I love the irony of this.
Given that lead poisoning had been around so long, the actions of the chemist Thomas Midgley Jr appear to have been reckless in the extreme. He is the man who put lead in petrol.
In 1921 as a brilliant young chemist at General Motors he discovered that adding the compound tetra-ethyl lead made engines run more efficiently, eliminating the uncontrolled knocking of early motorcars.
The product was marketed as the benign-sounding "ethyl". When challenged about the dangers of the lead content, Midgley called a press conference at which he poured the chemical over his hands and breathed in its vapour for a full minute, claiming he could do so every day without ill effect.
In reality, both before and after this incident Midgley spent months plagued by the effects of lead poisoning. GM's ethyl plant in New Jersey, meanwhile, was forced to close after several workers went mad and some died. The press renamed ethyl "looney gas".
Midgley was a tragic individual.
Thomas Midgley, creator of tetraethyl lead
Later in life he contracted polio and became bed-ridden, so he designed a system of pulleys to raise himself up - only one day he became entangled in them and died of asphyxiation.
However, the greatest tragedy was his legacy. It was Midgley who invented chlorofluorocarbons - CFCs - the refrigerant gases later found to be responsible for opening up the hole in the ozone layer and increasing the incidence of skin cancer. And cars - far more of them than Midgley could have conceived of in the 1920s - would continued to belch out lead bromide fumes for decades.
An excerpt from this very interesting article, none of it earth shatteringly new or unknown, but an entertaining read
www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29568505
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A couple of years ago I did read a report suggesting that when lead in petrol was banned in 1992 it was predicted that we would see a reduction in crime figures (Particularly violent crime) begin to show about twenty years later, and that'a exactly what happened.
Last edited by: Robin O'Reliant on Sun 12 Oct 14 at 11:05
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>>it was predicted that we would see a reduction in crime figures (Particularly violent crime) >>begin to show about twenty years later, and that'a exactly what happened.
If you believe the current official "recorded stats" OR "massaged figures" as some people call them - how many offences are ignored or not reported as the police do not investigate house breakings in many cases!
The prisons are nigh on 100% full and you have to have done multiple offences normally to have entered the prison system. Fines, community service, alcohol/drug re-hab..... Even drug dealing does not get you an immediate prison sentence.
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>> The prisons are nigh on 100% full and you have to have done multiple offences
>> normally to have entered the prison system. Fines, community service, alcohol/drug re-hab..... Even drug dealing
>> does not get you an immediate prison sentence.
The prisons are full because we go on sending the wrong people there. We have the highest prison population in Europe (as a % of population). IIRC only the USof A and China have more.
Far too many inmates have mental health problems or are in and out of a revolving door associated with abuse of drugs, in which category I include alcohol. Appropriate treatment in the community would be far better or them but instead we have a governments (of both parties) who prefer to pander to headlines in the popular press.
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We're also jailing more older people, particularly with regard to historic abuse cases. Twenty years ago prosecuting someone for an assault that took place thirty or forty years beforehand was unheard of.
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>> We're also jailing more older people, particularly with regard to historic abuse cases. Twenty years
>> ago prosecuting someone for an assault that took place thirty or forty years beforehand was
>> unheard of.
The elderly prison population is becoming a serious issue. It's due to same factors as rest of population though rather than a handful of ageing gropers and nonces being sent down.
Jails, particularly the older establishments, are no place for those with limited mobility or dementia and there's a limit to number prison hospitals etc can accommodate.
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Sun 12 Oct 14 at 14:06
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>> Jails, particularly the older establishments, are no place for those with limited mobility or dementia
>> and there's a limit to number prison hospitals etc can accommodate.
Article here gives an overview:
www.telegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/10107203/Should-we-help-our-OAPs-Old-Age-Prisoners.html
The Guardian has also covered issue via its ex con correspondents Erwin James and Eric Allison.
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Tetra-ethyl lead was wonderful stuff for engines with cast iron cylinder heads without valve seat liners. It also provided a ready-reckoning way of checking the car's tune by looking at the colour inside the exhaust pipe after a run at your normal cruise, or any proper run actually.
I don't know if the lead in car exhausts gave urban nippers brain damage. It was said to, but being urban nippers probably made more of a difference.
'Leroy! You do that one more time I'm'a get your daddy to whomp you upside the head, y'hear?' Enough to give anyone a feral, slinking, hunted demeanour.
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That material the BBC cited was simply boiled down from Bill Bryson´s book A Brief History of Everything.
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Thomas Midgley, the worlds greatest Villain? - Robin O'Reliant
