SEATTLE — Hundreds of thousands of small planes still use fuel that contains lead, a brain-damaging substance that has been banned from paint and other products, a radio station has reported Monday.
The aviation fuel known as “avgas” accounts for less than 1 percent of the nation’s liquid fuel use, but enough piston and engine planes use it to belch out half of all the lead going into the nation’s air, public radio station KUOW (94.9 FM) in Seattle reported.
The most commonly used jet fuel doesn’t contain lead.
America’s air contains a lot less lead than before the 1980s, but new research has found lead to be harmful at much lower levels than previously thought, and it’s mostly harmful to children, the station reported.
“Living close to an airport can increase your blood lead level anywhere from 2 to 4 percent. That’s small. But we’re getting more and more evidence that indicates even very small amounts of lead is bad,” said Marie Lynn Miranda, an environmental health scientist and a dean at the University of Michigan who has examined the lead exposure of children living within a kilometer of airports in North Carolina.
Miranda said lead from crumbling paint in old buildings remains a much bigger threat to children’s health.
“But the reality is that exposure to aviation gasoline contributes to children’s exposure to lead, something that we have known for a very, very long time is bad for children,” she added.
Monitoring of airborne lead in the Puget Sound region ended in 1999, a year after a lead smelter on Seattle’s Harbor Island shut down. The Puget Sound Clean Air Agency says “airborne lead is no longer a public health concern in the Puget Sound region,” KUOW reported.
In recent months, the EPA has started a pilot project to monitor airborne lead at 15 airports, including two in the Northwest — Harvey Field in Snohomish and Auburn Municipal Airport south of Seattle.
Avgas represents “a very small proportion of our fuel usage here at the airport,” said Gary Molyneaux, Boeing Field’s head planner. The airport is concerned and watching lead emissions, he said, but added that there’s not enough data to understand it.
Washington state ranks fifth in the country for lead emissions from airplanes, and per person, all the Northwest states use more avgas than the national average, the station reported.
At Kenmore Air Harbor on Lake Washington, half of Kenmore’s business depends on plans that burn leaded fuel, said Rob Richey, Kenmore Air’s maintenance director.
“Honestly, if leaded fuel without an alternative is removed, our industry will be dead,” he said. “If a fuel could be developed that was lead-free, it’s fine with us. But because our market is so small, whether the big refiners go to the trouble to make it, that’s the big question.”
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Information from: KUOW-FM, http://www.kuow.org/
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