WEBVTT - Special Episode: Daniel Stone & American Poison 0:00:43.760 --> 0:00:47.400 Hi, I'm Aaron Welsh and this is This Podcast Will 0:00:47.479 --> 0:00:50.960 Kill You. You're tuning in to the latest episode of the 0:00:51.040 --> 0:00:54.920 tpw k Y book Club, a series where I bring 0:00:55.000 --> 0:00:58.400 on authors of popular science and medicine books to chat 0:00:58.400 --> 0:01:02.080 with them about their most recent work. We have covered 0:01:02.240 --> 0:01:07.120 some wonderful topics so far this season, from important failures 0:01:07.200 --> 0:01:11.120 in the history of medicine to the evolution of human language, 0:01:11.480 --> 0:01:14.360 from how bacteria phases may help us in the fight 0:01:14.400 --> 0:01:19.559 against antibiotic resistance, to the promising future of regenerative medicine, 0:01:20.160 --> 0:01:24.040 and we've got more books on the horizon. To check 0:01:24.080 --> 0:01:26.800 out what books you may have missed or those will 0:01:26.840 --> 0:01:30.120 feature in upcoming episodes, head over to our website This 0:01:30.240 --> 0:01:33.720 Podcast Will Kill You dot com and find the extras tab. 0:01:34.200 --> 0:01:36.960 Under that tab, click on the link for our bookshop 0:01:37.000 --> 0:01:42.040 dot org affiliate page, which has a bunch of TPWKY booklists, 0:01:42.080 --> 0:01:45.280 including one for this book club. Make sure you're checking 0:01:45.319 --> 0:01:48.520 back in on these lists regularly because I am always 0:01:48.560 --> 0:01:51.280 adding more to them. If you have any books that 0:01:51.320 --> 0:01:54.120 you think would be a great fit for the TPWKY 0:01:54.160 --> 0:01:56.800 Book Club, we'd love to hear about them. The best 0:01:56.800 --> 0:01:58.920 way to get in touch is through the contact us 0:01:59.000 --> 0:02:02.360 form on our website. Two last things before we move 0:02:02.440 --> 0:02:05.080 on to this week's book, and that is first to 0:02:05.160 --> 0:02:08.959 please rate, review, and subscribe. It really does help us out. 0:02:09.440 --> 0:02:13.000 And secondly, you can now find full video versions of 0:02:13.040 --> 0:02:16.080 most of our newer episodes on YouTube. Make sure you're 0:02:16.120 --> 0:02:19.359 subscribed to exactly Write Media's YouTube channel so you never 0:02:19.440 --> 0:02:23.880 miss a new episode drop. The twentieth century was a 0:02:23.919 --> 0:02:30.079 time of profound scientific and technological progress, from transportation via 0:02:30.160 --> 0:02:36.400 horse drawn carriage to transoceanic airplanes, from telegrams to cell phones. 0:02:36.720 --> 0:02:41.680 From sky high infant mortality rates to vaccines for dozens 0:02:41.760 --> 0:02:46.440 of previously deadly infections. Over a mere one hundred years, 0:02:46.760 --> 0:02:52.440 people's lives drastically changed, mostly for the better. But progress 0:02:52.600 --> 0:02:56.320 comes at a cost. Sometimes that cost can only be 0:02:56.400 --> 0:03:00.799 tallied in retrospect, while other times it can be and 0:03:00.880 --> 0:03:05.840 thus preventable, but only if proper action is taken. When 0:03:05.919 --> 0:03:09.440 tetra ethyl leaded gasoline was developed by Thomas Midgley in 0:03:09.480 --> 0:03:13.520 the early nineteen twenties, it seemed like a miraculous and 0:03:13.760 --> 0:03:19.560 inexpensive solution allowing cars to drive faster and farther. There 0:03:19.639 --> 0:03:24.480 was just one small problem. Lead poisoning. While the manufacturers 0:03:24.480 --> 0:03:28.959 of leaded gasoline insisted that their product was entirely safe, 0:03:29.240 --> 0:03:33.560 other people, like occupational health pioneer Alice Hamilton, knew the 0:03:33.600 --> 0:03:37.880 truth that if this product was widely introduced, it would 0:03:37.960 --> 0:03:42.920 lead to a global lead poisoning pandemic. Despite these warnings, 0:03:42.960 --> 0:03:47.160 we of course know how the story ends. Leaded gasoline 0:03:47.320 --> 0:03:50.760 was sold around the world for decades before being banned, 0:03:51.160 --> 0:03:56.200 harming untold millions. How this toxic substance was permitted to 