Based on the OP, it wasn't at all accidental. They knew it was dangerous and chose it because they could make more money than with safer alternatives such as ethanol.
25 years ago in the UK, leaded petrol was being phased out but still pretty common. The UK Government was giving people grants to have existing cars converted to run on LPG, so they'd only run on a coke can of petrol for a minute or so on startup then switch over to gas.
Catalytic converters? Don't need 'em! There's no CO or unburnt fuel in the exhaust to catalyse because they run as lean as a vegan's dog!
CO2 emissions? Sure, but the stuff is getting flared off as waste at refineries anyway, and we're not going to stop making plastics and fertilisers any time soon, so may as well extract useful work from burning it!
We could have had incredibly clean cities everywhere by now, by simply keeping older cars on the road and adapting them to run on much cleaner safer fuel.
But there was a problem, an absolute bombshell of a problem. The fatal flaw that killed LPG as a road fuel.
It didn't sell new cars. It didn't sell anyone any debt.
So they came up with "scrappage schemes" where you'd get a couple of hundred quid for your old car, it would get destroyed, and then all you had to do was buy a nice new Cleaner Greener Diesel car instead, at some swingeing rate of interest (expect to pay well over twice the sticker price by the end of it - and no, you didn't get the Scrappage Scheme cash if you didn't take the finance package).
Robert Kehoe, working for GM, was the chief advocate for leaded gasoline, and really the only person/lab doing research on lead until Clair Patterson stumbled into it while measuring the age of the earth. [0,1]
A modern equivalent might be if Facebook was the only organization researching social media's impact on society, while being able to set the paradigm/assumptions about said safety for half a century.
So even when Patterson's research was published in 1965, it took time to change the paradigm, and more time to phase out lead's use.
Should anyone want to read a narrative about the intertwined lives of Midgley, Patterson, Kehoe and lead, then this Mental Floss article is a good read. [2]
and still sprayed all around the surrounding land at almost every airport in the USA and worldwide from prop aircraft exhaust despite knowing ANY amount is toxic and irreversible for 30+ years
Only in piston engines, which are a minority of propeller planes. Most commercial propeller aircraft are turboprops, and they use jet fuel. And diesel engines are slowly taking over from gasoline in piston engines.
Correct. For others reading this though: virtually all piston-engine GA aircraft in the US today are still burning 100LL (leaded), and there are nearly 200,000 of them actively flying.
There is a timeline to transition to UL, but very low collective confidence it'll happen by the 2030 goal.
edit: to the commenter that fired off the reactionary reply and deleted it before I could help you. No, not because "[rich people] won't do the right thing." It's because lead is an anti-knock additive for piston engines, and a safe replacement has to go through unimaginable amounts of testing. Once it's certified, one must still figure out scaling production, distribution, etc. Aviation is a very slow moving industry and regulatory environment, which I'm personally thankful for.
Same with cigarettes and asbestos. Everyone knew smokers had shorter lives, but the facts were suppressed because it was inconvenient. Everyone knew asbestos was dangerous, but they put it in every single house for decades because "fire was worse".
Cigarette smoking really got going in the world wars, I understand, especially ww2 when the world had manufacturers serving the effort. The custom is dying with the veterans as everyone knows they have a hall pass for it but the rest of us don’t. So smoking was a shorter life but that hardly matters when you’re deployed in theater.
Yes, the psychological effects of environmental lead last a lifetime. No, they didn’t vote differently, they have always gravitated to actors that promise simple solutions and highlight bad blood and animus.
They didn’t vote differently. There were a larger number of the greatest generation that were more comfortable with shared sacrifice in service of society and less entitled like the baby boomers are.
Anytime Thomas Midgley Jr. pops up, I take the opportunity to re-listen to his episode on the Memory Palace. Wonderful bit of historical biography: https://thememorypalace.us/butterflies/
> This, my dear friend, is all I can at present recollect on the Subject. You will see by it, that the Opinion of this mischievous Effect from Lead, is at least above Sixty Years old; and you will observe with Concern how long a useful Truth may be known, and exist, before it is generally receiv'd and practis'd on.
The major proponent was also known as
Thomas Midgley Jr.: Accidentally The Most Dangerous Man Who Ever Lived[0]
Leaded gas, CFCs, and accidentally created a machine that ended his own existence.[1]
[0]https://allthatsinteresting.com/thomas-midgley-jr [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr.
I had one purple link on that second Wikipedia page, which (macabre as it sounds) was very interesting to read through: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_inventors_killed_by_th...
Also leads to another great list-of-lists; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_unusual_deaths
> Accidentally
Based on the OP, it wasn't at all accidental. They knew it was dangerous and chose it because they could make more money than with safer alternatives such as ethanol.
I don't think he really appreciated the danger of lead. Its acute toxicity was well-known, but not its chronic toxicity.
And plenty of stuff is toxic in large quantities but harmless (or even vital!) in small quantities.
25 years ago in the UK, leaded petrol was being phased out but still pretty common. The UK Government was giving people grants to have existing cars converted to run on LPG, so they'd only run on a coke can of petrol for a minute or so on startup then switch over to gas.
Catalytic converters? Don't need 'em! There's no CO or unburnt fuel in the exhaust to catalyse because they run as lean as a vegan's dog!
CO2 emissions? Sure, but the stuff is getting flared off as waste at refineries anyway, and we're not going to stop making plastics and fertilisers any time soon, so may as well extract useful work from burning it!
