It's a little late now, and making comparison to NiMH doesn't suggest a realistic understanding of the state of art. Li-ion will replace both of these technologies. These guys are a bit like typewriter manufacturers, NiMH is the dedicated word processing machines and Li-ion is the PCs.

I guess we can't count lead-acid out of the game yet.

I'm pleased to see this, because if the existing battery mfgrs can compete with the new Li-ion producers such as LG Chem it means a much more robust marketplace, lower prices and likely faster adoption by automakers.

Personally I think the sooner a stake is driven through the heart of the use of lead in batteries or anywhere else the batter.

The use of even minuscule quantities of lead in circuit boards etc has been banned for years, and for sound reasons.

Unlike radiation, lead really does seem to follow a linear no threshold model, which means that any quantity no matter how small is damaging.

Not just lead use, but lead production and refining leads to severe health consequences.

The reason lead acid batteries got a free pass years ago, when its use in everything else was greatly tightened up or banned altogether, was that there was no realistic alternative back then.

That is far from the case today, and one of the many lithium chemistries combined where necessary with capacitors can not only substitute every use, but also makes for lighter batteries.

Any cost disadvantage is well worth bearing for a time until costs fall to get rid of this deadly menace.

Alain:
The dichotomy you present between the use of lead in batteries and fossil fuel burn is without merit.
As I noted, lithium can substitute for its use in every application that I am aware of.

I am also not in the habit of making statements without having evidence to back them up, although on this occasion I did not give references as the extreme toxicity of lead is a well known problem.

Here is one such reference:
http://phys.org/news/2013-02-historic-legacy-pollution-persists-regulatory.html

'The bad news is that blood lead levels are still about 100 times higher than the natural background level, and there is no known threshold for lead toxicity. In other words, even tiny amounts of lead in the body can be harmful.'

Note that the speaker is A. Russell Flegal, professor of environmental toxicology at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

And:
'Unlike organic pollutants, lead never degrades. To illustrate the persistence of lead in the environment, Flegal cites a 2005 study showing that 90 percent of the current atmospheric lead pollution in the Los Angeles basin originally came from leaded gasoline. Lead particles continue to be deposited on the ground and resuspended into the air decades after their original source was eliminated. Studies by Flegal and others also show that forest fires in California remobilize lead that was deposited in soils decades ago.

"It will take decades to centuries to purge these historic depositions from the environment," Flegal said.'
(ibid)

Also:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=lead-exposure-on-the-rise

' The ramifications of lead exposure are financial as well, costing the U.S. about $209 billion a year, said Jessica Reyes, an economist at Amherst College. The bill includes everything from direct medical costs to a heightened need for special education classes and incarcerations for violent crime, which also correlates with higher lead exposure.

The ongoing trouble with lead exposure is not to be confused with lead poisoning, which has dropped significantly in developed countries, including the U.S. The latter condition is caused by acute exposure at high concentrations, which can occur from eating lead paint chips. But all the other problems “are more like chronic diseases that build over time,” said A. Russell Flegal of the University of California, Santa Cruz. “We need to start thinking about the risks in that way.”

Lead is still prevalent in our environment for many reasons. Because lead does not degrade, heavy emissions from the past accumulate in soil. Winds, especially during drought—like that afflicting the Midwest for the past year or so—kick it up as dust, and runoff from heavy rains and flooding can re-suspend the particles in the atmosphere. Trees take up soil particles, too, but when forests burn in wildfires, as has been occurring more frequently worldwide with global warming in recent years, that lead is released back into the air. Fires also release lead from old houses and buildings coated with lead paint that was applied prior to the U.S. ban. Lead smelting and refining is still an enormous industry worldwide, sending more of the metal into the environment. Aviation gas used in planes still contains lead.'

Your notion of the relative benignity of lead is not founded on any medical studies which I am aware of at all.

@EP:
From my above quote:
'Lead smelting and refining is still an enormous industry worldwide, sending more of the metal into the environment. Aviation gas used in planes still contains lead.'.

I think we ought to take lead out of anything where we can reasonably do so.
Just producing it releases substantial contamination.

There is also a 'lag effect'.
Delightful socially aware developed world companies are still good enough to supply poor countries with lead paint and so on.

Recycling has a degree of hazard even in the OECD.
When cars have their batteries stripped in Nigeria or Bangladesh great harm is done.

