Trickle Down Episode 16: Earth's Most Destructive Organism Part 2 (Sample)
Leaded gasoline could not have become a universally-used commercial product without an enforcer. Someone who was dedicated to protecting the status quo position that leaded gasoline was safe to use and not a threat to the general public. And that enforcer was named Dr. Robert Kehoe. In 1925 he was appointed chief medical consultant of the Ethyl Corporation and remained in the post until his retirement in 1958. Though he continued to fight for leaded gasoline after that and he lived until the 1990s.
Thomas Midgley, Jr. might be the one responsible for inventing leaded gasoline. But Robert Kehoe is the one responsible for protecting industry from uncomfortable questions about lead so that it could be used as long and widely as it was. Until the 1960s, the only studies of the use of tetraethyl lead were funded by the lead, gas, and car industries and carried out by Robert Kehoe.
REFERENCES
Brown, Oliver W. "Kettering Lab Hailed as Pioneer" Dayton Daily News (Dayton, Ohio), April 2, 1964.
Markowitz, Gerald, and David Rosner. Lead wars: the politics of science and the fate of America's children. Vol. 24. Univ of California Press, 2014.
Ross, Benjamin, and Steven Amter. The polluters: the making of our chemically altered environment. Oxford University Press, 2010.
Keating, Peter. "The Secret History of the War on Cancer." Bulletin of the History of Medicine 82, no. 3 (2008): 757-758.
Nriagu, Jerome O. "Clair Patterson and Robert Kehoe's paradigm of “show me the data” on environmental lead poisoning." Environmental research 78, no. 2 (1998): 71-78.
Loeb, Alan P. "Birth of the Kettering doctrine: fordism, sloanism and the discovery of tetraethyl lead." Business and Economic History (1995): 72-87.
Reilly, Lucas. "The Most Important Scientist You’ve Never Heard Of." Mental Floss 17 (2017).
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/94569/clair-patterson-scientist-who-determined-age-earth-and-then-saved-it
Rosner, David, and Gerald E. Markowitz, eds. Dying for work: Workers' safety and health in twentieth-century America. Indiana University Press, 1987
McGrayne, Sharon Bertsch. “Prometheans in the Lab: Chemistry and the Making of the Modern World.” Sharon Bertsch McGrayne, 2001.
Markowitz, Gerald, and David Rosner. “Deceit and denial: The deadly politics of industrial pollution.” Vol. 6. Univ of California Press, 2013.
Cagin, Seth, and Philip Dray. "Between earth and sky: how CFCs changed our world and endangered the ozone layer." 1993.
Kovarik, William. "Ethyl-leaded gasoline: how a classic occupational disease became an international public health disaster." International journal of occupational and environmental health 11, no. 4 (2005): 384-397.
Kitman, Jamie Lincoln. "The secret history of lead." NATION-NEW YORK- 270, no. 11 (2000): 11-11.
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/secret-history-lead/
Patterson, Clair C. "Contaminated and natural lead environments of man." Archives of Environmental Health: An International Journal 11, no. 3 (1965): 344-360.
On April 1, 1964, the University of Cincinnati Medical Center
held a dedication for a new 4 and 1/2 story wing of its Kettering Laboratory.
The new wing was called the Robert A. Kehoe Hall.
The 70-year-old namesake of the hall, Dr. Kehoe, was in attendance and watched as his portrait was hung in the building.
Kehoe was being honored after a four-decade-long career of being the most staunch medical defender of leaded gasoline, a product invented by the late Robert Midgley Jr.
Kehoe's work defending leaded gasoline was so effective that the dedication of Kehoe Hall was even attended by Dr. Luther Terry, the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service.
Though Kehoe and his associates at Kettering Lab dedicated their lives to allowing workers and the public to be harmed in the name of profit, the Surgeon General spoke words of praise that indicated the opposite.
They represented something uniquely and admirably American.
An enlightened and humane interest on the part of industry in protecting its workers and the public.
This would be one of the last times any U.S.
public official would be so deferential to the absurd worldview of Dr. Robert Kehoe.
During the same time, undeniable evidence was building that lead from industry was poisoning the earth and humanity.
Just two years after the dedication of Kehoe Hall, Dr. Kehoe would find himself being forced to answer uncomfortable questions in Congress about the true impact of leaded gasoline.
I'm Travis View, and this is Trickle Down, a podcast about what happens when bad ideas flow from the top.
With me are Julian Field and Jake Rokitansky.
Episode 16, Earth's Most Destructive Organism, Part 2.
So on the last episode, I talked about how Thomas Midgley, Jr., with support from his boss,
Charles Kettering, invented leaded gasoline or tetraethyl lead in order to fix the problem of
engine knock in cars.
Engine knock being a problem that not only made engines noisy, but made them much less efficient and useful.
Leaded gasoline went on sale under the brand name of Ethyl, but there was a crisis where multiple workers were severely poisoned and died through the production of tetraethyl lead.
This caused health boards in New York and New Jersey to briefly ban the sale of leaded gasoline, It also caused the Surgeon General of the United States Public Health Service to appoint a special committee in 1925 to investigate the health impacts of the substance.
But that committee ultimately found, quote, no good grounds for prohibiting the sale of ethyl gasoline.
The danger, they claimed, lay only in the manufacturing of the substance, not in allowing it to be used by the ever-growing motoring population.
In fact, the Committee's exact words were this.
So far as the Committee could ascertain, all the reported cases of fatalities and serious injuries in connection with the use of tetraethyl lead have occurred either in the process of manufacture of this substance or in the procedures of blending and ethylizing.
To the committee's minor credit, however, they view their study as only interim.
It was to be followed, they assumed, by longer follow-up studies in the coming years.
