Fifty years ago, the federal government began a successful process to rid vehicle gasoline of lead, a chemical linked to brain harm and IQ loss. Half a century later, lead continues to be used in the fuels that power the nation’s fleet of small aircraft, an additive to stop their piston engines from potentially malfunctioning mid-flight. Today the aviation industry accounts for 70% of lead emissions in the nation — nearly 500 tons that rain down annually. Though ideally not for much longer.
Last September, the federal agency overseeing the nation’s aviation industry certified the first lead-free aviation gas for use in the more than 200,000 registered piston engine aircraft that currently use leaded gasolines. This important stamp of approval comes after a mounting, decades-long public outcry and a race among fuel companies like petroleum giant Phillips 66 to create a lead-free aviation alternative.
The winner was a relatively small company out of Oklahoma. But its product, G100UL, is a long way from being widely available on the market. It doesn’t have a manufacturer yet. A wholesale transition to unleaded aviation fuels appears years away. And frustrated officials, health experts and community groups blame the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA), saying it is making the switch more difficult than it should be.
“This is the last transportation sector that uses leaded fuel,” said U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), in an interview. The FAA “needs to move faster” to eliminate lead altogether from the nation’s aviation industry for the sake of people’s health, she added. It is more than two years since a National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine report laid out a policy pathway for the FAA to follow in the transition.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is similarly criticized for foot-dragging in its ongoing efforts to formally regulate leaded aviation fuels, with Marcie Keever, program director for Friends of the Earth, describing it as taking “just way too long.” The EPA estimates that 4 million people reside within 500 meters of airports that service piston-engine planes. Millionaire playboys use them as aeronautical runarounds. These aircraft also have significant utilitarian use such as crop dusting, the education of new pilots and emergency response efforts.
The World Health Organization has found lead potentially damaging at any level of exposure.
According to Robert Olislagers, senior coordinator of the FAA-backed unleaded fuel research and development initiative — a collaborative effort between industry and government — the typically higher price of new unleaded aviation fuels as they’re brought onto the market could potentially “eliminate a lot of pilots from flying.” An unleaded gasoline with limited use is already on the aviation market. Santa Monica Airport subsidizes its cost. But not all airports have the same resources as this one located in a wealthy Los Angeles municipality, especially not those in poorer, more rural parts of the country.
At the same time, lead exposure poses a significant public health concern, linked as it is to permanent damage to the brain and nervous system. It has also been associated with a higher risk of death from coronary heart disease. The World Health Organization has found lead potentially damaging at any level of exposure. Fetuses and young children are particularly vulnerable. Lead is an inhalation risk for those who live around airports, as well as for airport workers and pilots. It can also be deposited on homes and gardens where fruits and vegetables grow.
A 2021 study found that the closer children lived to Reid-Hillview Airport in California’s Santa Clara County, the higher the amount of lead in their blood. A follow-up analysis found that the blood lead levels in these children increased with the volume of air traffic and quantities of leaded aviation gas sold at the airport.
“The Biden Administration needs to lower the bureaucratic hurdles and accelerate the switch to unleaded aviation fuel,” wrote population health scientist Bruce Lanphear, co-author of the study, in an email. He calls for leaded aviation fuel to be eliminated by 2025, saying that “millions” would benefit almost instantly, “especially disadvantaged communities and communities of color” that are located at disproportionate rates next to general aviation airports with the highest emissions.
The study findings prompted Santa Clara County to suspend leaded gasoline sales at the airport. In response, the FAA opened an investigation into the action, arguing the county might have violated the United States Constitution and FAA guidelines. Rep. Lofgren said it took months of personal lobbying to help reach a compromise with the FAA, including at the highest office in the land.
“When you have to talk to the president of the United States personally to get action, which I did, that shows you it needs to improve at the agency,” said Lofgren. The FAA recently suspended its investigation.
