[drweevil]

> Cynics might point out that any old farmer could distill ethyl alcohol from grain. It couldn't be patented, or its distribution profitably controlled. Tetraethyl lead could.

Were they cynics, though? As the article itself points out, the dangers of tetraethyl lead were already well know. And then there is this:

> And, as Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner point out, "For the next four decades, all studies of the use of tetraethyl lead were conducted by laboratories and scientists funded by the Ethyl Corporation and General Motors".

It doesn't take a cynic to see what was going on here.

[Lio]

I could imagine Acquired doing a podcast on Ethyl Corporation gushing about how wonderful ut is.

“Yeah lead is a great business to be in. Let’s do a bull and bear analysis going forward.”

My cynicism is burnt in at this point. You only have to look at how willingly people are to keep pushing fossil fuels.

[brominebrewer]

I work for the company that was Ethyl and we have old "propaganda posters" touting the benefits of tetraethyllead on the walls of the administration building at the location where TEL was produced. They're curios from another time and hung on the walls as a reminder that acceptable science, norms, and requirements change over time. We're not the company we once were, but the past is worthy of remembrance--if only so the mistakes thereof are not repeated.

[rgmerk]

Harsh but accurate.

[amiga386]

Veritasium did a great video on Midgley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV3dnLzthDA

And therein they give the reason why ethanol was passed over: a lot of it is required to be effective (~10% of the fuel mixture), seriously dampening the profit margin of fuel sales! It works, but tetraethyl lead is so much cheaper

[somat]

It's not even that. alcohol destroys engines.

Sure in retrospect lead is a bad idea. but for the sake of argument. If we ignore all the subtlety of the real world choices, research and development required the argument would probably be.

We have this great additive that will let us make more powerful efficient engines that is also stable and lubricating or we could put something in the gas that degrades quickly and eats all the rubber seals out of our customers engines.

In short even ignoring price alcohol was a non starter then, even today with many years of developing rubbers that handle alcohol better E blends are a lot harder on engines than non E blends.

And a fun science experiment "how do you tell how much alcohol is in the gas?" fill a glass mason jar about a third full of gas, mark a line on the jar where the gas is. put another third of water in and color it with food coloring, put lid on and shake well, let separate and settle out. mark new line on glass where gas is. figure out percentage. The alcohol is water soluble and will have formed a solution with the water, the food coloring will only color the water and will let you see the boundery layer easier.

[dontlaugh]

That used to be true.

For a while now, any petrol car can run on high ethanol mixed without any damage.

[somat]

True but it was a real consideration for a surprisingly long time. And you still find a lot of lawnmowers that tell you not to use E mixes in them, I am not sure why (my guess are either they are being super cheap on the rubber or just acknowledging the fact that lawnmowers tend to sit and the E mixes sitting tends to corrode things and go bad.)

[KennyBlanken]

Literally nothing keeps the power equipment industry from making their carb parts out of components that won't rust except being cheap asses and wanting to sell parts and kits and keep their dealers happy with repair business.

[nubinetwork]

Then why use gasoline at all? This might sound sacrilegious, but I honestly wish LPG had more pull than it did in Canada.

[mikeodds]

I’m perpetually having to take apart and clean the carbs of a 2003 motorbike because of the added Ethanol in fuel nowadays.

[kevin_thibedeau]

I have a nylon fuel tank on a 2003 bike and it has swollen from ethanol such that it is tricky to remount after removal because it expands when unconstrained by the frame. Ducati had a recall over this but Triumph got away without having to do one. I have been running ethanol-free for a few years now because a station is near me but that doesn't fix the problem.

[garbagewoman]

Surprising that such a poor quality motorcycle was mass produced

[jshier]

My local Meijer gas station recently remodeled and now carries Rec gas, which contains no Ethanol or any other additives. It's actually more expensive than any of the other fuels there, but it is designed for things like motorbikes and lawn equipment.

[Scoundreller]

I thought ethanol was cheaper than gas. And the octane boost means the gas doesn’t need as pricy refining, especially in summer when you can’t load it up with butane.

+ the decreased fuel economy gets people to the stations more often where the high margin stuff is sold.

And if the US can convince the world to include ethanol in fuel, that helps if you’re the biggest corn grower on the planet. Even Canada imports about half of its ethanol (almost entirely from USA), with some of the domestic ethanol production using US corn.

[themafia]

Tetraethyl lead has a lifetime of a year when mixed into fuel. Ethyl alcohol has a lifetime of 3 months when mixed into fuel.

Tetraethyl lead oxidizes and the lead falls out of the solution over time. Ethyl alcohol pulls water from the air and dilutes itself over time.

You also need highly pure and anhydrous Ethyl alcohol for mixture into fuels.

The products simply aren't equivalent when you consider the massive system of fuel delivery and use that exists. The US is a huge country and there aren't refineries everywhere.

[Scoundreller]

> Ethyl alcohol pulls water from the air and dilutes itself over time.

How much of a problem is this for people that don’t store their gasoline in open containers?

Like, I get that many containers aren’t 100% sealed to avoid bursting/collapsing, but I don’t get any whiffs of gas when walking by my plastic Jerry cans.

[drweevil]

And yet, tetraethyl lead is a deadly poison. Surely that is a factor worth considering?

[themafia]

Salt is a deadly poison. The question is how much. Which is precisely why Midgely would demonstrate the "safety" of TEL by pouring some on his skin in front of reporters. He knew that in limited amounts the effect was small.

At the time when TEL was introduced gasoline engines were just _starting_ to be mass produced for personal vehicles. It was a way to take the limited manufacturing technology of the time and still produce a reliable engine. The installed base was small enough that if you didn't consider the potential exponential explosion of engines you might be convinced that it would never amount to a significant problem. Sure, it will increase lead levels, but hopefully not by that much.

Then two world wars broke out. Wars in which this technology featured significantly.

It's fun to blame Thomas Midgely for all of this but if offers no real lesson on how to prevent it from happening again.

[HPsquared]

It'd be interesting to compare and contrast this to the pharmaceutical industry.