The REAL scam has conveniently been completely ignored by both politicians and the media.  Back in 1996, two journalists, Christopher Booker & Richard North drew attention to the massive scam that was the start of both unleaded petrol (sham) and the great diesel con.  Fuelled (pardon pun) by some green nut-job politician supported by an environmental pressure group in California, claims, which were NEVER evidenced or substantiated in any way, were made about lead in petrol killing children.  It was pure sensationalism.  However, that didn't stop the EU from jumping on board the green bandwagon without a shred of scientific evidence other than to follow suit with California, since they had for years had America's tightest legislation on vehicle emission and pollution controls.

 

What the EU and the British politicians failed to do was ask for evidence or seek to provide that evidence themselves.  It has in fact materialised in more recent years where scientific research shows the risks to children's development to be way less than for example lead pipes in buildings or the occasional handling of lead, including solders.  Instead, draconian wholesale changes were brought into legislation which actually made things WORSE not better.  How so?  Well, only a tiny amount of lead is needed to refine petrol to 4 star standards for octane rating.  The emissions are cleaner than unleaded from a Co2 perspective by an order of magnitude, simply because there's no catalyser converting CO to CO2.  By contrast, a huge proportion of a litre of unleaded is made up of Benzine compounds, known to be highly carcinogenic (and evidenced as such).  To make things worse, the unleaded gases have to pass through a catalytic converter, resulting in hugely more CO2 emissions than for leaded petrol as well as increased risk of cancer to those regularly in contact with unleaded.  To makes matters even worse, the process of refining unleaded means that 20% more crude is used, so depleting a finite resource 20% quicker, and the cost to the industry was more, hence prices had to rise.

 

Utterly, utterly disgraceful that any politician should have allowed this state of affairs to be. The green lobby cheered in some sort of hand waving glee when green pumps started appearing all over the country (world) when the real truth is that not only is it more polluting, not only is it a recognised cause of some cancers, but we're getting through more of the stuff for any given engine efficiency by dint of production complexity and resources used.  the green lobby hadn't a clue then, and it still doesn't now.  Heaven forbid that they ever get into government.

 

Now, add to this completely unfathomable European Union diktat the selling of diesel as "cleaner energy" and the con is completed.  It was pushed as an agenda under Labour during Bliar's term in office by dear old Gordon Brown, bless his cotton socks. 

 

The government of the day back in the 1990's  had no motivation to do anything about the original con since it was being led by the pro European tory muppets under Major's government at the time and indeed, the slightly greater inefficiency of catalysed motors meant MORE revenue for the government, so the motivation was the opposite of a green agenda if anything.

 

The whole thing is one complete travesty of incompetence built upon incompetence, a deliberate misleading of the UK public and a controlling EU who effectively forced many many millions of vehicle users to adopt more and more polluting fuels, all backed by our own government.

 

I'd love some TV channel to have the guts to run with this complete story, but due to the (obvious) politics involved, I suspect that won't happen any time soon.

Edited 28 January, 201511 yr by SEVrs

<The emissions are cleaner than unleaded from a Co2 perspective by an order of magnitude, simply because there's no catalyser converting CO to CO2.>

 

Are you therefore saying that having more CO emissions is preferable to more CO2, as CO is also not good to breathe in?

Edited 28 January, 201511 yr by meb90

Are you therefore saying that having more CO emissions is preferable to more CO2, as CO is also not good to breathe in?

 

It really doesn't make any difference, CO naturally reacts in the atmosphere to create CO2 anyway, the half-life of CO in the human bloodstream is 5 hours and it's very difficult to absorb a significant amount outdoors anyway because it diffuses so quickly.

But you dont need to absorb a significant amount of CO?

35PPM or above can cause effects cant it?

How likely that is outdoors, i dont know. Im a gas engineer, so work indoors haha.

SEVrs, you make some interesting points but you have a mixed up mish mash of half truths in places. 

 

For example, you are somewhat off the mark about evidence for health deterioration caused by lead in petrol. It has long been known (for decades and decades) that lead absorbed into the body through any source is harmful and as I recall, in all the meetings I went to about this problem as an engine development engineer, we were fully briefed concerning the facts about lead toxicity on the human body. And as engineers we knew how the problem could be fixed.

 

Unfortunately, as many of you will know lead still exists in petrol today, but it's naturally occurring and not added of course. The levels now are so very low so not considered to be a major hazard. But the levels of lead in petrol where lead had been added was indeed very dangerous to any organic life including of course humans. Even the scientists who developed the lead additive used in petrol died of it's effects in the 1920's and 1930's after becoming ill with a range of illnesses caused by that lead. We knew from then on research was needed, and now, that it interferes with humans in everyway, particularly childrens brain development (it has been known for years that there is no safe limit on the amount of lead a child can be exposed too). We also know that the animal populations, birds, breeding, feeding etc have been and continue to be affected in various ways, and there is no place on planet earth where you cannot detect lead in the soil, trees, water, oceans, or even in the ice at the two poles. And all this detectable lead is from 'Tetraethyl lead' as tests have shown. 'We were and still are poisoning the planet. The culprit, lead from 'Tetraethyl lead', is a deadly toxin, and poisonous to all living things and known to reduce intelligence in children and adults and cause a range of other illnesses. 

 

Click below for Princeton University, Centre for Energy and Environmental Studies 1995 report, and read the conclusions in particular about how blood level lead dropped considerably in children after going to unleaded petrol: http://www2.isye.gatech.edu/people/faculty/Valerie_Thomas/elimination_lead.pdf

 

Go here to see the effects of lead on the human body:

http://www.nrdc.org/health/effects/flead.asp

Naturally, we have learned more about exactly how the degenerative process works in the human body these later years, caused by lead. I disagree that things were made worse by the legislation of that era. 

 

I've not heard that refining lead out of crude oil uses 20% more crude and feel this is unlikely. I understand that petrol is largely refined in exactly the same way today but that lead is no longer added. That's how you get unleaded petrol. The amounts of naturally occurring lead in crude and transferred to petrol is not significant so is not removed. So I don't understand your statement on that and cannot find an proof that is the case. But interesting if it's true. 

 

Sorry about the changing fonts in this post. Something went wrong somewhere and I can't get it all to go to one font type. 

Edited 29 January, 201511 yr by Estate Man

I also watched the programme, and was a typically sensationalist mixed message TV docu. Embarrassing for the SMMT, but they are not the body that should be the target of the questioning, car makers will sell what the public wants, driven by legislational constraints (that the public wants indirectly). 

 

I guess the benefit of CO2 emissions driven market drivers is the amount of R&d budget that OEMs pumped into forced induction high pressure direct injection technology that is now the catalyst for more economical petrol power.