Leaded Gasoline

In the early days of the automobile industry, gasoline motors were highly prone to engine knock, caused by low-octane fuel igniting too early in the engine's cylinders. The motor was rattling itself apart, and horsepower was lost due to fuel burning inefficiently.

Testing conducted for General Motors by Charles Kettering's Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company (DELCO) showed that (grain) alcohol raised the octane of gasoline, allowing for higher engine compression and eliminating the knock. By 1921 a blend of 30 percent alcohol to 70 percent gasoline was the fuel choice among most automotive engineers. But later that year an engineer named Thomas Midgely's cost cutting solution would come at a higher price.

Lead is a neurotoxin that collects in the blood and bones of humans and damages the central nervous system. Overexposure can cause convulsions, blindness, hallucinations, and cancer, as well as coma and death. It's dangers have been known since at least 100 BC when Greek physicians described lead poisoning and noted the danger posed to workers by fumes from lead smelting operations. In Midgley's time, health risks associated with lead-based paint were so well documented that in 1920 the League of Nations proposed banning its use. But despite all the risks associated with lead, and ignoring the proven effectiveness of cleaner-burning alcohol/gasoline blends, in 1923 General Motors, DuPont, and Standard Oil formed the Ethyl Gasoline Company to produce and sell gas with a tetraethyl lead additive. By 1924 at least 15 gasoline plant workers had died from exposure before better ventilation was added to factories.

Adding lead to gasoline was cheaper than adding alcohol. Car dealers warned their customers about lead's dangers until 1927, when GM ordered their dealers to promote it. The following year the Lead Industries Association was formed to counter the negative publicity. The Ethyl Company, along with its parent companies, GM, DuPont, and Standard Oil, hired scientists willing to claim that the lead couldn't be conclusively tied to illness. Because it was a national company, Ethyl was able to undercut the price of any independent filling station that tried to buck the system. During the Great Depression, people sought out the cheapest gas they could find, Ethyl made sure it was theirs.

Henry Ford called alcohol the fuel of the future and continued to make carburetors that would run on either gas or gas/alcohol blends until 1929. But by 1936 it no longer mattered, leaded gasoline accounted for 90 percent of the fuel sold in the United States, most of that produced by Ethyl.

In 1965 a geochemist named Clair Patterson counted back through 40 years of annual snowfall measuring the amount of lead in each layer and was able to show that the high levels of atmospheric lead found in industrialized countries were a result of leaded gasoline use. Patterson's findings led to the Clean Air Act of 1970. Finally in 1986, leaded gasoline was removed from American gas pumps for good.

Midgley contracted polio and suffered partial paralysis, he died in 1944 when he was accidentally strangled by a contraption he build to help himself in and out of bed. But, he is credited as having the biggest impact on the environment than any single organism in the history of the Earth. He had also come up with chlorofluorocarbons (CFC's) in 1928, which have been acknowledged as creating a hole in the ozone.

Excerpts taken from
Uncle John's 18th Edition Fast-Acting Long-Lasting Bathroom Reader, pg. 237-40
Also, see, Hybrids & Oil