Trickle Down Episode 16: Earth's Most Destructive Organism Part 2 (Sample)

QAA Podcast

Julian Feeld, Travis View & Jake Rockatansky

News

4.5 • 4.4K Ratings

🗓️ 12 February 2024

⏱️ 11 minutes

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Summary

Leaded gasoline could not have become a universally-used commercial product without an enforcer. Someone who was dedicated to protecting the status quo position that leaded gasoline was safe to use and not a threat to the general public. And that enforcer was named Dr. Robert Kehoe. In 1925 he was appointed chief medical consultant of the Ethyl Corporation and remained in the post until his retirement in 1958. Though he continued to fight for leaded gasoline after that and he lived until the 1990s. Thomas Midgley, Jr. might be the one responsible for inventing leaded gasoline. But Robert Kehoe is the one responsible for protecting industry from uncomfortable questions about lead so that it could be used as long and widely as it was. Until the 1960s, the only studies of the use of tetraethyl lead were funded by the lead, gas, and car industries and carried out by Robert Kehoe. REFERENCES Brown, Oliver W. "Kettering Lab Hailed as Pioneer" Dayton Daily News (Dayton, Ohio), April 2, 1964. Markowitz, Gerald, and David Rosner. Lead wars: the politics of science and the fate of America's children. Vol. 24. Univ of California Press, 2014. Ross, Benjamin, and Steven Amter. The polluters: the making of our chemically altered environment. Oxford University Press, 2010. Keating, Peter. "The Secret History of the War on Cancer." Bulletin of the History of Medicine 82, no. 3 (2008): 757-758. Nriagu, Jerome O. "Clair Patterson and Robert Kehoe's paradigm of “show me the data” on environmental lead poisoning." Environmental research 78, no. 2 (1998): 71-78. Loeb, Alan P. "Birth of the Kettering doctrine: fordism, sloanism and the discovery of tetraethyl lead." Business and Economic History (1995): 72-87. Reilly, Lucas. "The Most Important Scientist You’ve Never Heard Of." Mental Floss 17 (2017). https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/94569/clair-patterson-scientist-who-determined-age-earth-and-then-saved-it Rosner, David, and Gerald E. Markowitz, eds. Dying for work: Workers' safety and health in twentieth-century America. Indiana University Press, 1987 McGrayne, Sharon Bertsch. “Prometheans in the Lab: Chemistry and the Making of the Modern World.” Sharon Bertsch McGrayne, 2001. Markowitz, Gerald, and David Rosner. “Deceit and denial: The deadly politics of industrial pollution.” Vol. 6. Univ of California Press, 2013. Cagin, Seth, and Philip Dray. "Between earth and sky: how CFCs changed our world and endangered the ozone layer." 1993. Kovarik, William. "Ethyl-leaded gasoline: how a classic occupational disease became an international public health disaster." International journal of occupational and environmental health 11, no. 4 (2005): 384-397. Kitman, Jamie Lincoln. "The secret history of lead." NATION-NEW YORK- 270, no. 11 (2000): 11-11. https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/secret-history-lead/ Patterson, Clair C. "Contaminated and natural lead environments of man." Archives of Environmental Health: An International Journal 11, no. 3 (1965): 344-360.

Transcript

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0:00.0	On April 1st, 1964, the University of Cincinnati Medical Center held a dedication for a new four and a half story wing of its Kettering laboratory.
0:18.0	The new wing was called the Robert A Kehoe Hall.
0:21.0	The 70 year old namesake of the hall, Dr. Kiho, was in attendance and watched
0:26.0	as his portrait was hung in the building. Kiho was being honored after a four-decade long
0:30.9	career of being the most staunch medical defender of lead
0:34.4	at gasoline, a product invented by the late Robert Mitchley Jr.
0:38.4	Kiho's work defending lead at gasoline was so effective that the dedication of Kiho Hall was even
0:44.4	attended by Dr. Luther Terry, the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service.
0:48.7	Though Kiho and his associates at Kettering Lab dedicated their lives to allowing workers and the public to be harmed in the name of profit.
0:57.0	The Surgeon General spoke words of praise that indicated the opposite.
1:01.0	They represented something uniquely and admirably America, an enlightened and humane interest
1:07.7	on the part of industry in protecting its workers and the public.
1:12.4	This would be one of the last times any U.S. public official would be so deferential to the absurd world view of Dr. Robert Keito.
1:20.0	During the same time, undeniable evidence was building that led from industry was poisoning the earth and humanity.
1:27.0	Just two years after the dedication of Kijo Hall, Dr Kijo would fight themselves being forced to answer uncomfortable questions in Congress
1:35.8	about the true impact of lead it gasoline.
1:38.8	I'm Travis View, and this is trickle down, a podcast about what happens when bad ideas flow from the top.
1:44.6	With me are Julian Field and Jack Rockatasking.
1:47.8	Episode 16, Earth's most destructive organism, part 2.
2:03.7	So on the last episode I talked about how Thomas Bidley Jr. with support from his boss Charles Kettering invented lead lead in order to fix the problem of engine knock in cars. Engine knock
2:10.3	being a problem that not only made engines noisy but made them much less efficient and useful.
2:16.0	Lead Gasoline went on sale under the brand name of Ethel, but there was a crisis where multiple workers were severely poisoned and died through the production of tetraethyl lead.
	...

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