3 ms·

They didn't ban lead, they banned Tetraethyllead, an anti-knock compound used in gasoline. >... if we'd outlawed the specific molecule/compound that would have

• corrral 4y ago
  > I'm not sure what to make of that. The point of the ban was to keep lead out of the environment and people's blood levels which we did successfully. Lead isn't some sentient being looking to find it's way into our systems regardless of the actions of man. Yes—the "actions of man" might have been to create a different, also-useful-for-that-purpose lead compound, if they thought they could get away with it without someone putting a stop to it more or less immediately, just for the fact that it had lead in it. The trouble with many of these compounds is we can't point to a single easy-to-prove thing they have in common, like the presence of lead, as the cause of the harm—so you're left either testing for harm before the novel compound is included in products, or endless piecemeal bans with harm occurring at every step until, if we're fortunate, industries luck into compounds that are both the most economical and least-harmful of the remaining non-banned options.