In their final report to the Surgeon General, the committee warned this.
It remains possible that if the use of leaded gasoline becomes widespread, conditions may arise very different from those studied by us, which would render its use more of a hazard than would appear to be the case from this investigation.
Longer experience may show that even such slight storage of lead as was observed in these studies may lead, eventually, in susceptible individuals to recognizable lead poisoning or to chronic degenerative diseases of a less obvious character.
So, even in this early stage, they accurately predicted what was going to happen.
Cool.
We're playing with fire, but we aren't yet terribly burned.
Well, and we're going to see what happens if the fire continues to burn for, say, another 25 years.
Listen, your finger is definitely over the flame.
Let's just see what happens.
The committee recognized that the short-term investigation was limited and didn't account for how leaded gasoline would affect the public as the car industry grew.
In view of such possibilities, the committee feels that the investigation begun under their direction must not be allowed to lapse.
It should be possible to follow closely the outcome of a more extended use of this fuel and to determine whether or not it may constitute a menace to the health of the general public after prolonged use or other conditions not now foreseen.
The vast increase in the number of automobiles throughout the country makes the study of all such questions a matter of real importance from the standpoint of public health, and the committee urges strongly that a suitable appropriation be requested from Congress for the continuance of these investigations under the supervision of the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service.
The committee passed a resolution calling on the Public Health Service to conduct further studies.
Now, this was a really common view, so even some of the industry's paid scientists were uneasy about the use of lead in gasoline.
The president of the Society of Automotive Engineers called for additional investigations concerning lead's possible relation to sterility, and the American Chemical Society, which otherwise might have been a supporter of ethyl, You know what?
I'm starting to get the feeling that this Surgeon General, you know, he had something correct.
over chemicals, quote, "is a subject worthy of further discussion."
You know what?
I'm starting to get the feeling that this Surgeon General, you know, he had something
correct.
I mean, I don't know if it's admirably American, but this is definitely uniquely
American.
However, none of these calls for further government action were ever acted upon, and it was this
failure that gave Ethel its opening.
So, the Public Health Service never conducted the studies, the Surgeon General never lobbied Congress to pay for them, and for the next 40 years, all of research on TEL's health impact would be underwritten by General Motors, Standard Oil, DuPont, the Ethel Corporation, and lead industry trade associations.
In May of 1926, one year after the sale of lead-laced gasoline was suspended, the sale of ethyl resumed.
Signs appeared in gas stations, which triumphantly proclaimed that, quote, ethyl is back.
Oh, hell yeah.
Cigarettes are back!
We thought they were bad for a little bit, but guess what?
Light them up, boys!
And this doesn't even give you the nice satisfaction of a little bit of kick and something to do.
I know, it's funny, it's like, you know, the old Shamrock Lucky Charms are back, except it's like fucking poison that you can put into your gas tank in your lungs.
Guy holding an entire car up to his mouth with the exhaust pipe in his lips.
Yum, yum, yum!
He's holding a lighter to the front of the grill.
Ethel's earliest advertisements dealt solely with the speed and powers it could offer to engines, but for some reason never mentioned the active ingredient, lead.
For example, this is what was said in a 1927 ad that ran in National Geographic.
As an Ethel user, you have the benefits of greatly increased speed, more power on hills and heavy roads, quicker acceleration, and complete elimination of knock.
But the real high compression automobile is here at last.
Ethel Gasoline has made it possible.
Ride with Ethel in a high compression motor and get the thrill of a lifetime.
Oh yeah, you'll be flying, you'll be seeing fucking butterflies, you'll be beating the hell out of your family.
You'll grow butterfly wings, actually, and you'll claw at your skin over your shoulder trying to get them off.
Absolutely.
Thrill of a lifetime.
Because your life is soon to be over, so, I mean, it's gonna be the last thrill you get.
I'm seeing stars!
I'm seeing creatures!
I got bugs crawling all over me!
I'm having the thrill of a lifetime!
The reintroduction of tetraethyl lead played a crucial role in the early development of powerful yet affordable engines, leading to a boom in the car industry.
Cars, tractors, trucks, and buses became much more efficient, and this enabled other improvements.
For example, cars were redesigned to include features like heating systems and radios, and they were built with stronger frames and steel bodies that were safer in accidents.
Thanks to innovations like Kettering's self-starting engine and electrical systems, along with new engines that ran on leaded fuel created by Midgley, the American car as we know it was born.
Within 20 years of using tetraethyl lead, engines became twice as efficient, their power increased significantly, and the standard gasoline's quality improved dramatically.
Midgley's addition to gasoline showcased the incredible achievements of industrial research.
Power, growth, speed, luxury, all enabled by literal self-destructive poison being spewed everywhere.
I agree, there is something uniquely American about that.
You know what, Travis?
I'm sold, man.
I think I'm going to be a lead gasoline guy.
You know how Digital Foundry does videos where they're like, actually, CRT monitors make your games look better.
I think I'm going to be that for leaded gasoline.
I'm just going to do a bunch of YouTube videos about how your car is faster and stronger, more powerful, less knock.
Yeah, you should do that.
And also asbestos filters on your cigarettes, you know, it's like those busy bodies, those health cranks got rid of our asbestos filters.
I really look forward to the mini series that you come up with on your lead poisoning jaunts.
Hey there, you've been listening to a sample clip of Trickle Down.
This is a side project that I've been working on.
It's a 10 episode series about misinformation and bad ideas that flow from high authority sources.
I think it's fascinating and it's a way for me to explore the way people who should know
what they're talking about don't always actually.
Not gonna lie, some of it's kind of a bummer, but if you're anything like me, that's
actually more of a reason to dive into the subject matter.
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