0:03:56.200 --> 0:03:59.440 be used in spite of ample evidence of its dangers 0:03:59.840 --> 0:04:04.120 carries a powerful lesson for our society today. In this 0:04:04.160 --> 0:04:07.720 week's episode, best selling author and lecturer at Johns Hopkins 0:04:07.840 --> 0:04:11.760 University Daniel Stone joins me to discuss the story of 0:04:11.840 --> 0:04:15.280 leaded gasoline and those who fought against it in his 0:04:15.360 --> 0:04:19.120 book American Poison, A Deadly Invention and the Woman Who 0:04:19.160 --> 0:04:24.560 Battled for Environmental Justice. His compelling storytelling transports readers back 0:04:24.600 --> 0:04:27.800 to the United States in the early nineteen twenties, when 0:04:27.800 --> 0:04:31.520 it seemed like anything was possible and technology would save 0:04:31.560 --> 0:04:35.640 the day while corporations grew very wealthy in the process. 0:04:36.560 --> 0:04:40.840 Stone then introduces us to an unsung hero of industrial medicine. 0:04:41.080 --> 0:04:45.000 Alice Hamilton, who fights for those who didn't have a voice, 0:04:45.320 --> 0:04:48.520 who were seen as expendable in the pursuit of progress. 0:04:49.480 --> 0:04:53.400 In Midgley and his letted Gasoline, she finds a formidable foe, 0:04:53.839 --> 0:04:57.160 and the resulting battle would leave permanent scars on the 0:04:57.200 --> 0:05:01.080 health of the entire world. The story of Alice Hamilton 0:05:01.160 --> 0:05:05.240 and letted Gasoline. It's difficult to take in knowing how 0:05:05.279 --> 0:05:08.559 things end, but it's one that we need to bear 0:05:08.640 --> 0:05:11.760 in mind, given our failure to learn from the past. 0:05:12.680 --> 0:05:16.840 What will be the next letted gasoline, the next asbestos, 0:05:16.880 --> 0:05:20.719 the next radiation, things viewed as miraculous in their early 0:05:20.839 --> 0:05:25.719 years but later found to be dangerous, deadly even will 0:05:25.760 --> 0:05:30.280 it be microplastics, p fasts, or so called forever chemicals, 0:05:30.800 --> 0:05:35.279 something else we don't yet know about. Unfortunately, we can't 0:05:35.360 --> 0:05:39.400 undo the harm that letted gasoline has already caused, but 0:05:39.480 --> 0:05:42.240 we can use its story as a roadmap for a 0:05:42.279 --> 0:05:46.040 better future. I am really excited to share this conversation 0:05:46.120 --> 0:05:48.400 with you all, so let's take a quick break and 0:05:48.440 --> 0:06:14.680 get started. Daniel, thank you so much for joining me today. 0:06:14.920 --> 0:06:18.520 Thanks for having me in American Poison. You tell the 0:06:18.560 --> 0:06:22.400 story of tetra ethyl leaded gasoline and the woman who 0:06:22.520 --> 0:06:25.520 fought to bring its negative health effects to light. And 0:06:25.560 --> 0:06:28.440 you mentioned that you first came across the story of 0:06:28.560 --> 0:06:31.680 Alice Hamilton, or at least her name in a footnote. 0:06:32.080 --> 0:06:35.440 What made you decide to dig deeper into her story 0:06:35.520 --> 0:06:37.360 and where did it ultimately leave you? 0:06:37.920 --> 0:06:40.480 Yeah, it was a footnote, which is sort of fitting 0:06:40.520 --> 0:06:43.720 for women of that era, right to be remembered, right 0:06:44.080 --> 0:06:47.320 in such a minor way like that. I teach environmental 0:06:47.360 --> 0:06:53.800 science and policy to graduate students, and I'm very steeped 0:06:54.000 --> 0:06:57.760 in environmental history. You know what started the environmental movement 0:06:58.200 --> 0:07:00.480 two hundred years ago, one hundred years ago? Who were 0:07:00.520 --> 0:07:04.080 these big people, these big events that made us start 0:07:04.080 --> 0:07:07.279 to care about the planet. And I teach this every semester. 