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In 1924 the inventor of the lead additive for gasoline, Thomas Midgley Jr., poured the additive over his hands and inhaled its vapors for a minute, as a demonstration at a press conference. He knew it was poisonous though.

Seems like such demonstrations, even just describing it, were de riguer in the wild west era of industrial chemical innovation.

Fun fact, Thomas Midgley Jr. also invented CFCs.

Went to check if he ever had any erm, "effects", but this is even wilder:

> "In 1940, at the age of 51, Midgley contracted polio and was left severely disabled. He devised an elaborate system of ropes and pulleys to lift himself out of bed. On November 2, 1944, at the age of 55, he was found dead at his home in Worthington, Ohio. He had been killed by his own device after he became entangled in it and died of strangulation"

Yes his death was extremely fitting.

He did get lead poisoning at least twice according to wikipedia, before and after the demonstration, requiring vacations to recuperate.

Don't tell me he took copper supplements on his holidays?

https://youtu.be/IV3dnLzthDA?si=hgG67vKmBBLgKgeg

This youtube channel does a good job of explaining his inventions and just how bad for society they were.

it's not how that works. you need to look at the counterfactuals too.

TEL decreased knocking, which decreased incomplete combustion, which decreased pollution a lot.

lead pollution from gasoline was about 30% of all lead pollution.

it's great that people recognized how harmful lead pollution is and coordinated action was taken.

for CFCs it allowed the development of fridges that use non-hazardous working fluid. previous ones used propane for example, folks kept their fridges on the porch because there were some that exploded.

from this article/essay (I'm not endorsing the main message, but the need for nuance and cost-benefit analysis is correct IMHO)

https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2023/11/technological-sta...

Surely the counterfactual isn’t “what if we did nothing to reduce knocking”, but rather “what if we used any of the other substances which were known to reduce knocking and known to be safer, such as ethanol”?

Yes, and also "if we cared more about proving health safety", and unfortunately it seems - looking at aviation where TEL is just getting phased out - mostly we don't care enough.

R290 (highly pure propane) is still used pretty widely as a refrigerant with relatively low environmental impact.

The worse is, ethanol also has the same effect on gasoline and engines, however since GM needed something they can patent and control and exploit, they invented TEL and pushed it aggressively [0].

> So in February 1923, a filling station sold the first tank of leaded gasoline. Midgley wasn’t there: he was in bed with severe lead poisoning... [0]

This guy is an embodiment of quick-acting karma, and he didn't listen.

[0]: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/leaded-gas-poison-...

If I recall correctly, ethanol needed to be added at around a 10% level to prevent engine knocking. At its peak, lead was present at around 1.1 grams per gallon, so about 0.1%.

Not intended to excuse them. The amount of additive required was why leaded gas was cheaper than using ethanol. And as a reason, three generations grew up with lead poisoning.

Pretty sure there are still people using illegally using this crap in road vehicles I think.

I think you can still buy TEL as an additive in the US for older/smaller engines?

Edit/Answer: No. You get lead substitutes instead [0].

[0]: https://www.walmart.com/search?q=Lead+substitute

Another listener of Tim Harford's Cautionary Tales? If not, give it a listen! https://timharford.com/2022/11/cautionary-tales-the-inventor... The story of the Radium Girls tell a similar tale. Lick your Radium loaded brush to sharpen the tip, totally fine. Then the company denies all responsibility, and actively oppose concerned workers that start losing teeth, limbs and eventually their lives.

> Hey all, use this stuff, but you probably wouldn't want to drink it while you have lunch, right?

I don't know about that standard. There's a lot of things that are safe to work with that I wouldn't want to make part of lunch.

When I was at school in the 70s, if we got something on our hands in the science labs we'd wash it off with acetone or benzene (but were never advised to drink them)

And I still remember the chemistry teacher rolling beads of mercury round his palm to show us how mobile it was.

Acetone appears to be pretty high on the effective-divided-by-unsafe spectrum.

Yeah acetone is innocuous (at reasonable doses) and even present (and produced) naturally in our body.

I remember my science teacher telling us they used to use mercury in the class and he'd wonder if any of his old students were walking around cuckoo because of it.

if I recall TCE (is tricholoroethylene the same as 111-trichloroethane?) has significant links to Parkinsons and is classed as a known carcinogen over here in the UK

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/cleaning-chemical-...

No it's not the same as trichloroethylene.

Trichloroethylene is [Cl-C-Cl]=[Cl-C-H]

whereas 1,1,1-trichloroethane is [Cl-C-Cl -Cl]-[H-C-H -H]

Trichloroethylene is really evil.

Whereas 1,1,1-trichloroethane much less.

I see clear pattern. Some guys now tell you: self driving is around a corner, the cars are safe. We know how it ended with chemicals from 30 years ago. DDT is a good example of it both for Western world as well for soviet union. 30 years from now we will shake the heads thinking about 2 ton vehicles with camera trying navigate by themselves. Looks like that it’s in the human nature to believe things that are too good to be true.

Delayed effects are a bit different.

DDT as used is safe for humans though.

it's estimated that DDT saved 500 million lives. so you know, it's not black and white.

and FSD works, just not efficient if the safety parameter is set to high, because "suddenly" human drivers will start to bully it

It's not so much about "as used", but how it was produced by Montrose Corp and dumped straight down the municipal sewer by the ton, decades later leaving a signature in every marine animal off southern California and sometimes much farther away.

Self-driving is very easy to evaluate. We humans are potentially very good drivers, and in practice we all can say if someone is driving safely or not.

