Why did we use leaded petrol for so long? (2017)

Were they cynics, though? As the article itself points out, the dangers of tetraethyl lead were already well know. And then there is this:

> And, as Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner point out, "For the next four decades, all studies of the use of tetraethyl lead were conducted by laboratories and scientists funded by the Ethyl Corporation and General Motors".

It doesn't take a cynic to see what was going on here.

Lead fuel was during a time when the cylinder heads were mostly cast-iron, and the valve seat was cut directly into the head. Cast iron is an interesting material, it's reasonably durable, but it corrodes/rusts very easily, especially when exposed to moisture. Gasoline and ethanol both have water as combustion byproducts, so when the engine is off and cools, some of that moisture condenses inside the engine.

Running straight ethanol in an engine without corrosion resistant materials causes much more wear over time because it tends to strip the protective/lubricative oil barriers away, causing iron to corrode when the engine isn't running. Modern engines are aluminum heads with valve seat inserts, stainless steel valves, better piston ring materials (high chromium I think? these were cast iron in the past).

Ethanol has a significant detergent/cleaning effect, even when at 5-10% concentration in gasoline. The valve stems also get some of their lubrication from the fuel, and gasoline is basically a thin oil, and provides protection to mechanical components, better yet with additives. Ethanol is also a difficult fuel in a cold start situation and requires good compression and a strong ignition system to kick it off.

I suspect the whole reason to want to keep lead was motivated by the bean counters involved. They saw a cost savings with lead in the fuel. Cheaper materials and no tooling changes. This means more profits.

The BBC is British - what about the UK? The rest of Europe? China? Japan? Russia? Australia? Did the entire rest of the world also use leaded petrol? And stopped using it at the same time as the US?

While smallpox was no longer a major threat, influenza, polio, whooping cough and a bunch of other infectious diseases killed kids in huge numbers. People died from infections from routine cuts. Millions of young men (mostly) had been thrown in the meat grinder of WWI.

Life was cheaper then.

Until about the early 2000s you could get a grant to cover the cost of converting your petrol car to run on propane. There's masses of it that has to be burnt because it's a waste product from cracking heavier fractions to make plastics feedstocks, and it burns producing only carbon dioxide and water - no HC, no CO, no particulates.

They run warehouse forklifts on it, because unlike diesel or petrol you don't die if you breathe the exhaust fumes.

But, there was more profit to be had in buying everyone's cars for a couple of hundred quid and "scrapping" them - in reality, even 30 years later there are still millions lying in fields that haven't been touched - and then selling people very expensive finance packages so they can buy a diesel car instead.

So now we have stinky diesels everywhere and everyone is in debt. Working as intended.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0m89fqk?partner=uk.co.bbc...

Cautionary Tales: The Inventor who almost ended the world. BBC Sounds Podcasts

Edit: add title Edit: typo

There's even a 100LL alternative that has sailed through most tests the FAA requires but the FAA has been stonewalling them for something like a decade. The FAA is full of paper-pushing corrupt beaurocrats who are firmly in the pocket of industry, as demonstrated by the thousands of victims of Boeing crashes from the idiocy of the MAX program (wherein Boeing did not want to spend the money to redesign an aircraft for bigger passenger and cargo loads, so they just stretched the plane, which put the Cg out of whack, which meant they needed to have a computer help fly the plane...and then skimped on redundancy.)

That infamous tv spot where the inventor washed his hands in leaded gas was immediately followed by him having a psychiatric break and being committed. If they’d shown what really happened we’d have restricted it far earlier.

it's been spraying down from prop plane exhaust and engines flying overhead

anyone living around airports is being poisoned

extra TWENTY-FIVE YEARS NOW since cars (as long as the TSA has existed)

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/leaded-gas-wa...