0:07:07.520 --> 0:07:10.000 And about five or six years ago, I came across 0:07:10.000 --> 0:07:13.800 a footnote about Alice Hamilton, and I said, I've never 0:07:13.840 --> 0:07:16.000 heard of this person. Who is this? And so I 0:07:16.040 --> 0:07:20.679 googled her and read her whole Wikipedia page and I thought, Wow, 0:07:21.320 --> 0:07:26.160 this she was someone, someone real and someone influential that 0:07:26.280 --> 0:07:29.360 had completely escaped my view in the field and a 0:07:29.360 --> 0:07:32.200 lot of my colleagues too. So I dug deeper and 0:07:32.280 --> 0:07:37.600 deeper and was continually surprised at the sheer volume of 0:07:37.720 --> 0:07:42.400 work this woman had done for the benefit of humanity, 0:07:42.600 --> 0:07:47.440 really and got kind of not entirely forgotten, but certainly 0:07:47.440 --> 0:07:50.120 not celebrated to the extent she deserved. 0:07:50.840 --> 0:07:54.480 She is an incredible just a truly remarkable person, and 0:07:54.640 --> 0:07:58.720 her life journey is fascinating because it kind of takes 0:07:58.800 --> 0:08:02.280 us roundabout way where she didn't set out to become 0:08:02.880 --> 0:08:06.320 one of the leaders of this new field of industrial medicine, 0:08:06.760 --> 0:08:10.240 but yet that is ultimately what she did become. And 0:08:10.840 --> 0:08:12.840 I'm wondering, you know, if you could tell me more 0:08:12.840 --> 0:08:16.840 about the origins of this field and why it emerged 0:08:16.880 --> 0:08:17.440 when it did. 0:08:18.080 --> 0:08:21.400 Yeah, I often describe her as the Aaron Brockovich of 0:08:21.680 --> 0:08:25.760 the early twentieth century, a woman who took on very 0:08:25.800 --> 0:08:32.640 powerful polluting industries and tried to dislodge them or derail 0:08:32.720 --> 0:08:35.560 them in ways that were dangerous. Sometimes she won, a 0:08:35.559 --> 0:08:38.680 lot of times she didn't, but she was vindicated over 0:08:38.760 --> 0:08:41.839 time in all of them. And so this is a 0:08:41.920 --> 0:08:46.320 woman who was born in Indiana in eighteen sixty nine, 0:08:46.400 --> 0:08:48.960 right after the Civil War. She grows up in a 0:08:49.040 --> 0:08:52.920 very wealthy family among a lot of sisters and cousins 0:08:53.559 --> 0:08:57.240 who are all taught basically to be helpful, you know, 0:08:57.320 --> 0:09:00.320 find your way to help people, whatever it is. Go 0:09:00.360 --> 0:09:03.960 into law, go into medicine, go into teaching, anything that 0:09:04.040 --> 0:09:06.920 you think could improve someone else's life, not just your own. 0:09:07.440 --> 0:09:10.560 Her path is through medicine. She becomes a doctor, which 0:09:10.600 --> 0:09:13.680 is pretty rare in those days for a woman. You 0:09:13.720 --> 0:09:16.360 had to be from a wealthy family to get into 0:09:16.400 --> 0:09:19.680 medical school and go to medical school. And so she 0:09:19.760 --> 0:09:24.440 becomes a doctor, and her first kind of twist in 0:09:24.520 --> 0:09:28.080 her path comes in the eighteen nineties when she's a doctor, 0:09:28.240 --> 0:09:31.040 but instead of being kind of a wealthy doctor who 0:09:31.120 --> 0:09:34.520 serves rich people only, she decides she wants to serve 0:09:34.840 --> 0:09:39.319 the poor, and she wants to serve marginalized people, immigrants, 0:09:39.400 --> 0:09:43.000 people who don't speak English. And this was very much 0:09:43.040 --> 0:09:45.120 not done in those days, to the extent that there 0:09:45.160 --> 0:09:48.000 was really only one place that took on this kind 0:09:48.040 --> 0:09:52.559 of work that had been started by Jane Adams in Chicago, 0:09:52.640 --> 0:09:55.320 and it was called Hull House. Hull House was kind 0:09:55.320 --> 0:10:00.319 of this melting pot of cultures and classes. They called 0:10:00.360 --> 0:10:02.560 it a bridge between the classes because it was a 0:10:02.600 --> 0:10:05.920 house where you know, people who didn't speak English, people 0:10:05.920 --> 0:10:07.920 who didn't know how to read, people who needed help 0:10:07.960 --> 0:10:11.240 getting jobs or their kids getting daycare while they went 0:10:11.280 --> 0:10:13.760 to their jobs. It all sort of happened in this house. 