Drinking lead can damage people’s brains, but Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach opposes a plan to remove lead water pipes.
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In their letter, the attorneys general wrote, “[The plan] sets an almost impossible timeline, will cost billions and will infringe on the rights of the States and their residents – all for benefits that may be entirely speculative.”
Kobach repeated this nearly verbatim in a March 7 post on X (formerly Twitter).
Buttigieg responded by writing, “The benefit of not being lead poisoned is not speculative. It is enormous. And because lead poisoning leads to irreversible cognitive harm, massive economic loss, and even higher crime rates, this work represents one of the best returns on public investment ever observed.”
So you want society to pay those costs in air fares. You want to throw away a lot of the GA fleet, including a vast majority of the trainer aircraft in service. You’d see a lot of flight schools especially smaller ones just fold because their current aircraft is useless and unmarketable, so they have no capital with which to buy new ones. A lot of flight instructors would lose their jobs, and flight instructor certificates are the only ones issued under Part 61 that expire. With fewer people being trained as private pilots you’d have a much smaller pool of mostly richer young folks to pull from for commercial aviation, so the main effect of this will be flying will become a rich son’s way to demand more money from society.
The IO-390 is a derivative of the IO-360, which itself dates back to the 1950’s. Funnily enough it’s rated for a similar horsepower range to the O-360, but with 30 more cubic inches, basically having the same bore and stroke as the IO-580 but with 4 cylinders rather than 6. I wonder why they bothered.
You get to cherry pick an example, I get to cherry pick an example. The Rotax 915 was type certified a few years ago, it runs on premium automotive gasoline, features electronic capacitor discharge ignition, electronic fuel injection, turbocharged induction, dry sump lubrication, and a host of other features. It makes 141 horsepower, fairly close to the Continental O-300 that pulled early model Skyhawks. They just recently announced a 916 version that makes 160 horsepower, which is the same rating as early Lycoming powered Skyhawks. And they’ll make their rated horsepower up to 15,000 feet. Couple that with a constant speed propeller and you’ve got a hell of a power plant for a trainer in both performance and efficiency, for both climbs and cruise.
In 2004 the Light Sport rule was adopted, which put thousands of brand new lead-free GA trainers in the air, replacing an aging fleet of Cessna 152s and the like. It’s been such a success that there’s an initiative underway (MOSAIC) right now to expand the scope of Special Airworthiness Certificates to include significantly larger and higher performance aircraft, which stands an excellent chance of modernizing the GA fleet, making it much more practical to market new airframes and powerplants to flight schools and other GA operations. Part of the proposal is to remove engine-specific language from the rule to allow for electric propulsion.
The EAGLE initiative seeks to find a lead free substitute for 100LL by the end of the decade.
But you keep going off.
Yes, that’s how capitalism works. You want the government to pay, the industry should be nationalized. When other industries pollute, we don’t expect the government to pay to help them fix their issues.
Yes BECAUSE YOU ARE POISONING CHILDREN WITH LEAD, a fact you continue to ignore. You just want to keep doing what you are doing and say in the back of your mind “fuck them kids.”
As, as you keep missing the point, had aviation been working on the problem sooner, perhaps it wouldn’t be such an issue now.
And, yes, I grabbed an example that demonstrated the issue. Lycoming, on of the largest piston aircraft manufacturers, was still pushing forward with tetraethyl lead decades after we knew the dangers of tetraethyl lead. I know certification is time consuming and expensive, but no one tries for a long time. If aviation didn’t drag its feet, they should have been working on the issue since the early 90s at least. Saying “in 2004” proves my point. They are only doing it because they finally see that their hand will be forced. Once lead pipes are gone and lead paint is abated, when kids keep showing up with high blood levels of lead, they will know it’s from the only industry that still uses lead.
And before you blame the FAA, 2 words: regulatory capture. Just so happens they are staffed with people from the aviation industry.
The fact is, the claim is always about safety. Can’t leave 100LL, other fuels are too dangerous. But why isn’t it EVERYONE’S safety? Lead poisoning is a serious issue that has been glossed over in aviation. And the victims are innocent, often poor people (because who else is forced to live in cheaper land near airports), and especially their children. For a supposedly safety focused industry, y’all seem to not give a shit about the people on the ground.
Well let me ask you a question: What have you personally done about it?
I’ve submitted comments on the MOSAIC and EAGLE initiatives, I conducted much of my own flight training and all that of my students in lead-free aircraft, I’ve served as a light sport repairman to make owning and operating lead-free aircraft in my local area much more plausible and affordable, I’ve educated all my students on the dangers of leaded gasoline, I was among the voices that got MOGAS pumps installed at two local airports to enable pilots with MOGAS compatible aircraft to operate on unleaded fuel.
Have you so much as written to your congressman? Or do you just want to bitch at people on the internet?
I have written about it. Didn’t receive a response. I also made public comments of proposed lead regulations in my own industry, pointing out the incongruity of taking little to no federal action on lead paint and avgas. If we have to have a tight timeline to replace millions of lead lines, so should avgas and far fewer aircraft.
Glad you are doing something. Sorry, it just seems you continue to defend using leaded fuel as well as the inaction of the aviation industry through the 80s and 90s even as the dangers of leaded fuel were well understood. The fact that ANYONE is still allowed to use leaded fuel truly boggles my mind.
Well also remember: The aviation sector as a whole has done a LOT to reduce its lead footprint since 1950. Used to be, everything from two seat trainers to transcontinental airliners burned leaded gasoline in reciprocating engines. Now it is fairly rare to find a reciprocating engine of more than 350 horsepower or so in service as they have largely been replaced with turboprops. Sometimes literally replaced; I know of several operations that use older airframes like DeHavilland Beavers/Otters, Grumman Geese/Mallards, or even Douglas DC-3s that have swapped their old radial engines for Pratt & Whitney PT-6s.
Old 80/87 red AVGAS was phased out before I started flying, I’ve never seen any in person. Granted some aircraft rated for it just started burning 100LL but others started using regular automotive gasoline. 115/145 purple AVGAS was also phased out, though I understand it’s made in small batches for certain motorsports events? Even 100/130 green AVGAS is rare to find; 100LL blue AVGAS is meant to do the job of 100/130 with less lead. The industry as a whole has made a lot of broad strokes, now we’re working on the details.
Before the 60s, people didn’t consider what tetraethyl lead was doing. It was the groundbreaking work of Clair Cameron Patterson that finally exposed it. Even then industry fought him for years. I would far and away attribute most of those early gains to the wide adoption of faster and higher flying jet aircraft that thankfully do not use leaded fuel. And even turboprops have seen wide adoption, not because of lead fuel, but because they have superior performance and can support higher altitudes.
But, again, I find it unconscionable that in 2024 leaded fuel is still used. Sorry it effects you livelihood (it sure as hell effects mine even though we figured out how to mitigate it 30 years ago and would have stayed that way if it weren’t for some moron tea party Republicans in Michigan that thought they knew more than experts), but our children can’t wait. Hopefully, now nearly 60 years after Dr. Patterson exposed how bad leaded fuel is, leaded gas can finally die.