An Environmental Protection Agency finding this past week confirms what residents around small airports nationwide have shouted for decades: Leaded aviation gasoline is poison.
The long overdue EPA finding states clearly that emissions from piston-engine aircraft that use leaded aviation gasoline, known as avgas, are a public health hazard. This finding is an important step toward desperately needed avgas regulation.
The Biden Administration’s EPA made the finding after years of advocacy by Earthjustice and other organizations. The finding was influenced by a 2021 scientific study commissioned by Santa Clara County on risks near Reid-Hillview Airport in San Jose.
The county study revealed children living near Reid-Hillview faced lead exposure similar to what the residents of Flint, Mich., faced during that city’s 2014 water crisis. The EPA finding cites the county study numerous times.
While the EPA finding is an important first step toward ending lead exposure from avgas, there’s still important work ahead. Next, the EPA and the Federal Aviation Administration will develop new rules for engine-emission standards and fuel composition to reduce lead exposure.
For far too long, avgas avoided federal scrutiny, while other major products that contained lead, from automobile gasoline to paint and pipes, were heavily regulated or outright banned. Avgas is the largest remaining source of new lead emissions, accounting for 70% of the nation’s total in 2017.
The finding comes 50 years after the EPA first concluded that “a significant portion of the urban population, particularly children, are overexposed to lead.” For years, the American Medical Association, Centers for Disease Control, Environmental Protection Agency and World Health Organization have stated there’s no safe blood lead level in children and that lead exposure can affect a child’s IQ and academic achievements.
The EPA took its first steps toward banning the use of lead in the United States fuel supply in 1973. Leaded gasoline was completely banned from vehicles in 1996, but a glaring loophole allowed piston-engine planes to continue to use avgas. In 2010, the Obama Administration’s EPA attempted to close that loophole but was thwarted after significant resistance from the aviation and petroleum industries.
In the South Bay, we’ve been beating the drum to get attention to this matter for years. It has fallen on deaf ears. Children living in densely populated neighborhoods surrounding general aviation airports, including Reid-Hillview, still face unhealthy lead-exposure levels because of avgas.
Other Bay Area airports, including those in Hayward and Concord, are also adjacent to residential areas and face the same exposure dangers.
Nationally, there are now 3 million children who live within a kilometer of these general aviation airports. Far too many of them, including the children around Reid-Hillview, are from communities of color.
We’re asking that the EPA and FAA make up for lost time by developing the new rules as fast as possible. They absolutely can’t be put on the back burner or get lost in a web of bureaucratic red tape. The health of our communities nationwide depends on it.
Santa Clara County Supervisor Cindy Chavez has been a leading advocate to ban leaded aviation fuel. Her district includes Reid-Hillview Airport in San Jose.