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Environmental Group
Sues EPA To Get The Lead Out Of Aviation Gasoline By Shane Nolan |
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March 8, 2012 - Friends of the Earth, a leading advocate for a healthy environment, filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday after the agency did not reply to a May 2011 Notice of Intent to sue.
The lawsuit challenges EPA’s failure to respond to a
2006 petition from Friends of the Earth asking for the
regulation of lead emissions from general aviation
aircraft under the Clean Air Act. The petition specifically asked EPA to find that lead emissions from aircraft using leaded aviation gasoline (avgas) may endanger public health. Nearly six years later, despite continuing to acknowledge that there is no safe threshold for lead exposure, EPA has taken no final action with regard to Friends of the Earth’s petition. |
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“EPA has
repeatedly concluded that lead is extremely toxic to humans,
wildlife and the environment and causes health effects even at
low doses,” said Marcie Keever, legal director for Friends of
the Earth. “EPA’s continuing failure to do what the law requires
and address this pollution leaves us no choice but to take this
critical public health issue to the courts. The health of
airport workers, pilots, passengers, and surrounding communities
from continued exposure to leaded aviation gasoline hangs in the
balance.”
While lead
was phased out of automobile gasoline more than 15 years ago, it
persists as a constituent of avgas in general aviation
airplanes. Aviation is the single largest source of lead
emissions in the U.S. and poses a significant threat to public
health especially in communities located near airports where
general aviation operates and avgas is used.
Two facts
mandate immediate corrective action by EPA:
1.
According to EPA estimates, sixteen million people reside and
three million children attend school in close proximity to the
22,000 airports where leaded avgas may be used.
2. There
is no “safe” threshold for lead exposure. A July 2011 study from Duke University published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives directly supports concerns about the severe and negative public health consequences caused by lead in aviation fuel. The report found that children living within 500 meters of an airport at which planes use leaded avgas have higher blood lead levels than other children. |
This apparent
effect of avgas on blood lead levels was also evident among children
living within 1 kilometer of airports.
The researchers concluded that there is a significant association
between potential exposure to lead emissions from aviation gasoline and
blood lead levels in children.
“EPA needs to stop
excusing the largest source of airborne lead emissions from regulation.
Taking all of the evidence together, we must address this critical
health issue and start phasing out lead in aviation gas now,” said
Deborah Behles, Associate Professor and Staff Attorney at the
Environmental Law & Justice Clinic at Golden Gate University School of
Law.
Recently, members
of the aviation community have come on board calling for more immediate
action. A group of pilots known as the Aviation Fuel Club have started a
grassroots movement to make unleaded fuel available at airports.
“Given concerns
about the impact of lead on public health, EPA’s failure to take timely
action on Friends of the Earth’s petition is inexcusable. We are simply
asking the EPA to move more quickly and definitively in establishing
regulations that would protect millions from ill health caused by the
known toxic effects of lead,” said Marianne Engelman Lado, the lead
Earthjustice attorney representing Friends of the Earth.
Earthjustice and
the Environmental Law and Justice Clinic at Golden Gate University
School of Law are representing Friends of the Earth in this challenge of
the EPA’s failure to respond to Friends of the Earth’s 2006 petition.
Reinforcing the
need for immediate action, in November 2010, EPA identified 16 regions
in the United States that fail to meet clean air standards for airborne
lead emissions. All of these regions either contain or are next to
airports that use leaded avgas.
Even at low doses,
lead is highly toxic and causes a variety of adverse health effects.
These include death and brain damage due to high levels of exposure, and
learning disabilities, lower IQ levels, increased blood pressure, and/or
nerve damage at lower exposures.
Children are at
higher risk than adults because they absorb larger amounts of lead and
are more sensitive to lead induced toxicity.
Lead exposure presents a particular danger to the development of
children’s nervous systems. And the National Toxicology Program which
includes parts of the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention, and the Food and Drug Administration
classifies lead and lead compounds as “reasonably anticipated to be
human carcinogens.”
Airborne lead is
also known to travel far from its original source, and as such is an
environmental pollutant that finds its way to fields, forests, streams
and waterways. While commercial airlines use unleaded jet fuel, general
aviation aircraft using avgas account for about half of the national
inventory of lead emitted to air and are the largest single source. In
total, EPA estimates that approximately 14.6 billion gallons of leaded
avgas were consumed between 1970 and 2007, emitting approximately 34,000
tons of lead.
Contrary to the
doomsday scenarios of avgas proponents, EPA and the Federal Aviation
Administration could phase out lead additives with limited disruption,
and move the country toward cleaner fuel. Currently 70 percent of small
planes could be using unleaded fuel or a modified alternative without
any additional technology.
For the
approximately 30 percent of piston engine airplanes that are not able to
use unleaded gas, a meaningful plan by EPA to ban leaded fuel with
deadlines is needed to spark investment in alternative technologies. But
for decades since the EPA began regulation of lead emissions from other
sources, it has excused the general aviation community. |
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