> Cynics might point out that any old farmer could distill ethyl alcohol from grain. It couldn't be patented, or its distribution profitably controlled. Tetraethyl lead could.

Were they cynics, though? As the article itself points out, the dangers of tetraethyl lead were already well know. And then there is this:

> And, as Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner point out, "For the next four decades, all studies of the use of tetraethyl lead were conducted by laboratories and scientists funded by the Ethyl Corporation and General Motors".

It doesn't take a cynic to see what was going on here.

> How did the US get this so wrong for so long? [..] For the next four decades, all studies of the use of tetraethyl lead were conducted by laboratories and scientists funded by the Ethyl Corporation and General Motors

The BBC is British - what about the UK? The rest of Europe? China? Japan? Russia? Australia? Did the entire rest of the world also use leaded petrol? And stopped using it at the same time as the US?

The 21st century version of this will be "Why did we use petrol for so long?"

The USSR banned TEL in cities in the 50s

Same guy invented CFCs. What a **!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0m89fqk?partner=uk.co.bbc...

Cautionary Tales: The Inventor who almost ended the world. BBC Sounds Podcasts

Edit: add title Edit: typo

I worked as an Engine Machinist for a time, and I was told that lead in the fuel aided in sealing the valves, kept valves cooler by helping seal the valve, possibly acting as an impact damper, prevented valves from sticking to the seat and slowed corrosion. When lead was removed from fuel, common practice is to use a valve seat insert made from a different material, usually a high nickel alloy.

Lead fuel was during a time when the cylinder heads were mostly cast-iron, and the valve seat was cut directly into the head. Cast iron is an interesting material, it's reasonably durable, but it corrodes/rusts very easily, especially when exposed to moisture. Gasoline and ethanol both have water as combustion byproducts, so when the engine is off and cools, some of that moisture condenses inside the engine.

Running straight ethanol in an engine without corrosion resistant materials causes much more wear over time because it tends to strip the protective/lubricative oil barriers away, causing iron to corrode when the engine isn't running. Modern engines are aluminum heads with valve seat inserts, stainless steel valves, better piston ring materials (high chromium I think? these were cast iron in the past).

Ethanol has a significant detergent/cleaning effect, even when at 5-10% concentration in gasoline. The valve stems also get some of their lubrication from the fuel, and gasoline is basically a thin oil, and provides protection to mechanical components, better yet with additives. Ethanol is also a difficult fuel in a cold start situation and requires good compression and a strong ignition system to kick it off.

I suspect the whole reason to want to keep lead was motivated by the bean counters involved. They saw a cost savings with lead in the fuel. Cheaper materials and no tooling changes. This means more profits.

we still do for light aviation

We still do for piston aircraft, thanks to intense lobbying by the aviation piston engine industry.

There's even a 100LL alternative that has sailed through most tests the FAA requires but the FAA has been stonewalling them for something like a decade. The FAA is full of paper-pushing corrupt beaurocrats who are firmly in the pocket of industry, as demonstrated by the thousands of victims of Boeing crashes from the idiocy of the MAX program (wherein Boeing did not want to spend the money to redesign an aircraft for bigger passenger and cargo loads, so they just stretched the plane, which put the Cg out of whack, which meant they needed to have a computer help fly the plane...and then skimped on redundancy.)

We could have had incredibly clean cities 30 years ago, if the UK government hadn't effectively killed off LPG in favour of "scrappage schemes" to get people to buy "cleaner greener diesel" cars.

Until about the early 2000s you could get a grant to cover the cost of converting your petrol car to run on propane. There's masses of it that has to be burnt because it's a waste product from cracking heavier fractions to make plastics feedstocks, and it burns producing only carbon dioxide and water - no HC, no CO, no particulates.

They run warehouse forklifts on it, because unlike diesel or petrol you don't die if you breathe the exhaust fumes.

But, there was more profit to be had in buying everyone's cars for a couple of hundred quid and "scrapping" them - in reality, even 30 years later there are still millions lying in fields that haven't been touched - and then selling people very expensive finance packages so they can buy a diesel car instead.

So now we have stinky diesels everywhere and everyone is in debt. Working as intended.

we are still using leaded gas

it's been spraying down from prop plane exhaust and engines flying overhead

anyone living around airports is being poisoned

extra TWENTY-FIVE YEARS NOW since cars (as long as the TSA has existed)

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/leaded-gas-wa...

  In 2023, 69.8 million litres of avgas were sold in Australia, releasing 39 tonnes of lead into the environment, predominantly around airports.

  The LEAD Group proposes the earliest possible date, certainly well before 2030, for leaded AvGas phaseout in Australia and looks to Europe for the mechanism of phasing it out.

  The lead additive for leaded fuel is called tetraethyllead (TEL).

  Leaded AvGas has a phaseout date of 2025 in the European Union because TEL has a 2025 sunset date in European Union countries.

Like many other aspects of how cars took over our cities, I'd argue the reason we used lead so long is because the conveniences of people inside a vehicle have long been collectively judged to be more important than the lives of people outside the vehicle.

It’s worth noting here that premature deaths were routine back when these decisions were made, in a way that we would find almost unimaginable.

While smallpox was no longer a major threat, influenza, polio, whooping cough and a bunch of other infectious diseases killed kids in huge numbers. People died from infections from routine cuts. Millions of young men (mostly) had been thrown in the meat grinder of WWI.

Life was cheaper then.