The elimination of leaded gasoline in Japan

In Custodia Legis recently carried an interesting post by Sayuri Umeda on the history of the elimination of leaded gas in Japan. Among other things, it demonstrates that environmental regulation is often driven politically by pressure from businesses that stand to profit from the regulation, a phenomenon we have also seen, for instance, in the history of the Montreal Protocol on ozone-depleting substances. This is an important lesson for those trying to drum up political support for regulation. (It is also a shocking story of greed and regulatory failure in the US and elsewhere.)

Umeda writes (some links removed):

When I saw news headlines online on March 7, 2022, saying that a study found Americans born before 1996 might have a lower IQ from exposure to leaded gasoline, I seriously thought that my own IQ could be lower for the same reason, having grown up in Japan.

I checked when Japan banned leaded gasoline and found that actually, I was safer in Japan. Japan was the first country to ban leaded gasoline.

In Japan in April 1970, the media reported that a local health association found lead levels in the blood of residents near 牛込柳町交差点 (Ushigome Yanagicho crossing) in Tokyo were unusually high, exceeding the safe level considerably. The crossing was very busy and located at the lowest altitude in the area, and had recorded the highest carbon monoxide (CO1) level in the air. Therefore, the area would be one of the hardest-hit areas by air pollution from automobiles. The media and public called for tetraethyl lead in gasoline to be banned. Though the result of the original blood tests were questioned by later tests, concerns about leaded gasoline did not go away. The then Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI, predecessor of Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry) subsequently issued a notification to gradually reduce tetraethyl lead in gasoline in June 1970. In March 1971, the Cabinet amended (Order No. 30 of 1971) the Enforcement Order of Poisonous and Deleterious Substances Control Act (Order No. 261 of 1955) to reduce the maximum tetraethyl lead in gasoline from 1.3cc/liter (4.8cc/gal) to 0.3cc/liter (1.1cc/gal). (Art. 5.) Since February 1975, regular gasoline has not included lead. In 1986, gasoline for on-road vehicles became completely lead-free.

I felt that this was a great achievement, but was also a little suspicious. Through further research I found that, in fact, in order to clear the expected stricter exhaust emissions standards (not including lead) in the United States, Japanese automakers and MITI had moved in the direction of adopting new technology that required unleaded gasoline in February 1970, just before the Ushigome Yanagicho crossing case was published. Therefore, MITI and automakers already had a motive to eliminate lead from gasoline. However, it was true that the Ushigome Yanagicho crossing case was a strong force to eliminate lead from gasoline. According to an article, automaker engineers felt that the idea that “lead was bad for health, so industry eliminates lead from gasoline” was a new emotional approach, compared with their technical approach to improving cars.

Following Japan, Austria, Canada, Slovakia, Denmark, and Sweden were the next countries to ban leaded gasoline. In the United States and Germany, the final phase-out of leaded fuel came in 1996.

Actually, the Japanese government was not the first authority to ban leaded gasoline. Just after leaded gasoline was introduced to the market in 1923, New York City banned leaded gasoline for over three years, as did many U.S. states and municipalities for shorter periods in the mid-1920s. In 1925, the production of leaded gasoline was halted for over nine months. This was because of concerns raised after a horrible disaster that occurred in an oil company’s tetraethyl lead processing plant in Elizabeth, New Jersey, in October 1924. Five workers died and 35 others showed serious neurological symptoms of organic lead poisoning, out of 49 workers. Ultimately, the tragic accident did not have strong enough force to motivate the government and the industry to change their attitude toward leaded gasoline immediately. In the US, the Environmental Protection Agency began working to reduce lead emissions soon after its inception in 1970 and issued the first reduction standards in 1973, which called for a gradual phasedown of lead to one-tenth of a gram per gallon by 1986.