Since 1921,
Ethyl Corporation has provided chemical manufacturing and supply solutions to enhance the performance of products across diverse industries. Our more than 95 years of experience in worldwide chemical manufacturing means we are ready with the solutions you need today...
Propaganda!
In 1925, Ethyl Gasoline Corporation was formed by General Motors and Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. The added ethyl produced a higher octane level, and produced a cleaner gasoline for the engine. That advancement in fuel efficiency was one more asset to the prosperous GM company. Among other products, Ethyl Corporation distributes tetraethyllead, an additive used to make leaded gasoline.
Most people don’t realize that we knew in the 1920s that leaded gasoline was extremely dangerous. It looks at the connection between leaded gasoline and crime rates in the United States, I thought it might be worth reviewing that history.
In the fall of 1924, five bodies from New Jersey were delivered to the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office. You might not expect those out-of-state corpses to cause the chief medical examiner to worry about the dirt blowing in Manhattan streets. But they did.
To understand why you need to know the story of those five dead men, or at least the story of their exposure to a then mysterious industrial poison.
The five men worked at the
Standard Oil Refinery in Bayway, New Jersey. All of them spent their days in what plant employees nicknamed “the loony gas building”, a tidy brick structure where workers seemed to sicken as they handled a new gasoline additive. The additive’s technical name was
tetraethyl lead or, in industrial shorthand, TEL. It was developed by researchers at General Motors as an anti-knock formula, with the assurance that it was entirely safe to handle.
They knew it was poison in the 1920's but some college nerds at Cal Tech Pasadena, discovered that lead pollution in bones that shouldn't have been there came from the AC system and was compromising the tests.
So they tested the air and fish from the sea as well as costal surface and deep water. As a result leaded gasoline was banned but the truth was never told that it caused insanity especially among inner city children exposed leaded air!
The automotive and fossil fuel industries are not our friends!
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