I have just started lessons toward my private pilot license - 5 hours so far. The fuel the Cessna 172 I am flying uses is 100-octane “low-lead” general aviation fuel - it still has four times the amount of lead automotive gasoline did before it was banned as an additive.
Pre-flighting the aircraft requires checking the fuel tank sumps for water and other contaminants, and this process often ends with some of the fuel on your hands. This morning when I did it, I hit the sump drain wrong, and my whole hand was covered in the stuff.
I am concerned about the dangers of exposure to lead - notably the risk of brain damage, memory impairment, and so forth due to long-term exposure. I have seen research that indicates even small exposures to lead in adults can result in measurable cognitive impairment - and as someone who depends on my mind for a living, this worries me.
Aside from the fuel, I assume the engine exhaust spews lead compounds all over the bottom of the plane, the tarmac, etc. I want to take reasonable precautions, but I don’t want to go overboard and do things that are totally unnecessary. My instructor says he uses the fuel as a solvent to clean his hands, and I get the sense that most people at the airport don’t really think or care about this issue. I don’t really care if they think I’m nuts, but I don’t want to actually be nuts either.
So, what should I be doing? Obviously I thoroughly wash my hands after checking the fuel, and after flying. But should I wear gloves while checking the sumps? Should I change my clothes after flying? Should I wipe down the surfaces in my car that my clothes touch every so often? Just how concerned should I be?
Lets see, I use to wash car parts in gasoline when I was 16 (34 years ago) and I’ve been flying for 21 years using leaded fuel. Unless you’re drinking it or licking the dirt off your plane I wouldn’t worry about it. The health risk is generally focused on developing children who would play in lead dust (from cars and paint) and stick objects in their mouth.
If you are concerned about lead exposure, your doctor can conduct a simple blood test to measure your blood lead level. Your doctor will recommend corrective action if the amount is over 10 micrograms per decilitre.
FYI, you can buy fuel strainers that will separate water from gasoline allowing you to pour the gas back into the tank. Also, be on the lookout for floating “stuff”. There is a bacteria that grows between the layer of gas and water in a storage tank. It can really screw up a fuel system. Having been in a twin that lost an engine on takeoff it is something you want to avoid.
Lead levels in blood are transient response: the cumulative response will be in the soft tissues (like the brain) and bone.
The problem is, w.r.t. intellectual damage, those dumb enough today to manually handle 100LL are already self-selecting for low intellect, and so it’s hard to measure how “much dumber” they would be if, indeed, the lead exposure did impair their intellect. There is a convexity effect for stupidity, because the body must maintain basic homeostasis before it shuts-down.
Off topic, but I reload ammunition and some of the bullets I use are 1/2 jacketed (I shoot steel targets, the unpacked lead is easier on the targets). Does my handling of the bullets put me at risk?
I’m only an occasional shooter but I know that a lot of ranges where I live (SoCal) require FMJ ammo to cut down on lead pollution. I don’t know if it works, but that’s the stated reason.
Section 2 indicates “Harmful in contact with skin.”
Lead is only one problem. Section 8 lists a bunch of nasty shit (including benzene, a known carcinogen) that can be absorbed through the skin. This section goes on to recommend gloves for hand protection.
He may be an authority on how to fly a plane, but I wouldn’t necessarily turn to him for tips on chemical hygiene.
FWIW, when I was a teenager I cleaned bicycle parts in whatever solvent I could find in my dad’s collection: mineral spirits, lacquer thinner, gasoline, whatever. Never used gloves. My dad was big on physical safety when it came to driving or using power tools, but he was much less stringent when it came to chemical safety, whether it was spray paint, gasoline, or weed killer, and at the time, I took my cues from him. He’s in his 80s now, and has been suffering from Parkinson’s Disease for quite some time; I have no doubt that his lax safety standards WRT chemical use over many decades were a contributing factor.
I’ve long since wised up, and I have a box of disposable gloves in the garage (and another in the basement) for handling chemicals (weed killer, gasoline, oil changes, etc.). One’s twilight years are difficult enough without the added burden of chemical-induced cognitive deficits. Your health is precious, and nitrile gloves are very cheap insurance; per the MSDS, I highly recommend gloving up if you anticipate your hands may be exposed to liquid gasoline.
This is an old thread, but FWIW I agree w Machine Elf. The chemical risks are from gasoline in general; the fact it’s 100LL is largely immaterial to direct exposure. The LL part is a collective environmental risk, not an immediate personal one.
And yes, up until fairly recently pretty much everybody in auto or aircraft repair or ops didn’t consider the chemical hazards of fuels or solvents or oils or greases. “If you don’t drink it you’ll be fine” was the attitude.
That’s changing slowly, driven by the corporate safety departments and slowly filtering down to the mom & pop shops and the individual workers.
Wow, I remember this thread! Unbelievably to me now, I was 20 years old when I started it.
I settled on carrying a bunch of disposable nitrile gloves in my flight bag and using those to check the fuel sumps, oil level, etc. I’ve also tried to avoid contact with exhaust residue and used oil.
If I had a plane that ran on Jet-A I wouldn’t have to worry about little issues like this. A Pilatus PC-12, please…
So … It’s been 20 years. How has the flying gone? Had any interesting adventures or flown any interesting types? Been priced out yet? Or post to the GA thread.
Pilots don’t need to check the sumps on a jet. So there’s not much need to touch the stuff unless you’re the fuel pumper and even then …
There’s a lot more concern about preventing water from getting into jet fuel in the first place since jets operate at high altitude where any water turns into plumbing-clogging ice. So the last-chance check done by piston pilots is considered too little too late to detect anything.
Like MACHINE ELF**** I too used gasoline, paint thinner, etc to clean parts. When I was 14 my dad and I put a fence up around our five acres. We sealed the wood with Creasole. No gloves, I can still feel the burn! God we were stupid.
Can you clarify this comment? Do you mean the pilots don’t check, or *no one *checks? I hope someone is checking the sumps for water, though I know from experience that even if we provide a sump valve some operators don’t use it. And then they ask “where’d that gooey stuff in the fuel cellscome from?”
When I was that same age, my father and my uncle opened a new hardware store. It was a steel, warehouse-style building; the construction company did the erection, but it was then up to us to do all the finishing.
The support pillars and ceiling beams were unfinished steel, which we proceeded to paint white. But, before painting, the steel needed to be cleaned. My father and uncle assigned my cousin (who was also 14) and me to the task; “cleaning” involved washing the steel down with a rag dipped in gasoline. (This job was made even more fun when we were up on a scaffold, cleaning steel 15 feet off of the ground.) Ahh, the 1970s.
