[hawkinspeter]

https://theconversation.com/a-century-of-tragedy-how-the-car-and-gas-industry-knew-about-the-health-risks-of-leaded-fuel-but-sold-it-for-100-years-anyway-173395

[quote]A century of leaded gasoline has taken millions of lives and to this day leaves the soil in many cities from New Orleans to London toxic.

The leaded gasoline story provides a practical example of how industry’s profit-driven decisions—when unsuccessfully challenged and regulated—can cause serious and long-term harm. It takes individual public health leaders and strong media coverage of health and environmental issues to counter these risks.[/quote]

There’s a nice graph there too:

Extra course credits for reading up on the Lead-Crime hypothesis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis

[quote]A 2011 study by the California State University found that “Ridding the world of leaded petrol, with the United Nations leading the effort in developing countries, has resulted in $2.4 trillion in annual benefits, 1.2 million fewer premature deaths, higher overall intelligence and 58 million fewer crimes”, according to the United Nations News Centre. The executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Achim Steiner argued that “Although this global effort has often flown below the radar of [the] media and global leaders, it is clear that the elimination of leaded petrol is an immense achievement on par with the global elimination of major deadly diseases.”[/quote]

Topic

[hawkinspeter]

Fair enough – I’m taking him

Fair enough – I’m taking him off my Xmas card list

[Rendel Harris]

I’m not much good on

I’m not much good on chemistry but Wiki says “They [Midgely & team] rejected the assumption that such compounds [CFCs] would be toxic, believing that the stability of the carbon–fluorine bond would be sufficient to prevent the release of hydrogen fluoride or other potential breakdown products” which sounds as though some folks certainly raised misgivings.

[hawkinspeter]

I did see that in some

I did see that in some related info, but thought that maybe he didn’t realise the issues with CFCs?

[Rendel Harris]

Not mentioned in the

Not mentioned in the interesting article linked that Thomas Midgely, who was the main driver of adding lead to petrol, then went on to develop CFCs, making him arguably the individual with the worst environmental impact in human history. He became paralysed with polio in later life and invented a rope-and-pulley contraption to get him out of bed; one morning he got tangled up in it and it strangled him to death. One can’t help feeling his teachers should have encouraged him more towards the arts subjects…

[Author]

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