Gasoline Additives - When and Why

Use of Oxygenates to Date a Gasoline Release

“…MTBE total initial amount of 7 vol% increased rapidly. By 1981, 11 vol% MTBE was added to gasoline, which increased to 15 vol% in 1988 through an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) waiver to Sun Oil Company (Gibbs, 1990), and even up to 17 vol% in 1992 due to Clean Air Act requirements. A widespread national use of MTBE could be noticed after 1987.…”

Application of Forensic Techniques for Age Dating and Source Identification in Environmental Litigation

“…EPA calls for the reduction of lead in automobile gasoline to 1.7 g/gal in 1975 1979 Average lead content of gasoline (total of leaded and unleaded gasoline) is set at 0.8 g/gal for large re®ners and up to 2.65 g/gal for small re®ners depending on the re®nery size (Gibbs, 1990). Small re®ners are de®ned as those with less than 50,000 barrels per day that are not owned or controlled by large companies.…”

“…EPA establishes the overall lead content for large re®ners at 0.5 grams of lead per gallon eective October 1, 1980(Gibbs, 1990. Tetraethyl-lead is reportedly the only alkyl-lead additive added to gasoline after 1980 (Hurst, Davis and Chinn, 1996) although other literature suggests that the phasing out of tetraethyl-lead continued into the early 1980s (Clark, undated;Kaplan, 2000;Peterson, 2000).…”

“…EPA sets the average lead concentration in gasoline at 0.10 grams of lead per gallon for large re®ners eective November 1, 1982(Gibbs, 1990Harvey, 1998).…”

“…EPA limits the concentration of lead to 0.50 grams per gallon in July of 1985 (Gibbs, 1990). Lead credits are allowed (Harvey, 1998).…”