very heavy and chemically active which makes it much easier to remove from soils than some of the nastier contaminants. You can essentially break it down with sulphur amendments to acidify the soil and then let the plants do the rest of the work. Eventually dilution does the rest of the work until it reaches background levels.