1921: Researchers find that adding a small amount of tetraethyl lead to gasoline eliminates engine knock. Generations of children and refinery workers will suffer from lead exposure.
Researcher Thomas Midgley was working for General Motors under the legendary Charles Kettering to develop a fuel additive that could silence the harmful “knock” in high-compression engines. Knocking occurs when some unburned fuel-air mixture explodes in the wrong place and time in an engine’s four-stroke cycle. It can cause loss of power, engine wear and pollution.
Midgley had already tried hundreds of compounds to no avail, tracking his process on a pegboard that allowed him to compare tests — a shining example of scientific progress through rigorous research. A chemist delivered a small amount of tetraethyl lead, or TEL, on the morning of Dec. 9.
When Midgley added the TEL to the fuel and started the one-cylinder test engine, the engine knock was nowhere to be heard.
GM and Standard Oil of New Jersey (forerunner of Exxon) formed the Ethyl Corporation shortly thereafter to produce TEL. The company’s name was carefully chosen to avoid the use of the word “lead,” but safeguards at the factory weren’t as effective.
Not long after it opened, workers at the Ethyl plant began suffering from lead poisoning. Two workers died from exposure to what the press called “loony gas.”
Midgley himself suffered from lead poisoning and took a vacation to “get a large supply of fresh air.” Ironically, Midgley would later develop Freon, a refrigerant that cooled indoor air for nearly half a century.