So long as we keep using lead in batteries, then that recycling hazard will go on from decade to decade.

If we had no viable alternative, fine, the deaths would have to be accepted.

Since it is totally practical to replace lead with lithium it seems daft not to.
That might even give lithium battery development a lift, and would certainly lower the weight of cars by a couple of kilos.

Davemart,

I agree we should go to Li as fast as possible, however, even today, the mining capacity of Li is not much larger than the consumption, while a cellphone needs less than a car. I fear that if millions of car batteries must be made each year, progression will slow.
I hope we can soon extract millions of tons from seawater, but in the short run, we need cheap and many batteries (and laws requiring sound production/recycling).
However, every environmental problem of Pb is caused by "earosolized" lead (mostly historical due to Pb in fuels (which should obviously beforbidden) or through boiling (which can easily be prevented in industry).
Our use or not use of batteries will not change the historical pollution, Pb in fuels or lead paint in Africa.
The health hazards of combustion engines and fossil powerplants are much larger than any Pb effects from batteries if basic rules are respected.

However, if Li/H2 is available at large-enough quantities, it is first choice.

KitP as usual simply ignores the medical evidence.
I have already supplied links to what they think, which is certainly not that lead is zero risk

It really is not worth while pretending that he has anything sensible to offer, or faking any respect at all when his ludicrous denial of reality invites ridicule.

Alain:
There is plenty of lithium, without worrying about resources in the sea.
Chemetal puts the resource at 30 million tons:
http://www.rockwoodlithium.com/resources_recycling/resources/lithium_resources/lithium_resources.en.html

the Leaf uses around 4kg of lithium for its 24kwh pack.

So we are talking about 7 and half billion vehicles from present resources.

Zinc is likely to work just fine too, although not currently at the fore.

Resources of that are for all practical purposes unlimited.

“which is certainly not that lead is zero risk ”

I did not say the risk was zero. Davemart did not provide any links to sites that quantified the risk or medical evidence. I did not ignore what Davemart. Davemart does not understand the difference between the scientific method and junk science.

A systematic approach to the scientific method for determining if there is increased exposure to lead would be measurement of lead in the blood of children. There has been a dramatic reduction levels in children as reported by CDC and linked by me in the past.

This would suggest that in the US, exposure to lead has dramatically. The next step is to evaluate the medical evidence. I am not a doctor. As an engineer, I would look at the BAT for reducing a problem such as an environmental release. The criteria for risk is not zero but insignificant.

Exide is now in big trouble for claims of lead pollution. Not a problem?

Localized, and trivial compared to climate change.

From my above quote:
'Lead smelting and refining is still an enormous industry worldwide, sending more of the metal into the environment.

You can expect third-world smelters to have third-world pollution standards.  Yet regardless of this, the effects don't extend beyond the immediate area (unlike, say, mercury).  Lead is often associated with other metals, such as silver and zinc.

Aviation gas used in planes still contains lead.'.

Aviation gasoline is a trivial fraction of petroleum consumption, and many piston aircraft can get STCs to operate on unleaded premium auto gasoline.  There are strong incentives to get such STCs, because avgas is very expensive when it can be found at all; refiners place low priority on it, since everybody who's anybody has at least a turboprop if not a jet.

I think we ought to take lead out of anything where we can reasonably do so.

I think that paranoia about lead in traction batteries is counterproductive if it leads to continued excess reliance on petroleum.  Even auto starting batteries are mostly recycled; traction batteries replaced by repair shops or pulled out by automotive recyclers are going to be recycled with almost 100% likelihood.

When cars have their batteries stripped in Nigeria or Bangladesh great harm is done.

That's not a problem that's going to be solved by staying glued to the ICE.

Since it is totally practical to replace lead with lithium it seems daft not to.

If lithium can meet the price and performance levels required to replace petroleum, let it.  But don't make perfect into the enemy of good enough.

Even without other airborne sources of lead or lead in our homes many people don't think twice about going to the dentist to get a cavity filled. Often-times cavities are filled with a compound utilizing a high content of lead. The science behind ensuring that lead does not degrade and released from the filling is shaky at best and yet the practice has not been banned, even when there are better alternatives that are only slightly more expensive.

If people willingly put lead into their bodies why are profit seeking companies expected to care more?

How then do you expect to up-end entire industries based on Lead-Acid batteries and force all their customers to pay significantly more for the alternatives?