Still cleaning your belly with 100LL? Might want to watch this:

Kent Wien

Kent Wien

Pre-takeoff checklist
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Kent
For those of us who grew up cleaning airplane bellies and parts with 100LL, this might be enlightening. Or scary as heck:

 
RyanB said:
25 minutes long… got a TLDR?
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Cliff notes- 100LL is good for cleaning the belly of your aircraft but you’ll lose a few IQ points by doing so.
 
For medium length I'll add that the inventors of leaded gas were evil and killed millions with their invention. Of course, to believe that you have to ignore anyone saved by an ambulance running leaded gasoline, as well as any other improvements brought about by having access to faster, cheaper, more efficient automobiles.
 
RyanB said:
25 minutes long… got a TLDR?
Click to expand...
Thomas Midgley Jr. Invented leaded gasoline (and suffered from lead poisoning himself on multiple occasions but still insisted it was totally safe - video brings up effects of lead exposure which correlates to more than one less than optimal outcome.) and Freon (in this case, I don't think the potential problems were foreseeable). Video hits general aviation as the last of the leaded fuel holdouts.
 
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If Bryan drinks one more glass of the blue stuff....he just lost 800 million IQ points.o_O

This thing is painful to watch.....and proves nothing. And the last few minutes of the video says the most....consider the source.
 
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No signs posted warning of this:

The Omaha Lead Superfund Site is comprised of residential properties, child-care centers, and other residential-type properties in the city of Omaha, Nebraska, where the surface soil is contaminated as a result of deposition of air emissions from historic lead smelting and refining operations. The health-based limit for lead in surface soil at residential locations is 400 parts per million (ppm). The site boundary encompasses 27 square miles and is centered on downtown Omaha, where two former lead-processing facilities operated. The American Smelting and Refining Company, Inc., (ASARCO) operated a lead refinery at 500 Douglas Street for over 125 years.
 
Great article Kent... 10 years from now when I am sitting on my porch with my tongue hanging out, my wife will be reading an article to me about how I spent way too many hours talking on my cell phone to my airplane pals back in the 2000's... there is always something that we humans embrace for convenience or fun or coolness such as cigarettes... my Dad died because of those sadly...
 
bnt83 said:
The health-based limit for lead in surface soil at residential locations is 400 parts per million (ppm).
Click to expand...

Even this value is likely too high for long term exposure. California often uses 80 ppm in soil for residential. Background (natural) lead concentrations in soil are typically less than 10 ppm, but are sometimes a bit higher.

Every day the FAA delays final approval of G100UL is another day closer to the risk that 100LL will get banned by the EPA before a replacement is widely available.
 
Jeff Oslick said:
Even this value is likely too high for long term exposure. California often uses 80 ppm in soil for residential. Background (natural) lead concentrations in soil are typically less than 10 ppm, but are sometimes a bit higher.

Every day the FAA delays final approval of G100UL is another day closer to the risk that 100LL will get banned by the EPA before a replacement is widely available.
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Given the resurgence of the regulatory state in the last eighteen months, the probability of that ban occurring is a real concern.
 
donjohnston said:
I wonder how much lead was in the air back in the 50's compared to today?
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PSI_Bleikonzentration_en.jpg

https://www.psi.ch/en/media/our-res...eric-lead-concentrations-in-russia-since-1680
 
I’m more worried about the 10+ years of staging for motocross morning practices, 50+ bikes warming up, while two-strokes were still the preferred platform…many of us ran leaded race fuel since two-strokes loved it. Didn’t help that it smelled wonderful when paired with castor…
 
Omalley1537 said:
I’m more worried about the 10+ years of staging for motocross morning practices, 50+ bikes warming up, while two-strokes were still the preferred platform…many of us ran leaded race fuel since two-strokes loved it. Didn’t help that it smelled wonderful when paired with castor…
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We used to ride 2 stroke dirt bikes in the woods and we would run straight leaded race gas. It smelled so good and made my bike run so good. Then my buddies started running it also. Bad thing was at the end of the day it left a bad taste in your mouth from following the bike in front on long rides that would not wash away with our beers at night. Eventually we started cutting it with unleaded gas for economic reasons and so our beer would taste better around the campfire at night.
 
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I’ll say the purple fuel ( 115/145) didn’t help at all.
 
