Each turned out to be dangerous on an almost unimaginable scale

March 19, 2023 5:16 PM

"A double delight is dichlorodifluoromethane, with its thirteen consonants and ten vowels." Steven Johnson explores two inventions of Thomas Midgley Jr., freon and leaded gas, each lauded at its time, and each subsequently proven to be disasters. (SLNYT) (previously)
posted by doctornemo (26 comments total)

Oh, Midgley. What a guy he was.

Pretty sure if you could arrange for me to end up in a room with him, Stalin, Hitler, and a gun with three bullets, I'd shoot Midgley twice and then flip a coin.
posted by Kadin2048 at 5:26 PM on March 19, 2023 [7 favorites]

https://web.archive.org/web/20230315155642/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/15/magazine/cfcs-inventor.html

When you're inventing heat transfer fluids, it's a pretty far reach to be wondering if it will create a hole in the ozone layer over the Antarctic 50 years later. As it happens we found it and stopped it before it did too much harm. That's a success story.

Now lead on the other hand, its toxicity was well-known.
posted by hypnogogue at 6:19 PM on March 19, 2023 [7 favorites]

It was published pretty irregularly, but I’m starting to worry that with all the fuckery at the old Gawker blogs that Jamie Kitman’s well-researched and written series on leaded gas isn’t going to get finished.
posted by hwyengr at 6:20 PM on March 19, 2023 [3 favorites]

If you feel like there's not enough lead-based depression in your life I can "recommend": DECEIT AND DENIAL. THE DEADLY POLITICS OF INDUSTRIAL POLLUTION. By Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner.

I kept it when I downsized my library, but it's a hard read in bad times.
posted by krisjohn at 7:12 PM on March 19, 2023 [4 favorites]

Junior was like
the drug lord for Detroit.
posted by clavdivs at 7:13 PM on March 19, 2023 [2 favorites]

In 1940, at the age of 51, Midgley contracted polio, which left him severely disabled. He devised an elaborate system of ropes and pulleys to lift himself out of bed. In 1944, he was found entangled in the device and died of strangulation.

Well, that's certainly a memorable way to go.
posted by Saxon Kane at 8:05 PM on March 19, 2023 [2 favorites]

a bit more from johnson here, and radiolab's heavy metal (transcript)[1,2] delves into clair patterson's role[3] discovering lead contamination's extent -- and the earth's age :P
posted by kliuless at 8:08 PM on March 19, 2023 [2 favorites]

Whenever Midgely comes up, it feels like General Motors itself gets a pass.
posted by smelendez at 12:37 AM on March 20, 2023 [2 favorites]

This is why we always should remind ourselves what and who was behind the intent. But of course Midgley and his role must not be forgotten, which is pretty much what happened to Walter Dejaco, the designer, architect and master builder of Auschwitz death machine.
posted by hat_eater at 3:22 AM on March 20, 2023

Now lead on the other hand, its toxicity was well-known.

I'm not sure what's worse: that it's toxicity was well-known and the Midgely used it anyway, or that once the health and environmental effects of lead in gas were clear it still took some fifty years to finally get it out of gas.
posted by entropone at 4:50 AM on March 20, 2023 [2 favorites]

I wish Midgely had lived longer if only to have to deal with all the harm he caused.

On the other hand, who knows what other damaging chemicals he would have come up with so maybe humanity dodged a bullet.
posted by tommasz at 5:55 AM on March 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

Back in the 70s and 80s we used to use Freon TF (1,1,2-Trichlorotrifluoroethane, CFC-113) to clean tape heads.
posted by mikelieman at 6:21 AM on March 20, 2023 [2 favorites]

it feels like General Motors itself gets a pass.

It was really more of DuPont's doing. GM ran the research labs, but the duPont family pulled all of the strings.
posted by hwyengr at 7:04 AM on March 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

Paywall free link for the NYT article
posted by signsofrain at 7:24 AM on March 20, 2023 [2 favorites]

Ethyl Corporation still exists and is still making Tetraethyl Lead. They still refuse to admit that this is a problem.

And the story of Clair Patterson and his struggle to get the lead out is still woefully underknown. The fact that he was not a part of the committee that put the kibosh on leaded gasoline still pisses me off. The prevarications of the Industry in the Congressional hearings sound similar to Tobacco, Asbestos, Sugar and Oil execs. It is the same playbook.
posted by indianbadger1 at 8:14 AM on March 20, 2023 [3 favorites]

"A double delight is dichlorodifluoromethane, with its thirteen consonants and ten vowels."

pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism
posted by neuron at 9:26 AM on March 20, 2023

One thing I've never understood is, if a lead atom itself is not volatile, how does binding four ethyl groups to it make it volatile? It should make the molecule heavier.
posted by hypnogogue at 9:28 AM on March 20, 2023

The fight against lead is perennial. Lead-based perovskite solar cells are being researched. Some even suggest painting them onto surfaces. This will, of course, go badly.
posted by Headfullofair at 9:31 AM on March 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

Bit of a tangent, but I've wondered for a while if cumulative lead exposure from target shooting contributes to the kind of thought processes that rationalize private ownership of assault weapons.
posted by xedrik at 10:45 AM on March 20, 2023

@hypnogue: One thing I've never understood is, if a lead atom itself is not volatile, how does binding four ethyl groups to it make it volatile? It should make the molecule heavier.

Lead as a metal is a solid because of metallic bonding and it's boiling point is 1749 C.

Tetraethyl Lead has a melting point of -136 C and a BP of 84-85 C.

This is because melting and boiling is more about bond strength rather than Molecular Weights per se. The 4 ethyl groups attached to lead make it so that they cannot bond to each other.
posted by indianbadger1 at 11:14 AM on March 20, 2023 [2 favorites]

Ethyl Corporation still exists and is still making Tetraethyl Lead. They still refuse to admit that this is a problem.

Please pardon a rather "well actually" sort of comment, but I think Ethyl Corporation merely distribute TEL, and that the sole manufacturer of the chemical who trades in Western markets is the formerly UK-based Innospec.
posted by Chef Flamboyardee at 1:08 PM on March 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

When you're inventing heat transfer fluids, it's a pretty far reach to be wondering if it will create a hole in the ozone layer over the Antarctic 50 years later.

Lead and CFCs are pretty different sorts of cautionary tale, I think - the former is about greed steamrolling common sense, while the latter is about unforeseen and unforseeable impacts of choices that seem mostly harmless at the time. It’s just an incredible ghoulish coincidence that they pass through the same guy.
posted by atoxyl at 1:57 PM on March 20, 2023

Back in the 70s and 80s we used to use Freon TF (1,1,2-Trichlorotrifluoroethane, CFC-113) to clean tape heads.

Is that a euphemism for huffing it?
posted by atoxyl at 1:58 PM on March 20, 2023

Is that a euphemism for huffing it?

That's not the Not the Freon-TF head cleaner we used in the recording studio, but rather the Amyl nitrite "videocassette head cleaner" they used to sell at the S&M leather-shop.
posted by mikelieman at 3:01 PM on March 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

Bill Bryson in his excellent "A Brief History of Everything" nominates Midgley as an epicentre of disaster in the twentieth century. And every fresh investigation only re-affirms the awfulness.
posted by Barbara Spitzer at 3:50 PM on March 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

It’s just an incredible ghoulish coincidence that they pass through the same guy.

The fact that he died incredibly ironically, getting tangled up in his own invention, is what really cements the story.
posted by Merus at 6:12 PM on March 20, 2023