We could have had incredibly clean cities everywhere by now, by simply keeping older cars on the road and adapting them to run on much cleaner safer fuel.
But there was a problem, an absolute bombshell of a problem. The fatal flaw that killed LPG as a road fuel.
It didn't sell new cars. It didn't sell anyone any debt.
So they came up with "scrappage schemes" where you'd get a couple of hundred quid for your old car, it would get destroyed, and then all you had to do was buy a nice new Cleaner Greener Diesel car instead, at some swingeing rate of interest (expect to pay well over twice the sticker price by the end of it - and no, you didn't get the Scrappage Scheme cash if you didn't take the finance package).
And you see how well that worked out.
A good Veritasium video on the subject:
https://youtu.be/IV3dnLzthDA?is=MorITIg_MvFrKtvR
Lucas Reilly's Mental Floss article on Clair Patterson https://www.mentalfloss.com/science/environment/clair-patter... is a much better piece. I'll also recycle https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=heymijo 's old comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28502232 on this article from its 2021 HN discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28500508 (again, what follows is his or her work not mine!):
> Two beliefs became entrenched:
1. that lead is natural to the human body, and
2. that a poisoning threshold for lead existed
Robert Kehoe, working for GM, was the chief advocate for leaded gasoline, and really the only person/lab doing research on lead until Clair Patterson stumbled into it while measuring the age of the earth. [0,1]
A modern equivalent might be if Facebook was the only organization researching social media's impact on society, while being able to set the paradigm/assumptions about said safety for half a century.
So even when Patterson's research was published in 1965, it took time to change the paradigm, and more time to phase out lead's use.
Should anyone want to read a narrative about the intertwined lives of Midgley, Patterson, Kehoe and lead, then this Mental Floss article is a good read. [2]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Kehoe
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clair_Patterson#Campaign_again...
[2] https://www.mentalfloss.com/science/environment/clair-patter...
Yes and the toxic effects of asbestos had been known for thousands of years before popcorn ceilings became a fad
For an animated version of this story, see Cosmos, season 2 (I forget which episode, but it was helpful in teaching about this in high school)
We've known about climate change for more than a century, but we're pigs, we don't care.
Why is this surfacing up?
hmm good question.
and still sprayed all around the surrounding land at almost every airport in the USA and worldwide from prop aircraft exhaust despite knowing ANY amount is toxic and irreversible for 30+ years
* https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/leaded-gas-wa...
Very true that only recently, a lead-free substitute was available.
https://g100ul.com/
You say that in the past tense... But pretty much every propeller plane worldwide still uses the stuff...
Only in piston engines, which are a minority of propeller planes. Most commercial propeller aircraft are turboprops, and they use jet fuel. And diesel engines are slowly taking over from gasoline in piston engines.
Correct. For others reading this though: virtually all piston-engine GA aircraft in the US today are still burning 100LL (leaded), and there are nearly 200,000 of them actively flying.
There is a timeline to transition to UL, but very low collective confidence it'll happen by the 2030 goal.
edit: to the commenter that fired off the reactionary reply and deleted it before I could help you. No, not because "[rich people] won't do the right thing." It's because lead is an anti-knock additive for piston engines, and a safe replacement has to go through unimaginable amounts of testing. Once it's certified, one must still figure out scaling production, distribution, etc. Aviation is a very slow moving industry and regulatory environment, which I'm personally thankful for.
PDF (77pgs): https://download.aopa.org/advocacy/2026/2026-01_Draft-Unlead...
Some previous discussion:
2021 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28500508
Same with cigarettes and asbestos. Everyone knew smokers had shorter lives, but the facts were suppressed because it was inconvenient. Everyone knew asbestos was dangerous, but they put it in every single house for decades because "fire was worse".
And don't even get me started on DDT and teflon.
Cigarette smoking really got going in the world wars, I understand, especially ww2 when the world had manufacturers serving the effort. The custom is dying with the veterans as everyone knows they have a hall pass for it but the rest of us don’t. So smoking was a shorter life but that hardly matters when you’re deployed in theater.
i'm fairly certain the reason trump was elected is the long tail of leaded gasoline; the timing fits pretty well.
Why did these same people vote differently earlier? Does the effect of leaded gasoline show up later in life?
And does not explain all the young men voting for him.
Yes, the psychological effects of environmental lead last a lifetime. No, they didn’t vote differently, they have always gravitated to actors that promise simple solutions and highlight bad blood and animus.
They didn’t vote differently. There were a larger number of the greatest generation that were more comfortable with shared sacrifice in service of society and less entitled like the baby boomers are.
now let's dig up some old timey polls and see how the greatest generation felt about the issues you hold dear :)
The guy that invented spent years bed-ridden because of it... yet he still went to trade shows to show it off
He was bedridden because of Polio.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48872443
Anytime Thomas Midgley Jr. pops up, I take the opportunity to re-listen to his episode on the Memory Palace. Wonderful bit of historical biography: https://thememorypalace.us/butterflies/
And he also invented CFCs
“What don’t kill you makes you more strong”.
The Man Who Accidentally Killed The Most People In History
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV3dnLzthDA
> This, my dear friend, is all I can at present recollect on the Subject. You will see by it, that the Opinion of this mischievous Effect from Lead, is at least above Sixty Years old; and you will observe with Concern how long a useful Truth may be known, and exist, before it is generally receiv'd and practis'd on.
> Benjamin Franklin, 1786