Comment by jwess | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jwess | Hacker News Reader

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The water contamination crisis in Flint, MI has brought attention to the dangers of lead exposure and aging infrastructure. The problems in Flint will be expensive to fix, but many people are not aware of other "low hanging fruit" in this area. For example, aviation fuel is still leaded, and the national estimate of lead emissions from the consumption of leaded AvGas was 483 tons in 2011, according to the EPA's National Emissions Inventory [0]. Furthermore, the same NEI data shows airports as the top source of lead emissions in 42 states (according to 2011 NEI data).

Leaded aviation fuel is used by planes which use internal combustion engines instead of cleaner, more powerful, and more expensive jet engines. Most of these small planes are for personal use.

I think the costs of lead abatement should be included in the price of AvGas, or its use should be discontinued entirely.

[0] U.S. EPA. Calculating Piston-Engine Aircraft Airport Inventories for Lead for the 2011 National Emissions Inventory. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, EPA-420-B-13-040, 2013. Page 5

>Leaded aviation fuel is used by planes which use internal combustion engines instead of cleaner, more powerful, and more expensive jet engines.

Single engine personal aircraft are finally starting to switch over to Jet-A, due to the extreme costs of 100LL avgas, the difficulty of procuring it (there's only one TEL factory left in the entire world) and higher energy density in kerosene. So we're on the right track.

Huh? There are very very few GA engines capable of running on kerosene.

Conversions, especially of older, lower performance aircraft, to run on 87 mogas is MUCH more common.

That and the higher efficiency of diesels (assuming you're talking about little planes). Still it's a really long road ahead. For GA aircraft I think a better solution right now is a drop in replacement for 100LL (which is getting worked on) or getting leased engines certified for mogas or modified to run on it.

This makes me think of A Snow Mobile for George [1]. I'm not sure what the lead pollution impact of 2 stroke engines are (probably awful if you were able to find/use leaded gas) but in terms of low-hanging fruit its a perfect example of how regulation or deregulation can have a large effect on pollution.

Growing up using 2 stroke weedeaters and chainsaws I had no idea how polluting they are. Granted we were using terribly small amounts of gas compared to snowmobiles but it still made me think of the health dangers of the exhaust. I have some nostalgic feelings towards the smell of 2 stroke exhaust (diesel exhaust as well) but after seeing the documentary I wouldn't buy another 2 stroke anything.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1314278/

"Growing up using 2 stroke weedeaters and chainsaws I had no idea how polluting they are."

Terribly polluting. However, my understanding is that there is no potential for "fixing" chainsaws since a 4 stroke engine cannot run upside down - which is a requirement for a chainsaw.

Am I mistaken ?

Luckily we're starting to see a lot of battery operated chainsaws come onto the market with higher density Li-ion batteries. We're demoing a dewalt[1] chainsaw at my fire department and I have been using a Bosch reciprocating saw with a brush blade for light tree work for two years now ... but this is all light duty stuff and cannot replace large chainsaws...

[1] http://www.dewalt.com/products/power-tools/outdoor-power-equ...

2-stroke engines are lubricated by their own fuel mix. There's no reason you can't mix oil and gas in a 4-cycle fuel mix. This is what the Stihl 4-cycle chainsaw does.

Honda also makes small 4-stroke engines that work in any position, because Japan is awesome.

> This makes me think of A Snow Mobile for George

For some reason my immediate impression from the title was: "Like Flowers For Algernon, but with lead poisoning."

The AOPA is the NRA, essentially. They don't care about the public health problems they cause. They just want to fly around in their little WW2-technology toys.

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