IE 1940s, a graduate student at the Uy of Chied Clair Patterson(who was, first withstanding, an Iowa farm boy by in) was using a new methodof lead isotope measurement to try to get a definitive age for the Earth at last. Unfortunatelyall his samples came up inated—usually wildly so. Most tained something like twohuimes the levels of lead that would normally be expected to occur. Many years wouldpass before Patterson realized that the reason for this lay with a regrettable Ohio iorhomas Midgley, Jr.
Midgley was an engineer by training, and the world would no doubt have been a safer placeif he had stayed so. Instead, he developed an i in the industrial applications ofchemistry. In 1921, while w for the General Motors Research Corporation in Dayton,Ohio, he iigated a pound called tetraethyl lead (also known, fusingly, as leadtetraethyl), and discovered that it signifitly reduced the juddering dition known asengine knock.
Even though lead was widely known to be dangerous, by the early years of the twehtury it could be found in all manner of er products. Food came in s sealed withlead solder. Water was often stored in lead-lianks. It rayed onto fruit as a pesticidein the form of lead arse even came as part of the packaging of toothpaste tubes. Hardlya product existed that didn』t bring a little lead into ers』 lives. However, nothing gave ita greater and more lasting intimacy than its addition to gasoline.
Lead is a oxioo much of it and you irreparably damage the brain aral nervous system. Among the many symptoms associated with overexposure areblindness, insomnia, kidney failure, hearing loss, cer, palsies, and vulsions. In its mostacute form it produces abrupt and terrifying halluations, disturbing to victims andonlookers alike, which generally then give way to a ah. You really don』t want toget too much lead into your system.
Oher hand, lead was easy to extrad work, and almost embarrassingly profitableto produdustrially—araethyl lead did indubitably stop engines from knog. So in1923 three of America』s largest corporations, General Motors, Du Pont, and Standard Oil ofNew Jersey, formed a joierprise called the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation (later shorteo simply Ethyl Corporation) with a view to making as much tetraethyl lead as the world waswilling to buy, and that proved to be a very great deal. They called their additive 「ethyl」
because it sounded friendlier aoxic than 「lead」 and introduced it for publiption (in more ways than most people realized) on February 1, 1923.
Almost at once produ workers began to exhibit the staggered gait and fusedfaculties that mark the retly poisoned. Also almost at ohe Ethyl Corporationembarked on a policy of calm but unyielding denial that would serve it well for decades. AsSharosch McGrayes in her abs history of industrial chemistry,Prometheans in the Lab, when employees at one plant developed irreversible delusions, aspokesman blandly informed reporters: 「These men probably went insane because theyworked too hard.」 Altogether at least fifteen workers died in the early days of produ ofleaded gasoline, and untold numbers of others became ill, often violently so; the exaumbers are unknown because the pany nearly always mao hush up news ofembarrassing leakages, spills, and poisonings. At times, however, suppressing the newsbecame impossible, most notably in 1924 when in a matter of days five produ workersdied and thirty-five more were turned into perma staggering wrecks at a