Slashdot Mirror
Leaded Gas, CFCs, and the Dark Side of Progress (hackaday.com)
szczys writes: Leaded Gas did a great job of keeping engines from knocking thanks to tetra-ethyl lead. Unfortunately the fumes from the chemical are highly poisonous. R-12 is a refrigerant that revolutionized the cold storage of vaccines. It turned out to be the first of the chlorofluorocarbons which are well known (and now banned) for damaging the environment. Both are the creations of one inventor: Thomas Migley, Jr. Two deadly inventions seem like more than enough for one person, but his story ends with a third. Stricken with Polio, he invented a system to help him get in and out of bed on his own. A tragic accident ended his life when he was caught and strangled by the system he created.
If I recall correctly, the signs of lead being dangerous were there, but like the cigarette industry decades later, the companies invested in leaded gasoline fought tooth and nail to keep everyone believing lead was harmless. They would actively try to discredit and defund anyone who said otherwise and put all their political weight towards squashing any legislation that might question their official platform.
Obviously, they weren't ultimately successful is keeping "lead is dangerous" suppressed forever, but they did delay any action to mitigate the effects (and profited off said delay).
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
This article sparked the memory of wondering why we had to pay more for unleaded gas... Apparently it was expensive to remove the naturally occurring lead from the refined gasoline.
because instead of lead, they had to add other chemicals to raise octane ratings to reduce knocking. Those chemicals cost more.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
You recall correctly.
The scientist who first noticed that lead from car pollution was actually contaminating the environment was smeared by car and gas companies. I think Cosmos has an episode about it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead#History_of_controversy_and_phase-out
There are numerous citations in the first paragraph that you can follow and browse at your leisure.
Cosmos did have almost an entire episode (or a big part of it) devoted to this. This guy was doing research on determining the age of rocks and ran into problems when he wanted to created a lead-free lab environment. One thing led to another and he figured out lead was everywhere because of the leaded gas. From there, he realized this thing was making us sick and fought a long hard fight to bring this to the public. His R&D was directly or indirectly funded by the oil industry which promptly pulled his funding. He was a poster child for following the data and designing great tests to make the data drive conclusive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clair_Cameron_Patterson#Campaign_against_lead_poisoning
Wrong. They use 100LL, for "low lead", which isn't really low at all. All standard small-engine aircraft use this fuel, unless it's some "experimental" aircraft with a Subaru automotive engine or something.