newt
Well Known Member
You should also factor in the costs associated with detrimental health effects as a result of prolonged lead exposure, whether that's through increased health insurance premiums, taxes, etc. These effects are well known and can affect all persons that come in contact with lead, not just to residents living near airports. You'd be fooling yourself to believe that the price of lead is only measured in terms of $ per gallon, or that it's a decision that only affects you.
Any detrimental health effects as a result of prolonged lead exposure are eclipsed by the detrimental health effects of prolonged CO exposure. If you keep exhaust gasses out of the cockpit, you won't have to worry about either of them.
For all the supposedly well known effects inflicted on residents living near airports, the airports which have actually measured it can't seem to find any. The blood lead levels of people living near RHV when they investigated were actually lower than the blood lead levels of people in the wider community.
(How much extra do you think you're paying in insurance due to lead?)
I'll switch to unleaded avgas as soon as it's available. I know it'll cost more. Fear-mongering about health and taxes doesn't weigh on the issue at all.
A lot of this discussion is based on woolly-headed thinking about the continued viability of 100LL when unleaded avgas becomes available. The piston aviation market isn't large enough for petroleum companies to want to spend money to service us twice, so there won't be a situation where the airport offers leaded + unleaded and gives you a choice. It'll just be "avgas," and if it costs more when it's unleaded you'll either pay the bill or get out of general aviation.
Innospec is the only tetraethyl lead manufacturer in the entire world. And their only market for it is piston engine GA, because TEL is illegal in any other application. What do you think will happen to the supply chain as soon as petroleum companies know they don't have to buy that product anymore? I'm being completely speculative, but I doubt 100LL has a future past the at-scale introduction of unleaded avgas.
(while we're talking about R&D costs making unleaded avgas more expensive, does anyone have an estimate for how much TEL costs per gram, and what savings we'd expect from blending avgas without it? It seems there should be some kind of offset here that nobody is talking about)
- mark