0:10:13.840 --> 0:10:17.360 We would now call this social work or social welfare work. 0:10:18.160 --> 0:10:20.200 It didn't have a name back then. But Alice Hamilton 0:10:20.320 --> 0:10:24.240 goes in and it's through here that she applies her 0:10:24.240 --> 0:10:30.160 medical skills and knowledge to helping improve people's lives, mostly babies, 0:10:30.800 --> 0:10:33.800 gets babies sick, but she also starts to notice that 0:10:33.840 --> 0:10:36.600 other people in the community are getting sick too, People 0:10:36.679 --> 0:10:40.040 have coughs, people have stomach issues, and she starts to 0:10:40.120 --> 0:10:43.000 drop patterns. Right, all of the men who have the 0:10:43.120 --> 0:10:47.440 same kind of like deep cough work in the same factory, 0:10:48.000 --> 0:10:50.680 and all the ones who have like the wrist problems 0:10:50.840 --> 0:10:53.960 are working in that other factory. And so she draws 0:10:54.040 --> 0:10:58.240 these kind of patterns that we now call epidemiology. Back then, 0:10:58.320 --> 0:11:01.760 it was called shoe leather epidemiology, because you'd literally have 0:11:01.840 --> 0:11:04.720 to go from factory to factory and put these patterns together. 0:11:05.320 --> 0:11:07.480 And eventually she do enough of this that she would 0:11:08.280 --> 0:11:10.800 have like a body of research that she would take 0:11:10.880 --> 0:11:13.600 to that factory or that boss or that industry and 0:11:13.640 --> 0:11:18.160 say this thing you're doing is dangerous and here's how 0:11:18.360 --> 0:11:21.960 or here's how to mitigate it or correct it. And 0:11:22.000 --> 0:11:27.079 that's what started the field called occupational hygiene occupational medicine. 0:11:27.480 --> 0:11:28.440 She really started it. 0:11:29.120 --> 0:11:33.800 Tell me more about the primary concerns about working conditions 0:11:33.840 --> 0:11:35.520 at the turn of the twentieth century. It was not 0:11:36.440 --> 0:11:40.360 a very safe place, or most most factories were not 0:11:40.400 --> 0:11:42.719 a very safe place to work. There was little oversight, 0:11:42.960 --> 0:11:45.440 you know, what were some of the prevailing concerns or 0:11:45.480 --> 0:11:48.280 things that emerged during that time that kind of drove 0:11:48.559 --> 0:11:49.640 interest in this field. 0:11:50.120 --> 0:11:52.600 Yeah, it was very dangerous to work in a factory 0:11:52.720 --> 0:11:56.559 and very underpaid. You know. There was no sense of 0:11:56.679 --> 0:12:00.840 what we now would call like workplace compensation or OSHA 0:12:01.040 --> 0:12:05.160 or like anyone inspecting anything dangerous. There were a series 0:12:05.200 --> 0:12:08.400 of like horrific accidents. There's one of the most famous 0:12:08.440 --> 0:12:12.199 is the Triangle shirtwaist factory fire in New York where 0:12:12.480 --> 0:12:14.679 they locked the doors and so all these people burned 0:12:14.760 --> 0:12:18.160 up in a building that should normally have had some 0:12:18.200 --> 0:12:23.480 safety precautions. But the biggest storytelling element to this was 0:12:23.520 --> 0:12:26.720 a book in nineteen oh six by a journalist named 0:12:26.800 --> 0:12:30.839 Upton Sinclair who wrote a novel called The Jungle. We've 0:12:30.880 --> 0:12:34.000 all heard of The Jungle now, and it was very 0:12:34.120 --> 0:12:38.400 lightly fictionalized, but it was kind of an expose of 0:12:38.559 --> 0:12:43.160 the pecking yards in Chicago, and the conditions he describes 0:12:43.240 --> 0:12:48.800 were so horrific to the extreme that it sort of 0:12:48.880 --> 0:12:51.760 woke up the upper classes in a way that they 0:12:51.800 --> 0:12:55.360 could just completely close their eyes to this like horrifying 0:12:55.520 --> 0:12:59.760 condition before, you know, like men burning alive, and people 0:12:59.800 --> 0:13:02.760 get their limbs chopped off and falling into vats and 0:13:02.800 --> 0:13:06.760 getting ground up with meat, you know, just like stomach churning, 0:13:06.840 --> 0:13:09.840 things that had never before gotten out in a big 0:13:09.880 --> 0:13:13.160 public way. And so this was an era, sort of 0:13:13.200 --> 0:13:16.600 first decade of the twentieth century, when people were newly 0:13:16.640 --> 0:13:22.320 confronting horrors in industrialization that had existed for a while 0:13:22.480 --> 0:13:24.000 but were sort of newly. 