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
|
Thomas Midgley, the worlds greatest Villa.. new
Thomas Midgley, the worlds greatest Vill.. new