Leaded Petrol

50 Things That Made the Modern Economy

BBC

Business

4.8 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 8 July 2017

⏱️ 9 minutes

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Summary

In the 1920s lead was added to petrol. It made cars more powerful and was, according to its advocates, a “gift”. But lead is a gift which poisons people; something figured out as long ago as Roman times. There’s some evidence that as countries get richer, they tend initially to get dirtier and later clean up. Economists call this the “environmental Kuznets curve”. It took the United States until the 1970s to tax lead in petrol, then finally ban it, as the country moved down the far side of the environmental Kuznets curve. But as Tim Harford explains in this astonishing story, the consequences of the Kuznets curve aren’t always only economic. Producer: Ben Crighton Editors: Richard Knight and Richard Vadon (Image: Petrol Nozzle, Credit: Khaled Desouki/AFP/Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	50 Things That Made The Modern Economy With Tim Harford
0:16.0	Letted petrol was safe. Its inventor was sure of it.
0:22.6	Facing skeptical reporters at a press conference, Thomas midgely dramatically produced a container
0:28.1	of tetraethyl lead, the additive in question, and proceeded to wash his hands in it.
0:35.1	I'm not taking any chance, whatever.
0:37.1	Midgely declared.
0:38.1	Nor would I take any chance doing that every day.
0:44.1	Midgely was perhaps being a little disingenuous. He might have mentioned that it recently spent several months in Florida recouping from lead poisoning.
0:56.1	Some of those who had been making midgely's invention hadn't been so lucky, and this is why the reporters were interested.
1:03.1	One Thursday in October 1924, a standard oil plant in New Jersey, a worker named Ernest Elgurt, had started hallucinating.
1:12.1	By Friday, he was running around the laboratory screaming in terror.
1:17.1	On Saturday, with Elgurt dangerously unhinged, his sister called the police.
1:22.1	He was taken to hospital and forcibly restrained. By Sunday, he was dead.
1:28.1	Within a week, so were four of his laboratory workmates, and 35 more were in hospital. Only 49 people worked there.
1:39.1	None of this surprised workers elsewhere in standard oil's facility. They knew there was a problem with tetraethyl lead.
1:47.1	They referred to the lab where it was developed as the loony gas building.
1:56.1	Better working practices could make tetraethyl lead safe to produce. But was it really sensible to add it to petrol when the fumes would be belched out onto city streets?
2:07.1	When General Motors had first proposed adding lead to petrol a couple of years earlier, scientists were alarmed.
2:14.1	They urged the government to investigate the possible public health implications.
2:19.1	Thomas Midgely breezily assured the surgeon general that...
2:23.1	The average street will probably be so free from lead that it will be impossible to detect it, or its absorption.
2:31.1	Although he conceded that...
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