"Facing sceptical reporters at a press conference in October 1924, Thomas Midgley dramatically produced a container of tetraethyl lead - the additive in questio

"Facing sceptical reporters at a press conference in October 1924, Thomas Midgley dramatically produced a container of tetraethyl lead - the additive in question - and washed his hands in it. ""I'm not taking any chance whatever," Midgley declared. "Nor would I... doing that every day." "Midgley was - perhaps - being a little disingenuous. He had recently spent several months in Florida, recuperating from lead poisoning." (https://www.bbc.com/news/business-40593353 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-40593353) I believe after that press conference he spent several more months in Europe detoxing. High-concentration exposure was known to be dangerous ("On the Thursday of the week before Midgley's press conference, at a Standard Oil plant in New Jersey, a worker named Ernest Oelgert started hallucinating. By Friday, he was running around the laboratory, screaming in terror. On Saturday, with Oelgert dangerously unhinged, his sister called the police. He was taken to hospital and forcibly restrained. By Sunday, he was dead. Within the week, so were four of his colleagues - and 35 more were in hospital. Only 49 people worked there.") and quite a few people were concerned about long-term, low-level exposures.