Who invented leaded fuel

Midgley is a compelling villain. He invented not one, but two technologies society has come to regret. In addition to his role in introducing tetraethyl lead into gasoline, he is also responsible for the discovery and promotion of fluorocarbon refrigerants, Freon. Freons went on to become widely used. Ultimately, they were banned globally due to their impact on the stratospheric ozone that protects the earth from harmful solar UV radiation.

Midgley was paralyzed by polio. He was found strangled by the system of ropes and pulleys he constructed to allow him to get in and out of his wheelchair.

The excitement over the demise of leaded fuel is certainly warranted. Lead pollution, most of it coming from use of leaded fuel, created a heavy toll. Exposure to lead, both prenatal and as a child, is linked to lower IQ, with estimates that 23 million people lost IQ points over a six-year study period due to lead.

It is linked to aggression and criminal behavior. Learning disabilities, behavioral problems, and growth issues are all linked to lead exposure in children. Calcium uptake channels in developing children concentrate lead in the brain where it interferes with development.

Pregnant mothers with past lead exposures can transfer lead to the fetus as part of the normal process of supplying the fetus with calcium. Yet, Midgley led an effort to do exactly that. My first encounters with the story of Thomas Midgley caused me to conjure a picture of a rogue chemist operating on the fringes of the chemical enterprise.

I was wrong. Midgley was awarded the Gibbs, Perkin and Priestly medals, some of the highest honors in chemistry. He was elected to the National Academy. He was president of the American Chemical Society and a long-time board member.

He was a vice president at Ethyl Corp. He was mainstream. He was lionized for his accomplishments up to his untimely death in He was arguably the leading industrial chemist of his day.

Why lead in the first place? Lead is a chemical solution to a mechanical problem. Attempts to get more horsepower out of internal combustion engines prompted a move to higher compression. Pushing to higher compression ratios dramatically increased engine performance. Uneven combustion under high compression conditions caused engine knocking.

Knocking was a severe problem, not just a minor annoyance. It robbed horsepower, led to incomplete combustion and actually could damage engines. Several chemical additives were found that evened out the combustion, quieting engines — but most required high concentrations in the fuel.

In , Midgley found that tetraethyl lead TEL proved effective at very low concentrations. Added at 0. To reach the same horsepower, an engine could be half the size, burning half the fuel. TEL effectively doubled the constrained gasoline supply of the day. It was nothing short of revolutionary … except for the toxic part. Midgley asked whether the dose, the exposure, would be sufficiently low to be safe. He suffered acute lead poisoning and required an extended recuperation. Testing showed animals survived exhaust vapors.

He is quoted as saying lead levels would be undetectable in the exhaust. TEL was oxidized in the engine, as would be expected. A third plant elsewhere in New Jersey had also seen fatalities. Workers kept hallucinating insects - the lab was known as "the house of butterflies". Better working practices could make tetraethyl lead safe to produce. But was it really sensible to add it to petrol, when the fumes would be belched out on to city streets?

About a century ago, when General Motors had first proposed adding lead to petrol - in order to improve performance - scientists were alarmed. They urged the government to investigate the public health implications. Midgley breezily assured the surgeon general that "the average street will probably be so free from lead that it will be impossible to detect it or its absorption", although he conceded that "no actual experimental data has been taken". General Motors funded a government bureau to conduct some research, adding a clause saying it had to approve the findings.

The bureau's report was published amid the media frenzy over Oelgert's poisoned workmates. It gave tetraethyl lead a clean bill of health and was met with some scepticism. Under pressure, the government organised a conference in Washington DC in May The debate there exemplified the two extremes of approach to any new idea that looks risky, but useful. He called leaded petrol a "gift of God", arguing that "continued development of motor fuels is essential in our civilization".

In the other corner: Dr Alice Hamilton, the country's foremost authority on lead. She argued leaded petrol was a chance not worth taking. Hamilton knew that lead had been poisoning people for thousands of years. In , workers who made lead white - a pigment for paint - were described as suffering ailments including "dizziness in the head, with continuous great pain in the brows, blindness, stupidity".

The Romans used lead in water pipes. Lead miners often ended up mad or dead - and some correctly intuited that low-level, long-term exposure was also unwise. Many societies still grapple with the general question on which Howard and Hamilton disagreed: how much pollution is a price worth paying for progress? There's some evidence that as countries get richer, they tend initially to get dirtier and later clean up.

Economists call this the "environmental Kuznets curve", and it makes intuitive sense. If you're poor, you prioritise material gains. As your income grows, you may choose to spend some of it on a nicer, safer environment. But was lead-free petrol really such an expensive luxury? True, the lead additive solved a problem: it enabled engines to use higher compression ratios, which made cars more powerful. Ethyl alcohol had much the same effect and wouldn't mess with your head, unless you drank it.

Midgley knew this, having combined petrol with practically every imaginable substance, from iodine to camphor to melted butter. Why did the petrol companies push tetraethyl lead instead of ethyl alcohol? Researchers who have studied the decision remain puzzled. Cynics might point out that any old farmer could distil ethyl alcohol from grain.

It couldn't be patented, or its distribution profitably controlled. Carla Ng. Supplement Science and Regulatory Challenges. See all webinars and calls. How to Donate. Just released! Oct 26, New webpage: Lead Jan 10, November 18, Supplement Science and Regulatory Challenges.