Leaded Gasoline

Lead was used in early model cars to help reduce engine knocking, boost octane ratings, and help with wear and tear on valve seats within the motor. Due to concerns over air pollution and health risks. This type of gas was slowly phased out starting in the late 1970′s and banned altogether in all on road vehicles in the U.S. in 1995. A General Motors chemist in 1922 found that adding a lead compound to fuel smoothed the ride. But also over time, other manufacturers found that by adding lead to fuel they could significantly improve the octane rating of the gas. This allowed them to produce much cheaper grades of fuel and still maintain the needed octane ratings that a car’s engine required. Lead was good for cars but bad for the living things. The compound harmed child’s mental development and could cause nervous system and blood pressure conditions in there adulthood. The Environmental Protection Agency started to take out the leaded gas in 1974. Overcoming legal battles with refiners. A federal appeals court ruled in 1980 that the EPA could set standards "to act in the face of uncertainty." Little did they known that the GM chemist who came up with leaded gas also invented a ozone-destroying CFCs, leaving historian J.R. McNeill to conclude that Thomas Midgley Jr. "had more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth history.

Problems with lead were known even before major oil companies began using it. In 1922, while plans for production of leaded gasoline were just getting out. Thomas Midgley received a letter from Charles Klaus, a German scientist stating that lead, “it’s a creeping and malicious poison” and warned that it had killed a fellow scientist. Ignoring the warnings production on leaded gasoline began in 1923. It didn't take long for workers to begin dyeing due to lead poisoning. At DuPont’s manufacturing plant in Deep Water, New Jersey workers began to fall like dominoes. One worker died in the fall of 1923. Three died in the summer of 1924 and four more in the winter of 1925.

               In 1974, after environmental hazards began to become really bad, the EPA announced a scheduled phase out of lead content in gasoline. One way manufacturers met these and other emission standards was to use catalytic converters. Catalytic converters use a chemical reaction to change pollutants, like carbon monoxide and other harmful hydrocarbons, to carbon dioxide, nitrogen and water. Tetraethyl lead would tend to clog up these converters making them not functional. Thus, unleaded gasoline became the fuel of choice for any car with a catalytic converter. This hasn't completely gotten rid of leaded gasoline. You are still permitted to use it for off road vehicles, aircraft, racing cars, farm equipment, and marine engines, in the United States.