0:13:23.800 --> 0:13:28.880 Coming to light, right, right. And when Alice begins to 0:13:28.960 --> 0:13:31.640 dig into this field and she starts to observe these 0:13:31.679 --> 0:13:35.400 patterns that are coming out, especially in certain workers in 0:13:35.440 --> 0:13:39.439 certain factories, you know, these lead factory employees with these 0:13:39.440 --> 0:13:44.000 horrific coughs, she might not have realized that, yes, this 0:13:44.160 --> 0:13:46.520 was a problem that was at least decades old, but 0:13:47.240 --> 0:13:48.920 when it comes to lead. I mean this is a 0:13:48.960 --> 0:13:52.920 problem that is millennial, Like it's thousands of years people 0:13:52.960 --> 0:13:56.800 have been being exposed to lead and experiencing symptoms of 0:13:56.880 --> 0:14:01.200 lead poisoning. Could you briefly take me on a tour 0:14:01.280 --> 0:14:04.120 of like the highlights or low lights of the history 0:14:04.120 --> 0:14:06.480 of lead and in many ways that we've used it 0:14:06.559 --> 0:14:07.840 throughout human history. 0:14:08.360 --> 0:14:11.000 Yeah, I mean, lead is as old as the planet itself. 0:14:11.280 --> 0:14:15.640 It's an element, it's found on the periodic table, it 0:14:15.679 --> 0:14:19.040 existed when the Earth was formed, and it also is 0:14:19.120 --> 0:14:23.280 created when uranium decays, So uranium decays into an isotope 0:14:23.320 --> 0:14:26.560 of lead. So we've had lead for longer than human 0:14:26.640 --> 0:14:29.200 history by a lot. But we've also had it for 0:14:29.280 --> 0:14:31.360 thousands of years in our use. And one of the 0:14:31.400 --> 0:14:35.720 most prominent uses or use eras was really the Roman Empire. 0:14:36.400 --> 0:14:40.600 And this was the time of again great sort of innovation, 0:14:41.640 --> 0:14:45.680 advances of inventions, and the Romans had a lot of 0:14:45.800 --> 0:14:48.520 things they liked to do with lead. Lead has these 0:14:48.560 --> 0:14:52.680 miraculous qualities where it doesn't road, it doesn't really break down, 0:14:53.400 --> 0:14:58.240 It adds texture, it adds brighter color, it adds sweeter 0:14:58.440 --> 0:15:01.120 taste to almost everything. So the Romans used it not 0:15:01.160 --> 0:15:05.160 only for their aqueducts and their plumbing. Of course, the 0:15:05.160 --> 0:15:08.840 word plumbing comes from the word plume boom in lead. 0:15:09.800 --> 0:15:13.200 That is why we call lead PB on the periodic table. 0:15:13.280 --> 0:15:16.960 Plumbing effectively is named for lead. The Romans also used 0:15:16.960 --> 0:15:19.480 it for their cooking utensils. They used it in the 0:15:19.480 --> 0:15:22.920 powders on people's faces and makeup. They put it in 0:15:23.040 --> 0:15:25.880 food to make it taste better, and of course they 0:15:26.000 --> 0:15:29.200 put it in paints or any type of colorization to 0:15:29.280 --> 0:15:33.800 make the colors brighter. This was a sort of miraculous use. 0:15:33.880 --> 0:15:36.440 This was the miracle element. I call it the plastic 0:15:36.520 --> 0:15:39.200 of its era, right, like you could basically do anything 0:15:39.240 --> 0:15:42.760 with it. It was transformative. But people started to notice 0:15:42.800 --> 0:15:45.640 that people who used it a lot started to have 0:15:45.720 --> 0:15:48.920 these effects. And this is a very long running debate 0:15:49.160 --> 0:15:54.600 in history of whether lead caused or contributed to, or 0:15:54.840 --> 0:15:57.840 was a major factor in the fall of the Roman Empire. 0:15:58.200 --> 0:15:59.840 What do you think? What's your take? 0:16:00.360 --> 0:16:05.120 It's unmistakable that the rich people used it most, especially 0:16:05.160 --> 0:16:08.640 the emperors, and many of them are very well known 0:16:08.680 --> 0:16:11.680 to have gone crazy, like really crazy, like one of 0:16:11.720 --> 0:16:14.760 them appointed a horse as a console, or one would 0:16:14.840 --> 0:16:16.960 be like drooling and all of their you know, so 0:16:17.320 --> 0:16:19.720 these effects that we now know are caused by lead 0:16:19.720 --> 0:16:22.920 poisoning were seen back then. Of course, there were a 0:16:22.920 --> 0:16:26.600 lot of other things going out at the time, but yeah, 0:16:26.720 --> 0:16:30.520 it definitely contributed, is my opinion. Flash forward, you know, 0:16:30.640 --> 0:16:33.160 hundreds of years, and we see some of these same 0:16:33.280 --> 0:16:36.960 things repeat, especially in the nineteenth century here in America. 