this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
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Mildly Interesting
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Little known fact. Airplanes still use leaded fuel. I’ll bet that the blood levels for all of these families are elevated. Not a great place to raise a kid.
Clarification: Only piston aircraft require leaded fuel. Which is unfortunately a pretty big part of the general aviation market, but similarly sized turboprops do also exist (though are more expensive) and it doesn't apply to modern commercial aviation at all.
There is an increasing number of piston aircraft that have Diesel engines, and run on jet fuel.
Yep, and the FAA is taking it's sweet time to approve a new unleaded fuel for general aviation that shows a lot of promise called G100UL. It's estimated it could take another 6-9 years. Otherwise it's currently only approved for specific planes and not available at most airports and aerodromes.
It's approved as of last fall, but the FAA spent well over a decade stonewalling it with unnecessary bureaucracy.
Now we're left with the chicken-and-egg problem of the market, where nobody will offer unleaded because it's more expensive, but it's expensive because it's not widely used. The feds should subsidize it down to $4/gal for 5 years to get it off the ground.
Disgusting.