“The fuel has been tested extensively. It has shown to be usable and safe.”~ Eric Peterson, director of county airports, Santa Clara County
Other critics of the FAA accuse the agency of needlessly muddying the waters at a time when major logistical challenges obstruct the manufacture and distribution of the lead-free fuel G100UL nationwide. The American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), an international organization standardizing the way products are manufactured, is one such obstacle.
FAA officials view ASTM’s testing standards as a vital rubber stamp for aviation gasoline, saying engine manufacturers and fuel suppliers demand ASTM approval to ensure the fuel can be used consistently and safely. Olislagers likens it to a Good Housekeeping seal of approval, only with higher stakes. “It maintains a high level of accuracy so that what you get every time is the same thing,” he said. G100UL does not currently have this imprimatur.
But the ASTM standard process is a voluntary one, said George Braly, co-founder of Oklahoma-based General Aviation Modifications Inc. (GAMI), which invented the G100UL fuel. And while lack of this standard — a possible multiyear process — makes his product potentially harder to manufacture and market, he said, it’s not impossible. Indeed, Braly said he is in active discussions with several firms to manufacture G100UL, including a major oil company that so far has not required an ASTM standard.
“An ASTM specification, which is not written by God, is fallible. They provide no protection from litigation, and they are fundamentally nothing more than a document to facilitate commerce,” said Braly, calling the FAA either misinformed or guilty of “deliberately passing on misinformation.”
Eric Peterson, Santa Clara County’s director of airports, agrees with Braly. “The fuel has been tested extensively. It has shown to be usable and safe, and meets the requirements of these types of standards,” said Peterson, who is working with Braly to make GAMI’s fuel available at Santa Clara County’s Reid-Hillview and San Martin airports later this year.
FAA spokesperson Mina Kaji failed to respond to multiple questions. Regarding accusations of FAA foot-dragging, Kaji downplayed the agency’s ability to streamline and expedite the switch to unleaded fuel alternatives.
Since 2011, American taxpayers have poured nearly $50 million into two research and development projects for unleaded aviation fuels.
Though the FAA is “currently authorized to provide limited entitlement funding for aircraft fueling systems at general aviation airports,” Kaji wrote, the agency’s regulatory role is to approve the safe use of unleaded fuels. “It does not include scaling up manufacturing,” she added, about the challenge that GAMI’s fuel currently faces.
And yet since 2011, American taxpayers have poured nearly $50 million into two research and development projects for unleaded aviation fuels with stated goals that include helping develop “supply chain infrastructure and deployment.” This includes $10 million in last year’s federal spending bill. Despite these efforts, the race to invent a fleetwide unleaded aviation fuel has been won from outside these FAA initiatives. One such company is Swift Fuels, which aims to have its own unleaded full-fleet fuel on the market by the end of the year. Swift is currently seeking both FAA and ASTM approval for this product.
As such, some question the ongoing need for the FAA’s research and development initiative, with its goal of 2030 for a full transition to lead-free aviation fuels. “2030? Are you kidding me?” said Friends of the Earth’s Keever. The FAA should focus on how to get unleaded fuels “out into all airports and into plane owner’s hands” right now, she added.
Earlier this month, the FAA announced a “demonstration project” to study how a select number of airports handle the switch to unleaded aviation fuels. It is currently unclear how long the project will take and how many airports will participate. FAA spokesperson Kaji ignored questions about the demonstration project. Olislagers, who explained he is not directly involved in the program, said it could be completed within a year. “They really want to fast-track this,” he said.
According to Braly, however, the FAA unnecessarily slow-tracked the process to certify his product. He said the formula he originally submitted in 2009 was “almost identical” to the one that was finally approved last year, meaning it could have been certified years ago.
“He can hark back to what should have been done years ago,” said Olislagers, who assumed his position with the FAA-backed initiative only last year. “But he’s got [FAA certification] now. So, let’s get it out on the market.”
Rep. Lofgren agrees. She said that lawmakers are looking at current negotiations around the latest FAA Authorization Act for possible ways to expedite that process. “For safety and health reasons,” she added, the aviation industry “ought to get out of lead as swiftly as possible.”
