Elementary mistakes
Thomas Midgley - a scientist who may have stood on the shoulders of giants, but managed to topple over and unknowingly wreak environmental havoc on the world
Thomas Midgley died in 1944, unaware that he may have been single-handedly responsible for widespread premature death, a world-wide crime wave and potentially, if things had gone badly, even the possible destruction of the planet.
Yet Thomas was a mild-mannered, well-meaning man.
In a benevolent engineering quest, the Pennsylvania scientist created tetraethyl lead — a compound that seemed destined to make cars more efficient by stopping the 'knocking' or 'pinking' effect suffered by early internal combustion engines. He even won a medal for it in 1923 — not exactly the Oscars, but the American Chemical Society awarded him their top prize for his work on 'Ethyl', as it was commonly known.
Sadly, and unknown to Thomas as well as the judges at the American Chemical Society, not only did Ethyl pollute and poison the atmosphere, it was at least partly responsible for a decades-long crime wave. That's what scientists now believe
Rampant crime only began abating as lead was removed from the environment — the recent decrease in crime rates in most European nations has been attributed, at least in part, to the slow removal of Mr Midgley’s invention from the atmosphere.
You can read more about the correlation between aggressive behaviour and lead in the atmosphere in this research study from Macquarie University, Sydney https://doi.org/10.1186/s12940-016-0122-3. But if you hang about, I'll do it for you.
Basically what the report says is that lead is a neurotoxin. Too much, and irreparable damage to the brain and central nervous system inexorably follows. Symptoms include aggressive behaviour, a propensity for violence, blindness, insomnia, kidney failure, hearing loss, palsies and convulsions. Death is the common outcome. Not being a good egg is even more common.
Although the fall in crime rates across much of the world is undoubtedly due to multiple, complex factors, the removal of lead has been key — or so the figures seem to suggest. Data collected from several nations shows the same trend — the sooner lead is removed from the environment, the more quickly crime begins to fall.
Lead being dispensed at the pump at a garage in the state of Illinois. The "We have Ethyl" sign at the garage may sound like a ransom demand. Almost right — it is, in fact (and quite literally), a death sentence
AFTER Thomas Midgely’s tetraethyl lead innovations, the mechanical engineer-turned-chemist moved onto his next deadly substance. He realised that fridges, like motor cars, could be made a lot more efficient with the addition of a reactant. So he began manufacturing chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) — and the ozone layer was never the same again.
J. R. McNeill, an environmental historian, remarked that Midgley had made "more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth's history". That impact was overwhelmingly to the detriment of the environment.
Thomas Midgley contracted polio at the age of 51. Having lost the use of his legs, he invented a harness to get himself out of bed. Sadly, he accidentally strangled himself with his contraption.
He died, believing that he’d improved the lot of mankind, blissfully unaware of the havoc he had wreaked on the planet.
Lead and violence — see for yourself
