Really excited that work with @ivanjrudik is forthcoming at AEJ:Pol.

We wrote a non-technical summary highlighting our key findings. You can find that here: https://hollina.github.io/hollingsworth_rudik_social_cost_of_lead_summary_2020.pdf https://twitter.com/AEAjournals/status/1293549739795980288

1/N Despite the well known negative effects of lead, it's fairly difficult to get clean identification since exposure to lead is correlated with socio-economic status and exposure to other pollutants

2/N The primary way leaded fuel use was reduced in many countries was by mandating the use of catalytic converters, devices that gum up when leaded fuel is used, but--by design--reduce emissions of other harmful pollutants.

3/N Most countries also banned leaded fuel for on-road use. But lead exposure is currently not zero. Despite this ban there are carve outs for the automotive racing and aviation industries. A decent amount of exposure comes from industrial production too.

4/N

Over 500,000 gallons of leaded aviation fuel (with ~2.2 grams of lead per gallon) are sold each day in the United States. So this is not a small issue.
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=c400000001&f=a

5/N But the effect of planes is tougher to learn about since planes fly.

In comes auto racing. Until 2007 both @NASCAR and @ARCA_Racing used leaded racing fuel with ~5 grams of lead per gallon. Both racing leagues switched to an unleaded fuel at roughly the same time.

6/N

You might think, how could automotive races produce enough lead to be used in a study of lead pollution? Look at this histogram. A single three hour auto race uses as much lead as an airport does in an entire year.

7/N We find big increases in lead pollution in the week following a leaded race. We don't find any effect in the week following an unleaded race.

8/N

But does this exposure matter? Yes. Yes it does.

We find that exposure increases the rates of elevated blood lead in children.

9/N

We also find that lead exposure increases elderly mortality by about 2%

10/N

We estimate that the reduction in annual lead emissions from deleading NASCAR and ARCA races yielded social benefits of $2.2 billion per year from avoided elderly mortality alone.

This suggests that the cost of a gram of lead added to gasoline is over $1,100.

11/N While our paper is not about aviation fuel, it has important implications for aviation fuel.

Even if the external effects of aviation gasoline are only 1% ($10 per gram) of our race estimates, the socially efficient price of leaded aviation fuel should be much higher