0:16:37.400 --> 0:16:42.640 Led you know, makes great pipes, it makes makeup brighter, 0:16:42.920 --> 0:16:46.720 it makes colors on walls and paint even brighter. So 0:16:47.280 --> 0:16:52.320 we start to basically repeat the same mistakes and start 0:16:52.360 --> 0:16:55.720 to see the same effects also, So we have this 0:16:55.840 --> 0:16:59.840 long history with this same element that what's interesting, I 0:16:59.840 --> 0:17:03.720 think is it started really with rich people who enjoyed 0:17:03.720 --> 0:17:06.280 the benefits of lead the most thousands of years ago, 0:17:06.520 --> 0:17:10.840 and over time it migrates to basically a poison that 0:17:11.560 --> 0:17:14.879 is the domain and inflicted upon the lower classes and 0:17:15.000 --> 0:17:17.160 people who are less seen in the shadows. 0:17:18.320 --> 0:17:20.520 Let's take a quick break and when we get back, 0:17:20.640 --> 0:17:41.760 there's still so much to discuss. Welcome back everyone. I've 0:17:41.800 --> 0:17:45.160 been chatting with Daniel Stone about his book American Poison, 0:17:45.520 --> 0:17:49.440 A Deadly Invention and the Woman who Battled for environmental justice. 0:17:49.680 --> 0:17:53.119 Let's get back into things. We all know today that 0:17:53.200 --> 0:17:56.119 lead is a poison It is a toxin. What are 0:17:56.359 --> 0:17:59.040 some of the health effects that it's associated with or 0:17:59.080 --> 0:18:01.919 some of the symptom of lead poisoning. 0:18:02.040 --> 0:18:05.840 Mostly neurological breakdown. Lead has this effect on cells where 0:18:05.840 --> 0:18:10.320 it causes cells to basically atrophy prematurely. There's a lot 0:18:10.359 --> 0:18:15.119 of reasons why, biological reasons, but it's been poisonous to 0:18:15.200 --> 0:18:19.440 every living organism for this reason. It affects cellular growth. 0:18:20.440 --> 0:18:23.560 It chiefly affects the brain, and that's why people start to, 0:18:23.880 --> 0:18:26.760 you know, kind of slur their words or struggle to 0:18:26.840 --> 0:18:30.639 keep thoughts straight. In some cases, even mild poisoning, we 0:18:30.680 --> 0:18:35.720 see lack of impulse control or struggle to keep emotions, 0:18:35.800 --> 0:18:38.760 you know, together, like all of these effects from very 0:18:38.760 --> 0:18:41.959 slight exposure up to lead poisoning, which of course can 0:18:42.040 --> 0:18:42.359 kill you. 0:18:43.160 --> 0:18:47.560 Prior to the introduction of tetra ethyl leaded gasoline, which 0:18:47.600 --> 0:18:51.840 we'll get to, and Alice Hamilton's recognition starting to dawn 0:18:51.920 --> 0:18:55.679 on her these connections between lead and health. What was 0:18:56.080 --> 0:18:59.720 widely known or what was known in medical circles about 0:18:59.720 --> 0:19:04.000 the time toxicity of lead was it considered that might 0:19:04.040 --> 0:19:07.199 be a little bit bad or no amount is safe? 0:19:07.800 --> 0:19:11.360 Great question. So lead was a well known poison even 0:19:11.400 --> 0:19:14.800 in those days, but there was debate over how much 0:19:15.119 --> 0:19:18.360 did it take to poison someone. And it was kind 0:19:18.359 --> 0:19:21.160 of like black or white. It was like you either 0:19:21.280 --> 0:19:25.040 didn't have lead poisoning or you did. Binary and so 0:19:25.960 --> 0:19:27.840 there was some number and there was a lot of 0:19:27.880 --> 0:19:29.680 debate over what the number was. It was like, at 0:19:29.680 --> 0:19:33.160 what point does too much lead make you go crazy? 