Historical Retrospective: From Leaded Gasoline to Teflon (I)

By Give, Jointing.Media, in Shanghai, 2022-08-28

As someone who rarely steps into the kitchen more than a few times a year, watching Dark Waters for the first time sent me immediately inspecting every pot and pan at home. The film’s line — “We protect us. We do. Nobody else” — rings painfully true: safeguarding our health ultimately falls on ourselves. Yet in our interconnected society, when systemic failures occur, few emerge unscathed.

Amid widespread speculation about potential COVID-19 vaccine side effects, examining the historical cases of Teflon and leaded gasoline provides valuable insights – offering both a window into systemic patterns and historical perspective on our current situation.

Beginning in the 1920s, tetraethyllead became a globally adopted gasoline additive for engine performance enhancement. It took nearly a century before this leaded fuel was completely phased out worldwide. Throughout this period, leaded gasoline contaminated air, soil, drinking water, and food crops – claiming millions of lives and leaving enduring lead pollution in urban soils from New Orleans to London that persists to this day.

In the 1950s, DuPont began using perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA, also called C-8) to manufacture Teflon polymers. Only after half a century was DuPont legally proven responsible for PFOA-related personal injuries, groundwater contamination, and other environmental damage. While the U.S. government banned PFOA in 2015, the full extent of C-8’s environmental impact across America remains unassessed – let alone its consequences internationally.

Today, gasoline remains commercially available, now lead-free. Nations are actively developing renewable energy alternatives to fossil fuels to meet “dual carbon” emission targets.

Similarly, Teflon cookware coatings remain on the market, manufactured without PFOA but using GenX – a purportedly non-toxic alternative whose safety requires further verification.

100 Years of Poisoned Fuel

Lead is a neurotoxin. Excessive levels of lead in the body can irreparably damage the brain and central nervous system. But lead is easy to refine and mine and extremely profitable to produce on a large scale. So, at the beginning of the 20th century, although everyone knew lead was dangerous, it was still present in consumer products in various forms. Canned foods were sealed with soldered lead, water was often stored in lead-skinned jars, lead arsenate was used as an insecticide sprayed on fruit, and lead was even a component of toothpaste tubes. Almost every product adds a little bit of lead to a consumer’s life. However, it is the lead added to gasoline that people are exposed to the most and for the longest period of time.

In the early 20th century, automobiles entered the lives of the general public, but they frequently experienced engine problems.

In 1921, a General Motors engineer discovered tetraethyllead (TEL) could prevent engine knocking.
Beginning in 1922, countries adopted TEL as a gasoline additive to improve engine performance.

In 1923, three major corporations in the United States—General Motors, DuPont and Standard Oil of New Jersey—established the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation (later renamed Ethyl Corporation) to add TEL to gasoline. The company’s name did not include “lead”.

TEL is a fruity, highly toxic, oily liquid that enters the body through respiration, ingestion and intact skin, and resists excretion. Frontline workers almost immediately showed symptoms like unsteady walking and cognitive impairment—the first signs of poisoning. Almost immediately, Ethyl Corporation adopted a strategy of plausible deniability that proved effective for decades. As noted in Prometheus in the Laboratory (a history of industrial chemistry), when employees developed incurable hallucinations, spokesmen would shamelessly claim: “These people probably went insane from overwork.”

In leaded gasoline’s early production, at least 15 workers died and countless workers fell ill, often with severe symptoms. The exact number is unknowable because the company systematically concealed these incidents, never revealing damaging disclosures about leaks, spills or poisonings. Within days in 1924, five workers died at one inadequately ventilated facility, with 35 permanently disabled.

When General Motors began selling leaded gasoline, public health experts protested. One study called lead a serious public health threat; another described concentrated TEL as a “malignant, slow-spreading” poison. After the factory poisonings, a surge of scientific scrutiny emerged: TEL’s toxicity was confirmed in 1925, and a 1928 study documented dramatically how lead poisoning cases had risen exponentially since 1923.

Amid growing safety concerns, inventor Thomas Midgley Jr. (creator of both leaded gasoline and Freon) staged a public demonstration for reporters to reassure the public. While touting his product’s safety, he poured leaded gasoline on his hands and inhaled its vapors from a beaker for 60 seconds, claiming he could do this daily without harm. In reality, Midgley was acutely aware of the dangers—he had suffered severe poisoning from overexposure months earlier.

A small group of compromised researchers colluded with industrialists, aided by unscrupulous media outlets, exploiting the public’s limited capacity for information verification. Together they drowned out scientific warnings, inflicting immense global harm. Over decades, leaded gasoline claimed tens of millions of lives while causing intellectual disabilities and physical impairments in countless children.

American geochemist Clair Cameron Patterson first encountered lead contamination in his samples during his 1940s graduate studies at the University of Chicago. His subsequent research into Earth’s age revealed the lead industry as the primary cause of skyrocketing lead levels in both the atmosphere and human bodies.

In 1965, Patterson published “Contaminated and Natural Lead Environments of Man“, attempting to alert the public to the environmental and food chain contamination caused by industrial lead use.

Defying Ethyl Corporation’s lobbying efforts, Patterson opposed Midgley’s chemical invention—a stance that pitted him against the entire lead additive industry. His criticism cost him professional collaborations, with even the ostensibly neutral U.S. Public Health Service blacklisting him. In 1971, the National Research Council barred him from its atmospheric lead pollution panel despite his unquestioned expertise.

Patterson’s persistent advocacy ultimately compelled the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to mandate a 65% reduction in leaded gasoline by 1973, citing its incompatibility with catalytic converters and aggravation of air pollution.

By 1978, Patterson gained admission to the National Research Council’s relevant committee, where his proposals for stricter lead regulation were partially adopted—though deemed to require further study. His 78-page minority report called for immediate controls on lead in gasoline, food containers, paints, glazes, and water systems. Three decades later, most of his recommendations became standard practice across the U.S. and much of the world.

Despite this recognition, leaded gasoline continued poisoning hundreds of millions for another half-century. Its cost advantage ensured continued use in over 100 countries—primarily low-income nations—long after its dangers were established.
In 1996, the United States formally banned leaded gasoline sales on public health grounds.

Europe followed suit in the early 2000s, with developing countries implementing subsequent bans.

China’s State Council issued a 1998 directive mandating nationwide discontinuation of leaded gasoline by July 1, 2000, prohibiting both its sale at stations and use in vehicles.

After 2002, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) launched a global campaign to eliminate leaded gasoline. In August 2021, UNEP announced the complete global phase-out as Algeria’s final July 2021 discontinuation. This achievement is estimated to prevent over 1.2 million premature deaths annually from lead exposure while saving approximately $2.44 trillion each year, contributing significantly to multiple Sustainable Development Goals.

However, unleaded gasoline remains environmentally impactful, emitting gases, particulates, and condensates during combustion. With an estimated 1.2 billion new fossil-fuel vehicles expected on roads in coming decades, UNEP urges nations to accelerate the transition to zero-emission vehicles to address persistent air pollution and climate challenges.

After a century of use claiming millions of lives, lead contamination persists in soils at former production sites. Beyond lead, what other toxins surround us? Can emerging technologies effectively remediate polluted soil, waterways and air? Who safeguards public health? And who can prevent history from repeating? The answers remain troublingly uncertain. This pattern becomes even clearer when examining Teflon cookware – leaded gasoline’s chemical successor introduced thirty years later.

(To be continued)

Edited by Jas, DeepL, DeepSeek and Youdao

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