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Comment by refurb | Hacker News Reader

Leaded gasoline is still used in aviation, so in fact it’s not banned in every country of the world but Algeria?

Article is pretty low quality.

Note that most big passenger jets and such use kerosene, which is unleaded. In terms of leaded avgas, it's the smaller planes you've got to worry about.

The small old planes - typically hobbyist classic planes.

This is something to consider if you're buying a house, and are thinking of having kids. I wouldn't do very near to a airport where they fly planes that use leaded gas. The airport near me definitely does.

Is there any data out there to suggest that people living near airports that use leaded gasoline have high levels of lead in their blood?

It may be hard to come by, because 100LL(low lead avgas) is used only in piston engine aircraft and airports where these make the majority of traffic are usually in sparsely populated areas.

In places where airports are close to residences, the houses will typically be older and poorer. Which may mean they have other sources of lead - e.g. old paint.

Counterpoint would be some of the hobbyist airports. Some are in fairly wealthy suburban areas; some even have communities where homes will have hangars as well as garages.

There's a small airfield near here; 20 years ago it was surrounded with orange groves and an old defense contractor plant, and now they're putting in $800,000 McMansions less than 1km away.

There is data that says they have higher levels of lead [1]. About 4% higher than normal in children living within 500 m of a general aviation airport, dropping off with distance to insignificance at around 1000 m.

Note the the linked study did not consider wind patterns. Other studies cited in that one suggest that wind matters a lot, with someone downwind by a given distance getting a higher exposure than someone upwind the same distance.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3230438/

I just grabbed an article that had a few sources to dig further if someone so chose. I learned about it through working in the industry.

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