UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Leaded Gasoline, once so widespread, that it was sold to U.S. "regular" as fuel pumps, should to be eradicated around the world in two years, the United Nations environment programme announced Thursday.
With the end of the petrol in view of the environment and public health advocates are claiming victory in a fight that stretches all the way back to when it was first added to gasoline in the 1920s.
Leaded gasoline is still used in six countries. Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, the Korea of the North, in Myanmar and the Yemen should complete the phase-out by 2013, said the United Nations, which is to help these nations.The Elimination of leaded gasoline increased results of IQ, a decrease in the levels of lead-in-blood up to 90% and prevented more premature deaths of 1.2 million people each year, according to a new study by Thomas Hatfield, President of California State University, Department of environmental and occupational health and Northridge.
"We live in an era where politicians and lobbyists make opponent the economy of public health, sport," said Peter Lehner, Executive Director of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "This study steal these petty policies."In 2002, NRDC and environmental programme of the United Nations began a final assault to eradicate the leaded by the founders of the partnership for vehicle and clean fuels contributes to developing nations with the switch to unleaded petrol.
Most of the six nations still using leaded gasoline is only using small amounts, said Jim Sniffen, a spokesman for the United Nations Environment program. They work with United Nations agencies and partner to conduct blood tested for lead levels and progressively develop plans the petrol, he said.The lead is now the gasoline additive of choice in the 1920s, after General Motors, DuPont and Standard Oil of New Jersey, the forerunner of the Exxon, chose it over ethanol combustion own and other alternative as a way to make the engines work better. It has become universal despite warnings from defenders of the public health and a scandal on the death in 1924 of six workers of refinery in Newark, New Jersey, who have been poisoned while making it and "were conducted in straitjackets", said Bill Kovarik, journalist and communication Professor at the University of Radford, doing research on the history of leaded gasoline.
"Historically, there are only a handful of major environmental victories like that," Kovarik said. "It took of the 1990s to eradicate what has always been a well known poison of a product that everyone uses." This is a great success, but he said really something on the functioning of public health around the world, that it took so long... Benjamin Franklin complained about lead poisoning in printing. »The industry has falsely claimed that there is no alternative to lead, which was more cost effective solution and scientific study of the said Kovarik, Government control.
Finally, exposure to airborne lead was found to cause the brain, kidney and cardiovascular damage. In children, it turned IQ levels below and shorter attention spans.A public health crisis erupted around lead again in the 1960s as the environmental movement flourished. A trial brought by NRDC in 1973 to the Protection Agency lead environmental regulation of lead in gasoline and finally ban as an additive in 1986.
"It is an environmental issue that has been rediscovered and he was finally gradually, but it could have been done from the start with even the precaution, because everyone knew of lead poisoning,", said Kovarik."As we turn to a healthy future of environmental mind, it is a great example where we could do better." "We have to learn from this".
Associated Press
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