this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2025
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For some reason, I was doing dishes today and thinking about how dumb humans were to put lead in everything back in the 1900's despite the fact that we were well aware of the dangers of lead on human physiology. We literally put that shit in our fuel and pumped the exhaust into our air. We put it in utensils. UTENSILS people. Seriously? It had been known for eons practically that lead is poison to the body.
The US obsession with putting lead in shit was very uniquely American. Many European countries had banned lead in their stuff in the first third of the 20th century but the US stuck onto it for some reason.
The lead in gasoline was one of the worst environmental and social bullshit ever made. They didn't need to use that as an anti knocking agent. But they did since it was more patentable. When asked about possible health and environmental issues it would cause, they said it is the next generation's problem...
Yeah. That is capitalism. Creating what was a prime mover in the massive crime waves around the world from the 1960s to 90s for short term profit.
The US banned leaded gasoline (at a federal level, states had banned it since the 1920s) in 1996. Austria was the first European country to ban leaded gas, and they did it in 1993. The first country world wide to ban leaded gas was Japan and they did it in 1986.
And the EU didn't ban leaded gas as a whole until 2000
I am aware. I am an elder millennial and I remember gas pumps in the 90s with leaded and unleaded gasoline. I also remember the PSAs against it.
And its still not entirely banned in the US, AVGAS for small planes is a "low" lead fuel that still contains a decent amount of lead.
Avgas is the last hold out for that, yes. But piston powered airplanes are becoming rarer and rarer.
True, though they are more common than you think, there's still thousands of flights daily across the U.S. and where I live its the only mode of transportation in/out of a lot of communities. On thing that's common though is a mod to allow the planes to run on car gas, 85 or better octane. That helps us and them (much cheaper) and a lot of modern small aircraft are moving to diesel piston engines like the Thielert engines.
Dieselpunk all the way!
Yeah but 100LL is also still legal (and required) in Europe. My comment is specifically talking about automotive gas
And more specifically, I was refuting the very clear anti-american sentiment in the comment above mine. Because leaded fuel was not a "uniquely American problem"