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Politics : The Environmentalist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: FJB who wrote (24767)	5/30/2009 10:41:27 PM
From: Maurice Winn	1 Recommendation Respond to of 36917

Yes, I have traveled in India for a couple of weeks. But you wouldn't notice such ambient lead effects - it's all quite painless and cognitively undetectable unless you get significant doses [as far as I know but maybe that's not correct and people with acute awareness would notice something not right]. Lead poisoning here: nlm.nih.gov Lead in petrol was a big deal back in the 1980s and it consumed quite a bit of my working time. Mqurice

To: FJB who wrote (24767)	5/31/2009 1:02:40 AM
From: Maurice Winn	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 36917

I have to restrain myself or I would write many pages of rant about lead in petrol, octane quality, air pollution, cancer, brain damage, economic harm, evil doing lead supplier, class action suit [should be done], engine, oil and performance effects, costs, fuel components, cast iron cylinder heads versus stellite valve seats in aluminium, combustion efficiency, autoignition/knock etc etc. Suffice to say it was insane to keep lead in petrol to protect cast iron cylinder head valve seats while ignoring the vastly more valuable lifetime output of childrens' brains. I doubt you will not find anywhere a cost benefit analysis. When I figured out the value of the harm done to brains, I was quite shocked. When I was first given lead in petrol to deal with [in 1983] I thought it was probably not an issue because there was so little lead and it would just blow away, with the solution to pollution being dilution. After reading several kilograms of information, it was obvious that lead had no business being in petrol at 0.84 grams per litre and should be dropped rapidly to 0.1 grams per litre while figuring out when to drop it to zero. But, because the people in charge of governments, the Royal Society, the refineries and oil companies, the public, the motorists, were all indifferent, [more or less - not understanding the cost of the harm and the lack of benefit from the lead] lead was added to petrol in NZ until 1995. Even the environmentalists were relatively indifferent. They are more interested in their own status than actually doing something useful which is economically, technologically, medically, aesthetically, and scientifically rational. Now, I shall cease and desist. Mqurice