Gains in Air Quality, Health Expected
By Craig Timberg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, January 1, 2006
JOHANNESBURG, Dec. 31 -- The import and refining of leaded gasoline ended throughout sub-Saharan Africa at the stroke of midnight Saturday as the region eliminated the biggest source of a toxic substance that has damaged brains, weakened nervous systems and fouled air and soil for 80 years.
It will take several months for the leaded gasoline in storage tanks to be consumed. But here in South Africa's largest city, tank trucks have already begun delivering a new grade of gasoline designed to protect older engines built for leaded gas.
"The old one, it will finish, maybe at 11," Thomas Mathabi, 21, a station attendant, said as he stood beside a pump containing some of the final reserves of leaded gasoline at a station in one of the city's plush northern suburbs. "It will be over."
As the last of the leaded fuel disappears, experts said, the air quality in Africa's increasingly dense cities should grow safer, especially for children.
The use of leaded fuel, which spews lead into the atmosphere and destroys emission control systems in vehicles, has caused Africa's relatively modest fleet of cars and trucks to create some of the world's worst urban air pollution. The lead in the air finds its way into children through contaminated soil and food.
"The moment you stop using leaded petrol, the lead levels in citizens start to drop," Rob de Jong, head of the U.N. clean-fuels program office in Nairobi, said in a telephone interview. "Six months from now, the blood lead levels in Africa should have dropped significantly."
Lead is among the most pervasive and damaging of environmental toxics, causing decreased intelligence in children even when exposure is at very low levels. First introduced as a fuel additive to curb engine-knocking in cars in the 1920s, it has been gradually eliminated from gasoline in much of the world in recent decades. Leaded gas was banned in the United States in 1996.
However, it is still found in 27 countries and on several Pacific islands, with the heaviest concentrations in the Middle East and Central Asia. Pressure is growing on the remaining countries that produce leaded gasoline, and supplies of lead additives for fuel refineries are slowly dwindling, said Colin McClelland, director of the South African Petroleum Industry Association.
"This change has to be made," McClelland said from Cape Town, where the association is based. "It's a dying product. It's like saying, 'Do we still want to have ox wagons here?' It's necessary progress."
The change, heavily publicized on South African television and radio in recent weeks, has caused some uncertainty. At many gas stations, attendants wearing yellow T-shirts that said, "Ask me about the right fuel for you," handed out brochures explaining the new choices in gasoline.
But motorists remained puzzled, and some drivers asked whether it was the new or old fuel in the pump before buying.
"I'm not sure if my engine needs to be upgraded" for the new gasoline, said Eric Duma, 36, who pulled up in his baby-blue 1986 Toyota pickup to buy just enough leaded gasoline to make the 30-minute drive to his home in Soweto. He expected to buy his first tank of gas without lead on Sunday. "I am worried," he said.
Leaded gasoline until recently amounted to nearly 60 percent of the South African market. Consumers accustomed to using that fuel will now need to choose between unleaded gasoline or a new variety called lead-replacement petrol, which has additives needed by some older cars to prevent engine damage. The price for leaded, unleaded and lead-replacement gas is the same because of government regulation.
Leaders in sub-Saharan Africa agreed in 2001 to phase out leaded gasoline by the end of 2005. In just the past month, 16 countries have stopped refining or importing leaded gas, according to the U.N. Environment Program. As recently as 2002, Sudan was the only country in the region that had eliminated unleaded fuel.
The health effects of ingesting lead, which also can be contained in paint and contaminated water, include increased risk for heart attack and stroke. Children exposed to high levels often display irritability, stunted growth and decreased intelligence measurements. Before Egypt eliminated leaded gasoline, the average child in one study there had lost 4.25 IQ points, according to the United Nations.
Vehicles are the largest source of lead hazards in the environment. Emissions testing in March found that the average car in Nairobi, for example, produced 16 times the harmful emissions produced by the average new car in the United States.
That same research found that 70 percent of automobiles in Nairobi initially had catalytic converters to break down carbon dioxide, hydrocarbons and other harmful emissions. But the systems were destroyed by leaded gasoline, which coats sensitive surfaces within the catalytic converters, rendering them useless.
"The most polluting fleet we've found anywhere in the world is in Nairobi," said James Lents, president of International Sustainable Systems Research Center in Diamond Bar, Calif., which did the study.
Lents, speaking from his home, said the situation is much the same in Africa's biggest cities, with broken emission control systems and high levels of air pollution.
In the move to eliminate leaded gasoline, the conversion of a refinery in Kenya to unleaded fuel in December was a milestone. So were the recent conversions of South Africa's six refineries, where $1.6 billion was spent to eliminate lead and lower the levels of harmful sulfur in diesel fuel.
South Africa is the major supplier of fuel to much of southern Africa. As recently as 20 years ago, testing in South Africa revealed some of the highest concentrations of lead levels ever measured in children.
Unleaded gasoline was introduced as an option in 1996, and the next round of nationwide tests six years later showed reduced levels of lead in children's blood. Levels fell by more than half in Cape Town and by 25 percent in Johannesburg, said Angela Mathee, a lead policy expert for the South African Medical Research Council.
Yet the council estimates that at least 600,000 children in South Africa still have lead levels higher than the international standard of 10 micrograms per deciliter of blood. Mathee predicted that levels would drop with the next nationwide tests, likely in 2007.
Despite the confusion created by the change, motorists said Saturday that they were happy to switch fuels if it means cleaner, safer air.
"They should have done it long ago," said Malcolm Purdy, 45, a firefighter, as he filled the tank of his 1999 Ford pickup with leaded gasoline for the last time.
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