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.

Comments

The wikipedia has the quote

[cfalcon]

Wikipedia has the most interesting quote about him in his article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....

' J. R. McNeill, an environmental historian, opines that Midgley "had more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth's history." '

Anyway, it's always been a bit of an unfair slam. Leaded gasoline only became an issue when the car number went from the 7.5 million that were around when TEL was being made, to the over 100 million that were around the time that leaded ramped down in the mid 70s. The miles driven per person were also way lower back then- because most people had to get around without a car, everything was set up for that. If you had it to do all over again, you'd probably STILL use leaded gasoline until about 1955 or so. However, at least everyone knew lead was bad for you back then- not so with Freon's very hard to verify environmental impact, which wasn't understood for a lot longer.

Re:The wikipedia has the quote

[TWX]

Lead was only needed because the manufacturers did not want to do the metallurgy needed to make their engines work properly without it. The warning signs were all there right from the start- numerous scientists, laboratory technicians, and refinery workers died or were left with the effects of lead poisoning.

Re:The wikipedia has the quote

[careysub]

citation needed.

i have citations that say the opposite

This in no way "says the opposite". In fact it reinforces the point that some people (like the good people at Amoco) chose a safer (and probably more costly) means of increasing the octane rating. The rest of the industry just kept pushing the cheap toxic lead solution.

Interestingly as late as 1983 it was a personal priority for Reagan's first EPA head, Anne Gorsuch Burford, to try to remove all caps on lead content in gasoline, at at time that the evidence of harm was staggering.

Aviation Gas is still leaded

[mdsolar]

Small airports next to elementary schools are probably creating future violent criminals.

Re:Aviation Gas is still leaded

[Dcnjoe60]

Small airports next to elementary schools are probably creating future violent criminals.

That depends. Main small engine aircraft now use unleaded avgas instead of the leaded variety.

Reagan Crime Wave caused by lead

[mdsolar]

The evidence is now very strong that leaded gasoline was responsible for much past violent crime. http://www.chicagotribune.com/...

Re:Reagan Crime Wave caused by lead

[AthanasiusKircher]

The vast majority of high quality correlations are also causations. Sometimes a common cause for both can confuse matters, but in the vast majority of cases you can trust a correlation to be a causation.

That is ABSOLUTELY false.

I mean, seriously -- just think about what you said for a minute. There is an insanely large number of possible datasets in the world. And if you can match up any dataset with any other dataset, you'll have a similarly insanely large number of high correlations that just happen by random chance.

That vast majority of such "correlations" are absolutely meaningless.

If we take your statement to be true, we'd have to conclude that most of the correlations "discovered" here are likely to be causal: US spending on science causes suicides by suffocation (or the reverse, r=0.9979), per capita margarine consumption causes variations in the divorce rate in Maine (r=0.9926), annual number of drownings by falling out of a fishing boat causes the marriage rate in Kentucky to go up and down (r=0.95), per capita consumption of mozzarella cheese causes more civil engineering doctorates to be awarded (r=0.96), etc., etc.

The correlation between phasing out leaded petrol and falling crime holds in many countries which banned lead at different times. It is highly unlikely that some other cause happened at the right time in all the countries.

See, now you're starting to get there. When we can track a correlation and match it up with the cause in time or using some other variable which influences both, the causality likelihood starts to increase.

The causality itself is also quite uncontroversial: It is known that exposure to lead means lower average IQ, and lower average IQ means more violence.

And now we get even further along -- the causality mechanism might actually make sense.

I'm NOT arguing against this particular theory, by the way. I'm just pointing out that your assertion that the "vast majority" of "high quality" correlations imply causation is ridiculous. If you just allow any dataset to be matched with any other dataset in the world, the vast majority of correlations will be stupid random nonsense. That's the reason the "p-hacking" is a useless statistical practice that will inevitably result in false relationships.

It's only when you start tracking other variables related to the correlation and establish likely causality through other reasonable mechanisms and data in other variables that you can start proving something.

Is there a dark side

[Anonymous Coward]

to the improvement of life for millions of people? Tetraethyl lead is a small speedbump on the road to a bright future of advanced chemistry. The global car industry is a marvel. The tree huggers need to bugger off. What Henry Ford said one hundred years ago ring s truer than ever today.

"I will build a motor car for the great multitude...constructed of the best materials, by the best men to be hired, after the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise...so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one-and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in God's great open spaces."

Henry Ford.

Actually, if you read TFA....

[Radical Moderate]

...he was indeed lying for financial gain, because he was suffering from lead poison and was quite aware of it. What he honestly believed is impossible for us to know, but if honestly believed lead was harmless he was deliberately ignoring evidence to the contrary. The fact that some scientists mislead others (and perhaps themselves) out of love for money or their pet theories, doesn't mean all scientists behave the same way.