0:19:33.800 --> 0:19:37.159 And as long as you stay under that number, it's fine, 0:19:37.520 --> 0:19:40.639 you know, totally fine. And that was like the prevailing 0:19:40.760 --> 0:19:43.560 scientific opinion in those days. A lot of debate over 0:19:43.640 --> 0:19:47.320 what was that threshold. The lead industry argued the threshold 0:19:47.400 --> 0:19:51.200 was pretty high. Other people argued the threshold was pretty low. 0:19:52.040 --> 0:19:56.240 Today we know that the threshold is zero. There is 0:19:56.400 --> 0:20:00.960 no amount of lead that is safe. Tiny amounts have 0:20:01.080 --> 0:20:02.240 some effect on. 0:20:02.280 --> 0:20:06.600 Us, right, And so now turning to the other main 0:20:06.720 --> 0:20:10.400 character of the story, which is Thomas Midgley Junior. He 0:20:10.640 --> 0:20:15.199 introduced the world to tetra ethyl leaded gasoline. When he 0:20:15.480 --> 0:20:19.480 developed this idea or this this product. How much was 0:20:19.560 --> 0:20:21.920 lead used in the US, Like just trying to get 0:20:21.920 --> 0:20:24.920 a picture of like how much did the introduction of 0:20:25.000 --> 0:20:28.640 leaded gasoline change how much lead was used. 0:20:29.480 --> 0:20:32.080 We used a lot of lead, certainly not to the 0:20:32.119 --> 0:20:35.960 degree that we used later much more. But yeah, plumbing 0:20:36.359 --> 0:20:39.680 and paint were the main two uses in the economy. 0:20:39.920 --> 0:20:42.640 But this was also the time of the Industrial Revolution, 0:20:42.760 --> 0:20:47.480 where we had a lot of new chemical uses, you know, 0:20:47.520 --> 0:20:49.360 a lot of new elements that were put into use 0:20:49.400 --> 0:20:52.880 in a new way to spark you know, chemical reactions 0:20:53.000 --> 0:20:56.160 or to expedite the way things were made. So lead 0:20:56.240 --> 0:20:58.760 was not like the dominant thing we used in those days. 0:20:58.840 --> 0:21:01.960 It was kind of in the background, one element of many. 0:21:03.160 --> 0:21:05.960 I often think of it like like we use a 0:21:06.000 --> 0:21:11.760 lot of things today to grow our food and fertilizers, insecticides, herbicides. 0:21:12.040 --> 0:21:14.199 Lead was one of those types of things that we 0:21:14.320 --> 0:21:18.560 used in our industrial machine. It wasn't the worst, it 0:21:18.640 --> 0:21:21.400 wasn't the best. It just was there, and that's why 0:21:21.480 --> 0:21:25.480 it didn't really pop out immediately to Thomas Midgley as 0:21:25.520 --> 0:21:28.800 possible in gasoline. He had to work toward it and 0:21:29.320 --> 0:21:29.960 discover it. 0:21:30.800 --> 0:21:34.840 And what is the difference between organic lead and tetra 0:21:34.880 --> 0:21:37.159 ethyl lead? Is there any difference in the health effects 0:21:37.280 --> 0:21:39.760 or like the way that it seeps into the environment, Yeah, 0:21:39.800 --> 0:21:41.159 tell me about lead. 0:21:41.720 --> 0:21:46.600 Yeah, so lead has two main states, organic and inorganic. 0:21:46.840 --> 0:21:50.320 Tetra ethyl. Lead comes from an organic state, but the 0:21:50.440 --> 0:21:54.520 tetra ethyl part is four ethyl compounds that are attached 0:21:54.560 --> 0:21:57.280 on the sides, and so those are you know, ethyl 0:21:57.800 --> 0:22:00.760 is its own kind of compound when you attach it 0:22:00.760 --> 0:22:03.639 to lead. What it basically does is it allows lead 0:22:03.720 --> 0:22:07.920 to dissolve in a gallon of gasoline. So you think 0:22:07.960 --> 0:22:11.240 of sort of mixing, maybe like apple juice and orange juice. 0:22:11.280 --> 0:22:14.080 You want them to mix evenly together, but if one 0:22:14.119 --> 0:22:17.200 of them can't really mix, it'll just settle to the bottom. Right, 0:22:17.359 --> 0:22:22.360 So the tetra ethyl allows the lead to dissolve, and 0:22:22.359 --> 0:22:26.760 that was like the main innovation of it that used lead. 0:22:26.800 --> 0:22:29.720 I mean, lead is still lead, but it was evenly 0:22:29.760 --> 0:22:33.480 distributed and evenly burned in a car's engine. 0:22:33.920 --> 0:22:37.720 Okay, So now let's talk about that development, like how 0:22:37.720 --> 0:22:42.600 did Midgley come up upon this idea? And you know 0:22:42.680 --> 0:22:46.960 what problem ultimately was he looking to solve with tetrathyl 0:22:47.119 --> 0:22:48.160 leaded gasoline. 