Canada still allows lead in aviation fuel for small aircraft. It’s time to end that — especially now that cleaner alternatives are becoming available
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As the United States moves toward phasing out leaded aviation fuel by 2030, growing flight activity at regional airports like Pitt Meadows raises concerns about increasing lead exposure risks for nearby children and families.
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The Pitt Meadows Regional Airport is now home to 10 flight schools that rely heavily on small piston-engine aircraft burning leaded aviation fuel — one of the last transportation fuels in North America that still contains lead. This neurotoxin was banned from automobile gasoline in Canada in 1990 because of its dangers to human health. Even commercial jets have long operated without leaded fuel.
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It’s time for the remaining exemption for small aircraft to end — especially now that cleaner alternatives are becoming available. There is no reason to keep poisoning the yards, playgrounds and sports fields where children live and play.
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Health concerns around leaded aviation fuel intensified following research near Reid-Hillview Airport in Santa Clara County, California — a busy flight-training airport similar to Pitt Meadows.
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Peer-reviewed research led by Sammy Zahran found that children living closest to the airport had significantly higher lead levels in their blood, especially those living downwind and during periods of heavier piston-engine aircraft activity. Lead exposure is particularly dangerous for children because even low levels are linked to impacts on brain development.
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In response to those findings, Santa Clara County banned the sale of leaded aviation fuel at Reid-Hillview Airport in 2022. It became the first airport in the United States to offer a newly approved 100-octane unleaded aviation fuel suitable for all piston-powered aircraft. The county described the transition as part of an “inevitable national migration” away from leaded aviation fuel.
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Momentum toward that transition accelerated in 2023, when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued an “endangerment finding” formally concluding that lead emissions from piston-engine aircraft threaten public health. Under the U.S. Clean Air Act, that finding triggered legal obligations for federal regulators to begin developing standards to phase out leaded aviation fuel.
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By contrast, Transport Canada has not clarified whether Canada plans to phase out leaded aviation gasoline on a similar timeline, and there is currently no regular monitoring of airborne lead pollution around Pitt Meadows airport.
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That gap is increasingly important as fights have surged at Metro Vancouver airports like Pitt Meadows.
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According to Statistics Canada data, the Pitt Meadows airport had 208,551 aircraft movements in 2025 — about 106,000 more takeoffs and landings than a decade earlier, with most of that growth during the past three years. That increase amounts to roughly one additional plane overhead every few minutes during airport operating hours.
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AI-assisted estimates produced for academic review suggest that total flight activity at Pitt Meadows may now release roughly 366 kilograms of airborne lead annually. That’s equivalent to burning more than 25,000 car tanks of leaded gasoline a year. If these estimates hold, it would be like scattering millions of toys with unsafe lead levels across the places where children in Pitt Meadows live and play.
