4 ms·

I'm curious: Where do you put the line? For example, leaded gas improved car performance and arguably key to economic performance. But it was also incredibly ne

I'm curious: Where do you put the line? For example, leaded gas improved car performance and arguably key to economic performance. But it was also incredibly neurotoxic and damaging to society. Do you believe banning it was a bad idea because it resulted in a lot of people losing their jobs?

warkdarrior 11mo ago
> Do you believe banning [leaded gas] was a bad idea because it resulted in a lot of people losing their jobs? Who lost their job when leaded gas was banned? A web search did not give me any examples.
- fzeroracer 11mo ago
  The Ethyl Corporation primarily, they had to quickly diversify and adjust their business model as a result of the US phase out of tetraethyllead. They managed to stem some of the bleeding by simply just...selling the rest to other countries before they instituted their own restrictions on leaded gas (which tells you how ethically sound said business was) but this was a massive change at the time considering just about every vehicle used leaded gas even if it was a slow rollout.
mrguyorama 11mo ago
>For example, leaded gas improved car performance and arguably key to economic performance This is not true. We currently use ethanol to boost octane, and that additive was known at the time by the company that invented TEL, and they did not use it because they did not control the market for ethanol like they could control the market of a new and patented chemical. TEL was never actually necessary, and we poisoned ourselves for most of a decade to enrich a corporation. Large scale ethanol (as beer) production was one of humanity's earliest industries. Indeed, after we banned leaded gas, we tried using yet another stupid poison additive, MTBE, for a decade or so, and that continued to poison people because gas tanks leak and that chemical was toxic. Most of Asia actually still uses MTBE, to their detriment. Ethanol has never had this problem. Arguably, when Bush required all US gasoline to include 10-20% ethanol, he wasn't even trying to fix the poison problem of MTBE, he might have just been greenwashing and kicking more subsidies to corn growers, but it definitely solved the poisonous additive problem for octane boosters. Indeed, zero additives for octane are "required" at all. You can produce high octane gasoline just by choosing different refined components but this results in less gasoline produced per barrel of oil.

warkdarrior 11mo ago

> Do you believe banning [leaded gas] was a bad idea because it resulted in a lot of people losing their jobs? Who lost their job when leaded gas was banned? A web search did not give me any examples.

fzeroracer 11mo ago
The Ethyl Corporation primarily, they had to quickly diversify and adjust their business model as a result of the US phase out of tetraethyllead. They managed to stem some of the bleeding by simply just...selling the rest to other countries before they instituted their own restrictions on leaded gas (which tells you how ethically sound said business was) but this was a massive change at the time considering just about every vehicle used leaded gas even if it was a slow rollout.

mrguyorama 11mo ago

>For example, leaded gas improved car performance and arguably key to economic performance This is not true. We currently use ethanol to boost octane, and that additive was known at the time by the company that invented TEL, and they did not use it because they did not control the market for ethanol like they could control the market of a new and patented chemical. TEL was never actually necessary, and we poisoned ourselves for most of a decade to enrich a corporation. Large scale ethanol (as beer) production was one of humanity's earliest industries. Indeed, after we banned leaded gas, we tried using yet another stupid poison additive, MTBE, for a decade or so, and that continued to poison people because gas tanks leak and that chemical was toxic. Most of Asia actually still uses MTBE, to their detriment. Ethanol has never had this problem. Arguably, when Bush required all US gasoline to include 10-20% ethanol, he wasn't even trying to fix the poison problem of MTBE, he might have just been greenwashing and kicking more subsidies to corn growers, but it definitely solved the poisonous additive problem for octane boosters. Indeed, zero additives for octane are "required" at all. You can produce high octane gasoline just by choosing different refined components but this results in less gasoline produced per barrel of oil.