Salty said:
For medium length I'll add that the inventors of leaded gas were evil and killed millions with their invention. Of course, to believe that you have to ignore anyone saved by an ambulance running leaded gasoline, as well as any other improvements brought about by having access to faster, cheaper, more efficient automobiles.
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Right, because ambulances were completely ineffective before the addition to lead to fuel and completely ineffective after it was removed from fuel. :rolleyes:

Finding some sort of rationale to think that leaded fuel saves lives is a bet of a stretch...
 
Mtns2Skies said:
Right, because ambulances were completely ineffective before the addition to lead to fuel and completely ineffective after it was removed from fuel. :rolleyes:

Finding some sort of rationale to think that leaded fuel saves lives is a bet of a stretch...
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I'll betcha you and your family used it more than once.
 
Thomas Midgley Jr. also invented Freon, so he's on the hook for that as well.
 
I watched it and was unimpressed with its sensationalism. Far more Americans are dying from obesity. I grew up when ALL gasoline was leaded and I am in exceptional health and almost 90. Also I only use pumice free Goop hand cleaner on my plane's belly since it works better and you can hose it off with water.
 
I agree....pumice irritates my belly. o_O
Snowmass said:
I watched it and was unimpressed with its sensationalism. Far more Americans are dying from obesity. I grew up when ALL gasoline was leaded and I am in exceptional health and almost 90. Also I only use pumice free Goop hand cleaner on my plane's belly since it works better and you can hose it off with water.
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This is old news packaged as new news. Tetraethyllead is very toxic, and reasonably volatile which is why it was phased out from automobile fuels in the 1970s. Chemical exposure, manufacture, and environmental pollution was treated much more lax decades ago. We know better now. I hope. (I still can't believe the kinds of chemical exposures we tolerated in teaching and research laboratories in the 70s and 80s. We don't do that now, thankfully.) Phasing out its use is a good idea, as soon as someone can figure out out to make an adequate replacement 100 octane fuel.

100LL gasoline is not the most healthy thing to handle. One should probably wear gloves to handle it and keep it off the skin, as TEL is quite lipophilic. I would never consider using it as a cleaning solvent. Most of us that grew up in the 60s and 70s will likely have measurably higher blood lead levels than those born in the 80s. Yet, we didn't all become stupid or commit crimes. (It may, however, account for higher risks for various health problems.) But one should be careful to not confuse correlation with direct causation. However you slice it, though, lead it not good for you in any way, and exposure to it should be limited to the greatest extent possible.

GA is not the only source of atmospheric lead, although it is probably one of the last few remaining major sources. (Coal-burning utilities, ore smelters, and some trash incinerators account for a major fraction of atmospheric lead.)
 
Chemgeek, how bad was MEK? I spent a lot of time around that as a teenager and I’ve always wondered.
 
Jeff Oslick said:
Even this value is likely too high for long term exposure. California often uses 80 ppm in soil for residential. Background (natural) lead concentrations in soil are typically less than 10 ppm, but are sometimes a bit higher.

Every day the FAA delays final approval of G100UL is another day closer to the risk that 100LL will get banned by the EPA before a replacement is widely available.
Click to expand...
That's probably what they're waiting for. That way everyone will be mad at/sue the EPA instead of FAA.
 
Kent Wien said:
Chemgeek, how bad was MEK? I spent a lot of time around that as a teenager and I’ve always wondered.
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MEK is pretty much a nothing burger compared to most stuff in the lab. (It will defat your skin in a hurry, though.) What I worry about is all the exposure to 1,2-dichloroethane and other chlorinated solvents I used for peptide crystallization in grad school. Would never happen today with me or my students. Fortunately, I was not a very good synthetic chemist and quickly moved on to less toxic interests. Acute exposure is less of a problem than chronic exposure.
 
BTW the original reason given to the public for lead free gasoline was not TEL toxicity but that catalytic converters could not have leaded fuel. At least that was what was in the news then. After all we had been living with TEL auto fuel for many decades by then.
 
Thanks ChemGeek. I feel better about that. Now I guess I’ll have to use a different excuse for my SAT scores in high school.

Can I blame it on Aircraft Paint Stripper? Worth a try.

Kent
 
what about 2 4 dichlorophenoxyacetic acid, combined with 3,4,5-Trichlorophenoxyacetic acid, and diesel fuel? We used a whole bunch of that for many years for mesquite control. And then Arsenic Acid for cotton defoliation.
 
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