0:22:48.840 --> 0:22:54.680 Cars in those days were the biggest innovation in maybe 0:22:54.840 --> 0:22:58.400 human history. They were so exciting. Cars had been invented 0:22:58.440 --> 0:23:00.720 in kind of like the eighteen seventies and eighties, but 0:23:00.720 --> 0:23:03.240 it wasn't until the eighteen nineties that people start to 0:23:03.280 --> 0:23:06.520 see them more on roads, and not until the early 0:23:06.560 --> 0:23:09.200 twentieth century where you know, you start to see your 0:23:09.200 --> 0:23:11.840 neighbor's flying cars and you could afford a car, and 0:23:11.880 --> 0:23:15.320 Henry Forward's assembly line cars are rolling off. But the 0:23:15.359 --> 0:23:19.760 problem cars had was basically a maximum amount of power 0:23:20.240 --> 0:23:23.320 that would come from the internal combustion engine. The engine 0:23:23.320 --> 0:23:28.480 would burn gasoline, but the engines would burn it inefficiently 0:23:28.840 --> 0:23:32.320 or incompletely. They wouldn't burn all of the gasoline, and 0:23:32.359 --> 0:23:34.399 so over time you'd get this sort of build up 0:23:34.480 --> 0:23:39.199 of residue and what they call premature combustion. And the 0:23:39.280 --> 0:23:41.679 problem that did was that, you know, the engine can 0:23:41.720 --> 0:23:44.160 only run so powerfully before it would kind of reach 0:23:44.160 --> 0:23:47.880 its maximum and kind of stall out. This was known 0:23:47.920 --> 0:23:51.359 as engine knock because when this happened, the engine would 0:23:51.359 --> 0:23:54.159 make this like loud clanging sound that would announce to 0:23:54.200 --> 0:23:56.760 everybody on the road you know that your car was 0:23:56.760 --> 0:23:59.800 having this problem. And again it was like a ceiling 0:24:01.040 --> 0:24:05.200 in the growth of car power, and so everyone wanted 0:24:05.200 --> 0:24:07.159 to figure out this problem of engine knock. How can 0:24:07.200 --> 0:24:09.480 we innovate our way past this or figure out how 0:24:09.480 --> 0:24:12.639 to make cars more powerful. And the answer was, we 0:24:12.680 --> 0:24:16.959 could make gasoline burn better. So how do you make 0:24:17.000 --> 0:24:21.200 it burn better? Well, the idea was gasoline has an 0:24:21.320 --> 0:24:26.000 quality called octane, and that basically refers to how hot 0:24:26.359 --> 0:24:29.359 it can burn. And in those days the octane was 0:24:29.440 --> 0:24:34.080 like in the sixties, low seventies, that was high octane. 0:24:34.160 --> 0:24:38.360 Today our lowest octane when you buy gas is eighty five, right, 0:24:38.400 --> 0:24:41.320 So it's like a big, big room for growth. And 0:24:41.359 --> 0:24:43.239 so the idea was to how do you raise the 0:24:43.280 --> 0:24:46.439 octane of gasoline to make it, you know, burn better? 0:24:47.440 --> 0:24:51.159 And the answer was, we add something to it. But 0:24:51.200 --> 0:24:53.480 what do we add to it? You know, what compound, 0:24:53.480 --> 0:24:56.080 what element, what chemical can we add to it that 0:24:56.160 --> 0:24:59.240 makes it burn better? And so this was what was 0:24:59.280 --> 0:25:02.040 really the goose for Thomas Midgley. He was a chemist 0:25:02.600 --> 0:25:06.200 and he wanted to be the one to solve engine knock. 0:25:06.920 --> 0:25:09.359 And so he goes to work in his lab and 0:25:09.400 --> 0:25:13.320 he tries all sorts of you know, anything that's lying around. 0:25:13.359 --> 0:25:17.000 He tries you know, iodine, he tries chlorine, he tries 0:25:17.080 --> 0:25:20.679 you know, pure hydrogen, anything he can, and some of 0:25:20.720 --> 0:25:23.120 them work better than others. He has this test engine 0:25:23.200 --> 0:25:25.600 that he feeds everything into and sees how they run. 0:25:26.040 --> 0:25:28.480 You know, when he puts these things in and he 0:25:28.560 --> 0:25:32.760 tries really smelly compounds, he tries really expensive ones. He 0:25:32.880 --> 0:25:37.119 tries two of them mixed together, and it's really a 0:25:37.119 --> 0:25:39.760 goose chase, that's how he describes it. And he's looking 0:25:39.760 --> 0:25:42.640 at the periodic table and trying to figure out what 0:25:42.720 --> 0:25:43.800