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I live near a small airfield. The kind celebrities and wealthy people fly out of every day, mostly recreationally. Every single small plane still uses leaded g
by Solvency 3y ago
I live near a small airfield. The kind celebrities and wealthy people fly out of every day, mostly recreationally.
Every single small plane still uses leaded gas.
Flying overhead, all days, every day. At low altitudes.
And no one is changing that any time soon. As in tens of decades. Just leaded gas everywhere in the sky.
- zht 3y agoSure? I mean we can’t remove lead everywhere all at once but taking them out of pipes is better than nothing right?
- pseg134 3y ago[flagged]
- wanderingmind 3y agoWhy do you want to rip out pipes before banning small/private jets?
- AlgorithmicTime 3y agoJets don’t use leaded aviation gas.
- keep_reading 3y agoAlso came here to point out that celebrities aren't traveling the world in these cheap slow planes ...
- paulcole 3y agoYeah I think the original commenter wanted to drum up support for their idea by also blaming movie stars and CEOs (kind of like shooting fish in a barrel on HN).
- denton-scratch 3y agoJets? I thought lead was added to fuel to prevent "pinking", which is the pre-ignition of fuel in the cylinders of a piston engine. Why does jet fuel need lead?
- kedikedi 3y agoI think you’re right. Leaded additive is an octane enhancer to prevent knocking but it’s also good for valve seats and whatnot. That’s the bit what makes it difficult to just switch to other octane enhancers as far as I know.
- denton-scratch 3y agoSuggested explanation: jet fuel doesn't need added tetraethyl lead. But aviation fuel is standardized; it's convenient to use the same fuel for jet planes and planes with piston-engines, so that airstrips don't have to store more than one kind of fuel.
- tass 3y agoJet fuel and avgas are kept carefully separate and are incompatible - Jet fuel has no added lead. Most piston aircraft use avgas (usually leaded) though some use jet fuel (diesel powered). Larger propellers are usually powered by turbines burning jet fuel.
- denton-scratch 3y agoThanks for clarifying!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- SonicScrub 3y agoLeaded AvGas is the fuel for piston powered aircraft. Typically your small, general aviation propeller aircraft. Not jets. They burn JetA (kerosene).
- notahacker 3y agoPresumably because having lead in drinking water is more likely to be a source of lead poisoning than background AvGas emissions from the small piston powered aircraft at the nearby flight training school
- jdietrich 3y agoMetallic lead has very low bioavailability. Lead compounds - particularly organolead compounds like tetraethyllead - are vastly more toxic. Replacing lead pipes is a good idea, but it should be a scandal that leaded avgas is still legal.
- spacecadet 3y agowhy not do both in parallel, ban the fucking planes AND restore the pipes. Are you OK?
- time4tea 3y agohttps://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/10/20/2023-23247/finding-that-lead-emissions-from-aircraft-engines-that-operate-on-leaded-fuel-cause-or-contribute-to https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/10/20/2023-23... > We estimate that piston-engine aircraft have consumed approximately 38.6 billion gallons of leaded avgas in the U.S. since 1930, excluding military aircraft use of this fuel, emitting approximately 113,000 tons of lead to the air.
- EnigmaFlare 3y agoMy rough estimate of the amount of naturally occurring lead in the air is 5 million tons. So 113 000 tons makes it 2% more than what it would have been with no human activity. Doesn't seem terribly serious, but not nothing either. Natural concentration of lead in atmosphere: https://www.dcceew.gov.au/environment/protection/chemicals-management/lead https://www.dcceew.gov.au/environment/protection/chemicals-m... Volume of atmosphere: https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/rf7tn/volume_of_earths_atmosphere/ https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/rf7tn/volume_of... I'm neglecting the variation in density with altitude and assuming that all that 100 years of aviation lead is still there, so it might be way off.
- D-Coder 3y agoThat 2% will tend to be concentrated around human settlements. Every airplane starts and ends up at an airport, which will be in/near a population center.
- time4tea 3y agoThe figures are for USA only, but you're counting the whole world. >>> import pint >>> r=pint.UnitRegistry() >>> usa = r.Quantity(9833517,"km*2") >>> h = r.Quantity(35000, "ft") >>> v = usa * h >>> naturally = r.Quantity(0.1, "ug") / r.Quantity(1, "m * 3") >>> natural_total = naturally * v >>> natural_total.to('ton') <Quantity(11563.6821, 'ton')> Natural total in USA, up to 35,000ft is 11,000 tons, and added is 113,000 tons. So the leaded avgas has added 10x. Assuming uniform distribution up to that height, and that it doesn't disappear. Neither of those things are true, especially as the lead is absorbed by people and animals.
- rsynnott 3y agoI mean, I’ve got to imagine the days of piston-engine aircraft are limited for other reasons in any case; if charged sensibly for CO2 emissions they wouldn’t be particularly economic for most use cases.
- lost_tourist 3y agothat's doubtful. Sure they will eventually go away but they're still popular amongst the moderately rich. However I can see forcing conversion of everything over to non leaded fuel spread out across 20 years or something.
- rsynnott 3y agoSo, currently, as I understand it, piston engine planes are attainable to people who merely have more money than sense (my possibly unfair mental image is the sort of person who buys a 100,000 EUR car while still having a mortgage), but private _jets_ are the domain of the actually very rich. Any cost increase is likely to hurt them in a way that it wouldn’t hurt private jets.
- ghaff 3y agoYou don't need to be particularly wealthy to own a single engine prop plane. My contractor who I had a decade or two ago flew one and, while successful enough, it's fair to describe him as working middle class.
- sokoloff 3y agoI started flying in the 90s. Most of the pilots I met were not rich, but rather just enthusiasts with a particular hobby. The last 30 years have seen fewer people overall, but also skewing more wealthy as the costs have also risen faster than general inflation. It’s like going to the marina; some people there are notably rich, but most aren’t and are instead just modestly successful folks who put their discretionary money into a hole in the water.
- 3y ago
- skybrian 3y agoAn unleaded fuel for small planes was approved last year by the FAA, but it seems it's not available from distributors yet. I found a story about plans for Half Moon Bay to switch to it next year, maybe: https://www.hmbreview.com/news/airport-plans-transition-to-unleaded-fuel/article_cbc5af6a-8282-11ee-b51f-ff4d4daac6f9.html https://www.hmbreview.com/news/airport-plans-transition-to-u...
- heelix 3y agoIt is changing fast. Now that the lead free avgas is available for a trivial paperwork STC for all engine types, almost all the pilots I know are pestering their fields to switch. For GA aircraft.. things are in a wild shift first now.
- thatfrenchguy 3y agoMy favorite part in the bay area is how those small planes fly from Palo Alto airport, right through East Palo Alto to make sure poor kids stay underprivileged so that a bunch of rich folks can keep their hobby.