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Leaded fuel still used in small private planes in UK (2022)

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-12/uk-underestimated-lead-pollution-from-small-private-planes-by-14-000-times-study-finds

Unpaywalled archive link: https://archive.ph/TDGsk Open Access link to the study mentioned: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/puh2.27

Posting because I saw another post on this community about Extinction Rebellion UK blocking a private jet airport today (June 2024) (https://extinctionrebellion.uk/2024/06/02/climate-activists-blockade-farnborough-private-jet-airports-three-main-gates/) and wondered how many people know that leaded fuel is still pretty common in planes, both in the UK and elsewhere; I was pretty shocked when I first learned this

15 comments

OminousOrange

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Leaded fuel is still used in piston airplanes everywhere. While there are ongoing efforts to develop an unleaded alternative, there is none currently available to the market.

rtxn

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There are already multiple unleaded aviation fuels in testing, and one (G100UL) commercially available. The main barrier is that the engines, especially larger and older ones, are not designed to run on unleaded fuel, and must be certified.

OminousOrange

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Right, hopefully G100UL can replace 100LL reasonably quickly, but there's a big difference between "commercially available" and actually available. I imagine it will be quite some time until it's commonplace for GA aircraft, unfortunately.

ephemeral_gibbon

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If they aren't absolutely essential for some important societal function the aircraft should just be grounded rather than be allowed to fly on leaded. No one's toy or joy ride should be giving thousands of people lead poisoning

RGB3x3

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Well it's about time they get the lead out and get the lead out!

veganpizza69

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The alternative is to ground them. Into dust (and recycle).

OminousOrange

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What's your alternative for access and supplies to many remote communities?

Sizzler

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Lol, remote and UK is about 5 Scottish islande.

veganpizza69

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Same as for current lunar communities.

pewgar_seemsimandroid

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History should stay preserved, you want your items to be a discovery don't you.

homesweethomeMrL

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Humanity: but it’s poisoning the planet, and the humans

Business: lol yeah

br3d

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It's not even business - a lot of small planes are just hobbyists. So we're getting poisoned (to say nothing of the noise pollution) by people flying in circles for fun

mojofrododojo

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finally someone who gets it.

I wonder if we'll ever come to a time when we can get the vroom vroom crowd to put down their poisoning toys, something tells me our species is fucked because they're never going to stop.

we have an air show here in Seattle every summer where the navy burns tens of thousands of gallons to VROOM f-18s around the lake.

I'm prior service, I'm not anti-military extremist, but do we really need to dump tens of thousands of gallons of gas into the summer (already shitty) air quality and the CO2 it becomes after combustion? for 'patriotism'?

Logically, no, but god forbid you take away the circuses from people, even if it's hurting their communities.

CouncilOfFriends

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Roughly a quarter of General Aviation traffic (which is primarily piston single-engine aircraft) is flight training, 30% is personal use, and the other 45% is commerce. I'm hoping we can increase adoption of unleaded alternatives since I don't see most of those flights going away.

mlg

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Mmm yummy 100LL