Why is leaded petrol phased out

This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Classic Bentleys and Rolls-Royce adapted to fully electric. View comments. Related Topics. United Nations Climate change Fuel. Published 29 August. Published 24 August. But why did this take so long, when the understanding of lead as a health hazard goes back more than a century? Companies began creating lead additives in to fix knocking or pinging in engines that could damage them and waste gasoline.

The leaded product was highly promoted and popular, even though there were cleaner alternatives— based on alcohol, for example.

All the lead that went into gas tanks globally—three grams in each gallon—came out the exhaust pipe as particles that lingered in the air before settling on surfaces. Gasoline coated the world in lead. Environmental Protection Agency. Japan was first to ban leaded gas in Austria, Canada, Slovakia, Denmark, and Sweden followed. In the United States and Germany, the final phase-out of leaded fuel came in , a quarter century ago. Lead impacts nearly every physiological domain in the human body, said Amit Bhattacharya , a professor of environmental health at the University of Cincinnati.

You have to see a letter, which is a symbol, put it together with other symbols, connect that to a pronunciation, connect that to an object or an activity. Children who have been exposed to lead take a blow to these processes that can amount to 10 IQ points. From first grade to 11th. He and a team found a way to detect lead-induced impairments with a quick, non-invasive test that can be administered starting at age five.

Found early, some problems with balance and motion may be treatable. Another researcher, Kim Cecil , shed light on the possible pathway, Battacharya said. It was gone. Lead can travel across the blood-brain barrier, he explained: It can go anywhere it wants. Currently, Bhattacharya is finding early bone fragility in women that is associated with lead exposure.

In the early s, 25 sub-Saharan countries agreed in the UN-sponsored Dakar Declaration to phase out leaded petrol. The UNEP partnership formed and began its work. Evidence has mounted to show that lead in petrol damages the catalytic converters. Following the Clean Air Act amendments in the United States, the catalytic converter emerged as the most effective technology for cleaning up emissions from car exhausts.

Unfortunately, this technology was rapidly poisoned by lead. So the Environmental Protection Agency EPA began to regulate lead in gasoline and mandate the availability of lead-free gasoline.

The EPA adopted a health-based ambient air quality standard for lead to address these and other concerns in This triggered strong governmental action. Countries around the world started to ban lead in petrol, Walsh said. India was among those countries that took early action to phase out leaded petrol. The process of phase down that had started in , got completed in Initially, low-leaded petrol was introduced in Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta and Madras in , followed by unleaded petrol in The entire country got low-leaded petrol in while leaded fuel was banned in the National Capital Territory of Delhi.

Unleaded and low-leaded petrol were also extended to all other state capitals and major cities. The final introduction of unleaded petrol in the entire country was mandated in April This decision was also catalysed by the Supreme Court order that had directed introduction of unleaded petrol to enable adoption of catalytic converters in petrol cars.

In fact, after the lead phaseout, Indian refineries took voluntary steps to not to use MMT Methylcyclopentadienyl manganese tricarbonyl , yet another dangerous neurotoxin which several developed countries have virtually banned by setting an exceptionally low permissible limit for its use.

There are still other sources of lead in the environment like the industrial processes or contamination of soil due to legacy emissions of lead that need to be addressed. Skip to main content Skip to navigation. Jamie Durrani Science correspondent, Chemistry World.

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