Trickle Down Episode 16: Earth's Most Destructive Organism Part 2 (Sample)

Feb 12, 2024

Dr. Robert Kehoe, chief medical consultant of the Ethyl Corporation, defended the safety of leaded gasoline and protected the industry from uncomfortable questions about its dangers. He influenced studies funded by industry and carried out by himself. The podcast explores the invention of leaded gasoline, health hazards, temporary bans, investigations into its effects, and the reintroduction of Tetra Ethel lead in gasoline, addressing lead poisoning and spread of misinformation.

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Introduction

00:00 • 4min

Investigations and Concerns about Leaded Gasoline's Health Effects

03:58 • 2min

The Reintroduction of Tetra Ethel Lead in Gasoline and its Impact on the Car Industry

06:25 • 4min

Leaded gasoline could not have become a universally-used commercial product without an enforcer. Someone who was dedicated to protecting the status quo position that leaded gasoline was safe to use and not a threat to the general public. And that enforcer was named Dr. Robert Kehoe. In 1925 he was appointed chief medical consultant of the Ethyl Corporation and remained in the post until his retirement in 1958. Though he continued to fight for leaded gasoline after that and he lived until the 1990s. Thomas Midgley, Jr. might be the one responsible for inventing leaded gasoline. But Robert Kehoe is the one responsible for protecting industry from uncomfortable questions about lead so that it could be used as long and widely as it was. Until the 1960s, the only studies of the use of tetraethyl lead were funded by the lead, gas, and car industries and carried out by Robert Kehoe. REFERENCES Brown, Oliver W. "Kettering Lab Hailed as Pioneer" Dayton Daily News (Dayton, Ohio), April 2, 1964. Markowitz, Gerald, and David Rosner. Lead wars: the politics of science and the fate of America's children. Vol. 24. Univ of California Press, 2014. Ross, Benjamin, and Steven Amter. The polluters: the making of our chemically altered environment. Oxford University Press, 2010. Keating, Peter. "The Secret History of the War on Cancer." Bulletin of the History of Medicine 82, no. 3 (2008): 757-758. Nriagu, Jerome O. "Clair Patterson and Robert Kehoe's paradigm of “show me the data” on environmental lead poisoning." Environmental research 78, no. 2 (1998): 71-78. Loeb, Alan P. "Birth of the Kettering doctrine: fordism, sloanism and the discovery of tetraethyl lead." Business and Economic History (1995): 72-87. Reilly, Lucas. "The Most Important Scientist You’ve Never Heard Of." Mental Floss 17 (2017). https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/94569/clair-patterson-scientist-who-determined-age-earth-and-then-saved-it Rosner, David, and Gerald E. Markowitz, eds. Dying for work: Workers' safety and health in twentieth-century America. Indiana University Press, 1987 McGrayne, Sharon Bertsch. “Prometheans in the Lab: Chemistry and the Making of the Modern World.” Sharon Bertsch McGrayne, 2001. Markowitz, Gerald, and David Rosner. “Deceit and denial: The deadly politics of industrial pollution.” Vol. 6. Univ of California Press, 2013. Cagin, Seth, and Philip Dray. "Between earth and sky: how CFCs changed our world and endangered the ozone layer." 1993. Kovarik, William. "Ethyl-leaded gasoline: how a classic occupational disease became an international public health disaster." International journal of occupational and environmental health 11, no. 4 (2005): 384-397. Kitman, Jamie Lincoln. "The secret history of lead." NATION-NEW YORK- 270, no. 11 (2000): 11-11. https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/secret-history-lead/ Patterson, Clair C. "Contaminated and natural lead environments of man." Archives of Environmental Health: An International Journal 11, no. 3 (1965): 344-360.