[foofoo12]

> This was lead poisoning. ... Nobody knew.

Good article. But just to note, lead was already a known poison at the time when it was added to gasoline. Significant concerns were raised. Production was even halted for a while in the US due to health incidents.

[ants_everywhere]

Lead had been a known poison for nearly 2000 years when it was added to gasoline.

The guy who owned the patent for leaded gasoline and who promoted its use even got lead poisoning himself https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr.

[vunderba]

That guy's entire wikipedia page is an almost surreal read. For introducing lead into gasoline and the proliferation of CFCs, he was termed a "one-man environmental disaster". His death is equally fascinating. He invented a mechanical device to help him out of bed because of his polio-related infirmity, and ended up getting strangled by it.

[kragen]

Midgley's paralysis, as I understand it, was probably not due to polio but to lead poisoning.

[ludicrousdispla]

Maybe the mechanical device had also achieved AGI?

[jihadjihad]

> Environmental historian J. R. McNeill opined that Midgley "had more adverse impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth's history", and Bill Bryson remarked that Midgley possessed "an instinct for the regrettable that was almost uncanny".

[davnicwil]

it's incredibly surprising to me that lead was added to gasoline specifically at all.

I'd always assumed it was some expensive-to-remove byproduct of manufacture or something, so they left it in to save costs despite the risks.

Why did this happen?

[pixl97]

Lead in gas increased compression rations and allowed us to build higher horsepower engines. Lead is still used in avgas for this reason. Engine knock was a big problem at the time.

[margalabargala]

I wonder about lead levels in soil near gen aviation airports for this reason, and in the neighborhoods that sometimes get built on decommissioned runways.

[potato3732842]

I assume it's pretty inconsequential because if it weren't I'd hear real people talking about it (like with lead paint, and various forms of soil contamination) and as it stands I only hear fake internet comment section hand wringers hand wringing about it.

[Der_Einzige]

I'm sure you'd regard something like banning tail docking, ear cropping, or non medically necessary infant circumcision as similarly unimportant because only weird "chronically online" folks talk about it. "Just hand wringers". This is why the world is full of cruelty.

[margalabargala]

Per the article we're all commenting on that's maybe not the wisest assumption.

What makes the difference between a fake hand wringer and a real one, by the way? Whether or not this happen to be standing near you at the moment?

[LorenPechtel]

AFIAK only permitted in some old engines that were designed to need the lead.

[chasil]

As I understand it, both tetra ethyl lead and ethyl alcohol are anti-knock agents.

Lead was used because it was cheaper.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiknock_agent

[potato3732842]

Ethanol has other downsides regarding corrosion and reacting with various organic and organic-ish (read: rubber) components. Those were bigger problems back then because everything was carbureted and they didn't have modern plastics.

[consp]

Ethanol on its own is an anti knock agent. E85 is RON 105 for instance.

[ants_everywhere]

according to the article

> Oil companies and automobile manufacturers (especially General Motors, which owned the patent jointly filed by Kettering and Midgley) promoted the TEL additive as an inexpensive alternative superior to ethanol or ethanol-blended fuels, on which they could make very little profit.

Functionally, as others have commented, it is there to reduce knocking. But lead was used instead of ethanol (aka alcohol) because it was more profitable despite being poisonous.

[kragen]

It also gave better gas mileage.

[marcosdumay]

It allowed people to use engines with better gas mileage, what is a different thing.

Just adding the lead addictive to gasoline reduced your gas mileage. But it made better engines work.

[kragen]

It surely reduced it by a tiny amount compared to just straight octane, but ethanol reduced it by something like 10%. So using TEL instead of ethanol gave you about 10% higher gas mileage.

[JJMcJ]

Tetraethyl Lead was an octane raiser - an anti-knocking compound.

[fuzzfactor]

The article doesn't mention it, but at some point the yellow paint on the pencils that young students often chew on would have likely been pigment having high lead content.