Getting The Lead Out Of Gasoline: The Struggle Continues

Automotive Industries, June, 2000 by Lindsay Brooke

Every day in Mexico City, 4 million cars pump an estimated 32 tons of lead into the air. In Jakarta, the capitol of Indonesia, 1.5 tons of lead enter the atmosphere daily from automotive combustion.

Tragically, as new fuels and emissions-control technologies are about to make the industrial world's vehicles even cleaner, much of the developing world is being poisoned the old fashioned way: by fueling their vehicles with gasoline containing tetraethyl lead (TEL). Fifteen years after the U.S. banned the sale of leaded gasoline as a motor fuel, the petroleum and chemical industries are still peddling tankerloads of it throughout the Third World -- the last major profit center for leaded fuel. More than 80% of the countries that consume leaded gasoline today are poor nations (see box).

The continued marketing and consumption of gasoline laced with a poison that's widely known to pose serious health hazards to society should concern Al readers for three reasons. First, the developing world is where automobile use is exploding. Two-thirds of India's pollution now is generated by vehicles; in 1971, it was only 24%. Second, the fact that leaded gasoline is still manufactured (there are only three TEL plants remaining in the world, in Britain, Germany and Russia) when modem, catalyst-equipped engines cannot run on the stuff, is outrageous.

And third, automobile engines never needed lead to operate efficiently and reliably in the first place. Not even the old ones that the oil and auto industries said were most susceptible to combustion "knock" and valve-seat recession -- two problems that leaded gas was claimed to conquer. There were safer antiknock additives available, including alcohol and benzene blends. But proof of their effectiveness was downplayed by General Motors, Standard Oil and DuPont which, despite mounting medical evidence of lead's health threat, colluded to create a huge manufacturing base and market for leaded gasoline, beginning in the 1920s. It has not been one of the finer chapters in any of their histories.

Auto writer Jamie Kitman has researched the sordid story of TEL vigorously and completely. His shocking report, "The Secret History of Lead," was recently published in The Nation magazine. (Al readers can link to the complete text via ai-online.com.) It should be read by every auto industry/chief executive, product planner, powertrain strategist and global marketing boss. Because Kitman's a committed vintage car owner/restorer and not a narrow-minded enviro, the story has an inherent credibility. This is no hatchet job against industry. Rather, it's a vivid recount of a business that put profits over public safety -- and continues to do so.

U.S. phaseout of lead in coatings and gasoline began in 1975, and was mostly completed by 1986. Removing it from regular use in these products resulted in a 78% decline in blood-lead levels in Americans between 1978 and 1991. As the U.S. led the world, other developed nations have followed. In Britain, which began its phaseout of leaded gas relatively late in the 1980% blood-lead levels have dropped by 66%. The European Union banned leaded gasoline beginning this year.

But as the industrial nations legislate lead's demise, the world's leadmakers are pushing to expand new markets, primarily in the Third World, Kitman notes. In 1998 Octel, the company which supplies 80% of the world's TEL to companies such as the Ethyl Corp., noted in an SEC filing that from 1989 to 1995, it was able to substantially offset the decline in TEL demand in the West with higher pricing.

There's immense irony in today's leaded-gas story, much of it coming from the petroleum industry. Kitman cites the example of Petroleos de Venezuela, the state-owned oil company of Venezuela, which exported unleaded gasoline in the 1990s while it imported shiploads of TEL for domestic use. As is typical in Latin America, some ranking company officials also served as paid consultants to lead-additive manufacturers.

The widespread combustion of leaded gasoline is dangerous to society. The more auto industry leaders and government officials can do to rapidly end its use, the better. Kitman's work is a call to arms.