When leaded car gas was still in use it resulted in 4-5 million tons of lead emissions per year.[1]
The use of leaded aviation fuel contributes 500 tons per year according to the EPA[2]. Compared to 5,000,000 tons for cars historically.
Of course, any lead is not good and we should be shooting for zero. Which is the goal of the unleaded G100UL aviation fuel. But let's not try to say that personal aviation is evil when it's contributing a fraction of a percent of lead contamination. Frankly, we have bigger pollution problems to worry about than a very small amount of lead emissions from an ever shrinking fleet of piston powered aircraft.
Mind you that general aviation is more than rich people flying around in their planes. It's medical flights, it's training future airline pilots, it's aerial surveying, and many more critical tasks for society.
1. https://grist.org/regulation/leaded-gasoline-lead-poisoning-...
I in no way imply aviation is the greatest poison emitted by humanity; it is one of the most selfish emissions by any standard. It is not that leased fuels support meaningful industry as suggested, nor is it as if there are not alternatives. Instead, the FAA and pilots of piston driven planes have simply decided lead poisoning is a justifiable price to pay for people living near an airport in exchange for individuals getting to fly their quarter million+ $ aircraft.
Everything you suggest it is useful for could be performed with the already proven and no longer new unleaded alternative. Defending this practice is asinine.
But yes, I've read quite a bit about the Reid-Hillview Airport saga. These claims of leaded gas hurting the children around airport is just the newest in a long list of excuses to close airports so their land can be redeveloped into more strip malls and condos. These neighborhood groups are biased towards wanting airports closed. It's textbook NIMBYism and they'll look for any excuse to achieve their goals. If it's not leaded gas, it's something else.
> Instead, the FAA and pilots of piston driven planes have simply decided lead poisoning is a justifiable price to pay for people living near an airport in exchange for individuals getting to fly their quarter million+ $ aircraft.
Don't buy a house near an airport if you're concerned about it then. The airport was there before the houses were.
> Everything you suggest it is useful for could be performed with the already proven and no longer new unleaded alternative. Defending this practice is asinine.
Where did I say I liked leaded gas exactly? I'm quite excited about G100UL being rolled out, even if it costs a bit more, so I can stop having this exact argument about how we need to close airports because of leaded gas. Everything with the FAA moves slowly, but it's moving. We're about to have unleaded gas for all planes.
By the way, the average Cessna 172 is well under $100k (at least prior to the previous two years before asset prices for everything went through the roof). For every fancy late model Cirrus SR22T there's 10 more shitbox Cessna's from the 1970s barely hanging onto life. You think of private pilots as all extremely wealthy individuals. Most of us are solidly middle class. How many people have boats or RVs that cost the same or more? Small planes fall into that same category.
One thing particularly twisted about that is:
1. The airport announced that it is trying to convert to unleaded fuel
2. Immediately after that announcement, the NIMBYs tried to get an emergency judgement to close the airport (because converting to UL fuel would completely undermine their only semi-legitimate argument for closure)
3. If the airport is closed, and if the lead pollution is truly as bad as they claim, then it will be economically infeasible to re-develop the airport as condos (which is what they're actually trying to do, not save the children) because the ground would be too polluted.
Because of this, leaded gas still produced in commercial volumes.
Modern aircraft engines could work on unleaded gas, and especially Celera use aircraft diesel engine, working on basically aviation kerosene (with tiny addition of lubricants for diesel equipment).
BTW diesel add about 30% of Celera range.
Ideally we could have the FAA promote the certification of newer engine designs so we didn't need to keep flying around with 1940s engine tech as well that relies on lead, but that's another issue.
I cry every time see, how good maintained old aviation history in US, comparable to exUSSR.
Even more impressive, there are examples of old soviet planes in flight condition in US - you will not see them flight in exUSSR.
Unfortunately, not all 1940s engines have modern substitutions.
For me this is our history. I think it is acceptable to make for them exclusion from rules.
While it is cool local planes pull 25mpg, they spew lead on their local communities.
I don’t think humanity can put the cat of air travel back in the bag, and if I understand correctly the SUV market is actually driving as much CO2 emissions as the entirety of aviation; I still don’t see why individuals should be privileged to do such damage of poison and inefficiency for their pleasure. It is pleasing to others to imagine a long lived humanity on a globe hosting life as we know it, after all.
The commercial aviation industry does optimize for efficiency but only with larger planes since human costs (and airport costs) are mostly fixed per plane.
I’m simply saying that perhaps the future could have smaller, more efficient planes and more automation that removes fixed costs. (The design in the article is such a plane, in theory.) You seem to be conflating big/small with commercial/private and taking a firm anti-private position.
For track or drag usage, running on the ragged edge makes more sense.
Small jets do indeed use jet fuel but have a terrible efficiency proposition when ran at even 50% capacity, which is not the standard use case.
This is about to change though with G100UL finally being approved. https://gami.com/g100ul/g100ul.php.
Absent an STC (Supplemental Type Certificate) to change that, there is a regulation that those engines in certified aircraft have to use leaded fuel to be airworthy (legal) as airworthiness requires both “in condition for safe operation” and “in conformance with its type design”.
GAMI is pursuing an all-model (or many, many model) STC for their fuel to remedy this, but it’s a regulation issue currently.