Chemical and biological interactions are very difficult to evaluate and predict, so I don't see the parallels here.

One is a very hard research field, while the other requires complex hardware, but it is readily applicable if/when it works.

Part of self driving is dealing with those human drivers who are terrible drivers though.

This is what makes the whole thing so hard. If we could have dedicated roads for self driving cars it would be easy peasy. No need to interpret road markings, signs, other vehicles and their intentions. Because it would all be communicated digitally over radio. Steering a car is total peanuts for a computer.

It's the unexpected stuff that makes it hard. Like that Uber car that killed that lady that crossed the road with her bike in the dark at a totally unexpected spot. A human is better at those things because they're caused by other humans who aren't logical.

But such matters are really hard to test and evaluate for precisely because they are unexpected.

All you say is true.

Even then, that's many orders of magnitude easier than predicting all possible chemical interactions of a given compound.

Predicting the actions of humans is easier than determining chemical interactions of a given compound?

Yes, but only because in the general case, the actions are very limited by the controls of a car.

Steering wheel, two pedals, that's only three axes of possible inputs.

> Self-driving is very easy to evaluate.

I disagree. We can say that someone is driving safely in one given moment. A drunk driver could drive quite safely through a main road while we watch them, and then turn around a corner and run over someone the moment they leave our sight. We can only extrapolate the "goodness" of a driver by expanding the time we spend observing their driving. 2-3 hours of evaluation will be quite solid. It would be even more solid if we are inside the car with the driver, and if we have received training about how to evaluate a driver. And the result would be even more reliable if the evaluator is financially independent from the driver. And for safety, the car should have controls that allow the examinator to take over if needed.

So yeah, I am describing a driving test. As far as I know we don't have those for self-driving cars. We should.

They should be way more thorough than than the ones we give to a human, because machines lack the shared context that humans have with each other. Tests like driving offroad, driving while there's tiny (fake) animals around, behavior in a (staged) accident, etc. Things that we know a human will have enough context to deal with, but for a machine it's not a given.

One advantage is that these tests could be done in parallel. You can load the same AI in 50 identical vehicles and have 50 examinators run tests on it at the same time.

>> We can only extrapolate the "goodness" of a driver by expanding the time we spend observing their driving. 2-3 hours of evaluation will be quite solid.

Millions of miles driven with extensive telemetry for every instant in time and you do not think it amounts to a meaningful level of observation?

Personally, I'd be more comfortable when get to trillions that cover all aspects of the globe in all seasons 24 hours per day over 365 days per year for perhaps a decade. Edge cases are likely insane everywhere, we already know that. Are my estimates overkill? Perhaps. But it's what I'd like.

Not if my son has to share a road with them, no.

Sure, we're shaking our head about DDT, but we're still very much relying on DDT's less obviously harmful successors. I hope it won't be the same with self-driving cars. Where there's a will, there's a way, and technology does advance. And at some point, the only way to improve things further will be to remove manually driven cars from the streets.

I, too, am skeptical that wide-scale adoption of autonomous vehicles will be an overall good for humanity. I'm afraid it's going to make us humans even more dependent on hyper-complex technology, hence more vulnerable to issues like over-concentration of capital and break-downs of the global supply chain system. That it will atrophy some of our collective native capabilities (for example, the skill to assess risk and take action based on our innate grasp of physics of motion and psychology of others). We would in effect be outsourcing our physical safety to large corporations. Even if more safe, comfortable and efficient, I don't think that's a good idea.

poor analogy

    > it's wild that people
    > would say things like that
    > back then.

I think it's "wild" that you're so confidently clinging to the narrative that there was a causal link between this chemical and your dad's cancer.

Sure, it's possible, but clearly decades of data since then failing to move it away from the "probably a carcinogenic" column supports the notion that it's more harmless than not.

The list of IARC group 2A includes bitumen (widely used in roofing), red meat, drinks above 65°C (150°F), being a barber, and working night shifts.

I don't know why your reply is being hidden. it is completely fair to say most people drawing such links are likely mistaken.

I'm not confidently clinging, just saying there's a probable causality link.

My father has several brothers and sisters, none got Parkinson's but none worked with herbicides. An acquaintance that was also an agricultural engineer, colleague of my father, also got Parkinson's. There were lots of people in the town around those chemicals but noone kept track. They're almost all gone by now, but old age is also a factor. On the other hand it's almost certain not all got Parkinson's so funk knows. Again I didn't verify and I'm not in the mood to verify, although it would be possible since it's a small town. Go round every house and ask if their deceased relative had Parkinson's. But to what purpose?

You too need to read my comment again. See my reply to gp comment.

You seem to have reading comprehension issues. I nowhere said that I thought there was a causal link. I cited well-known medical organizations that said it was probable. I in no way put my own feelings into that statement. You were reading things that weren't there and then making incorrect inferences. I'm certainly not clinging to anything. But I do still think it's wild to say that it's perfectly fine to drink 111-trichloroethane. If you think it's not wild to say this, perhaps we can meet up, I'll pour 111-trichloroethane into a cup, and you can drink it in front of me. Me, I'll continue to say it's wild to say it's OK to drink the stuff.

> You seem to have reading comprehension issues.

You seem to have a particular obsession with drawing equivalences between the safety ratings of industrial chemicals and their ingestion.

Of course I wouldn't drink 111-trichloroethane, I wouldn't drink bitumen either.

Neither is intended for human consumption, so these safety ratings need to be considered in the context of their intended uses.

The CDC source you cited notes that it was phased out due to damage to the ozone layer, which is orthogonal to any human safety concerns.