Short answers, pulled from the story.
Gasoline is produced in oil refineries by fractionally distilling crude oil and then blending several processing streams, including straight-run naphtha, reformate, alkylate, and oxygenates such as ethanol. Roughly 19 gallons of gasoline are derived from a single 42-gallon barrel of crude oil. The final blend's composition depends on the refinery's equipment, the crude oil feed, and the octane grade being produced.
The U.S. Clean Air Act banned the sale of leaded fuel for on-road vehicles from January 1996. The Environmental Protection Agency had been reducing allowable lead content in stages since 1976, and by 1995 leaded fuel accounted for only 0.6 percent of total U.S. gasoline sales.
In August 2021, the UN Environment Programme announced that leaded gasoline had been eradicated worldwide, with Algeria being the last country to deplete its reserves. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stated that ending leaded petrol would prevent more than one million premature deaths each year from heart disease, strokes, and cancer.
Octane rating measures a fuel's resistance to premature ignition, known as knocking, which causes engine damage and reduces efficiency. It is measured relative to a reference mixture of 2,2,4-trimethylpentane and n-heptane. Higher-octane fuels allow for higher compression ratios and power output, which is why they were critical to aircraft performance in World War II.
Transportation is the largest source of carbon emissions in the United States, accounting for 30 percent of the total national carbon footprint. Burning one litre of gasoline produces about 2.35 kilograms of carbon dioxide, and oil products including gasoline were responsible for approximately 32 percent of emissions worldwide in 2021.
Gasoline vapour produces euphoria when inhaled and is readily accessible in remote communities, making it a common substance for abuse where other intoxicants are scarce. In Canada, children in the Northern Labrador community of Davis Inlet were the focus of national concern in 1993. In Australia, the governments of Australia and BP Australia began distributing Opal fuel, a non-sniffable formulation, in vulnerable areas starting in 2005.