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Thomas Midgley Jr. invented leaded gasoline and chlorofluorocarbons

nytimes.com

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Re: Thomas Midgley Jr. invented leaded gasoline and chlorofluorocarbons

#131

Post by prennert »

rob74 wrote: post #93
prennert wrote: post #45

This Cautionary Tales podcast episode talks about him [0]. Both were invented in the service of DuPont. CFC at least helped making refrigeration safer and helped getting it to the masses. Leaded gasoline on the other hand was always known as a bad idea. In both cases though, DuPont fought back hard to prevent bans of these solutions. They rather kill the planet than their profits. Suitably enough he killed himself wi…

Speaking of DuPont, they also were among the first to introduce PFAs with Teflon - although in this case I don't think anybody suspected what implications that may have at the time...

On a high level, this story looks similar to CFC: when environmental issues arise, deny and defend profits. [0]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bilott#Initial_actions_...

Re: Thomas Midgley Jr. invented leaded gasoline and chlorofluorocarbons

#132

Post by Arrath »

twarge wrote: post #73
prennert wrote: post #45

This Cautionary Tales podcast episode talks about him [0]. Both were invented in the service of DuPont. CFC at least helped making refrigeration safer and helped getting it to the masses. Leaded gasoline on the other hand was always known as a bad idea. In both cases though, DuPont fought back hard to prevent bans of these solutions. They rather kill the planet than their profits. Suitably enough he killed himself wi…

Propane is a shockingly better refrigerant. Sure, it's flammable, but is it really unsafe? It's widely used in commercial units.

Don't forget decades of advancements in manufacturing procedures, engineering, tighter tolerances, improved materials science, and so on that have happened to help ensure the propane remains in the coolant circuit.

Re: Thomas Midgley Jr. invented leaded gasoline and chlorofluorocarbons

#133

Post by JPws_Prntr_Fngr »

Weneedlead wrote: post #126
JPws_Prntr_Fngr wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't follow. #2 is on nicotine exposure, and #3 concluded lead exposure is bad. "Conclusion: Lead poison has a great effect on vision and eye health of the workers, its lead to decrease of vision result in development amblyopia, it also has influence on ocular media and causes severe allergic reaction Thus, all the workers in this field should wear the protection tools provided in the factory, and there is a criti…

Tobacco smoke contains heavy metals, smoking rises lead levels. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322790056_Blood_Lea... 11 out of the 76 short term exposed workers had myopia, while 10 out of 124 long term exposed workers had myopia, which is much less.

Uh huh. I think I'll let the Sudanese researchers run the lead ingestion trials on themselves first and wait it out.

Re: Thomas Midgley Jr. invented leaded gasoline and chlorofluorocarbons

#134

Post by Arrath »

somenameforme wrote: post #18
chuankl wrote: post #11

The absolute terrible thing about leaded gasoline is that they were already aware of several other additives (including ethanol, IIRC) that have the desired anti-knocking properties. But they went with tetraethyl lead anyway because it is cheaper and provided a few cents more profit per gallon. A cent was worth more back then than it does now, but still :-(

I would also emphasize a more social issue to this. There's also a tendency for society to discount the dangers of something when the impact is sporadically distributed or long-term. Beyond the endless corporate lobbying and sold out scientists/politicians working to convince everybody that leaded fuel was 100% safe, I think there was also probably a mindset of many in society that 'Well, if leaded fuel is so poisono…

> There's also a tendency for society to discount the dangers of something when the impact is sporadically distributed or long-term.

Doesn't US regulation still approach novel chemicals with a "Safe until proven otherwise" stance? Surely this doesn't help.

Re: Thomas Midgley Jr. invented leaded gasoline and chlorofluorocarbons

#135

Post by kergonath »

yesenadam wrote: post #125
kergonath wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I'm not sure how to respond to that comment, which I find profoundly shocking and depressing. I've read some HN comments before which for some reason suggest a large-scale nuclear "war" wouldn't be so bad, but..this one seems even much worse, for some reason. I don't get it. I don't get how anyone could believe or write that. Anything I could write seems so obvious. I can't think. I think I need a break from HN for a…

> I find profoundly shocking and depressing

Indeed, it is. There is nothing more depressing than what we are doing to ourselves and to our own world.

> I've read some HN comments before which for some reason suggest a large-scale nuclear "war" wouldn't be so bad

No mistake, it would be absolutely terrible, country- if not civilisation-ending. None of this is any good. It is just that nuclear weapons and our current way of life are on two opposite sides of a risk spectrum: nuclear apocalypse is a very improbable event with huge consequences; our industry is a fact of life that has been more or less silently killing indiscriminately, almost innocent because we don’t see its effects as huge, memorable events. A nuclear winter might kill hundreds of millions if it happens; we’ve already killed much more than that with non-nuclear means.

So yeah, nuclear weapons are terrible, and I completely disagree with the other poster who said everyone should have them. I just wish we would see the harm we do every day as clearly as the harm we could do in exceptional circumstances.

> You don't seem to have been downvoted in 5 hours.

I think the post has been downvoted. I don’t have all the detail but I think the score has fluctuated a bit. If it can be of comfort to you.

Re: Thomas Midgley Jr. invented leaded gasoline and chlorofluorocarbons

#136

Post by kergonath »

Ekaros wrote: post #76
kergonath wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If every country had nukes wold would be much more peaceful place. It does not work. Countries would still fight conventional wars, because not everything is worth escalating. Even in your example. They are being invaded and are at risk of losing their country (well, they were at some point anyway). Do you reckon they’d throw a nuke at the US and so be absolutely certain to lose everything they have rather than fig…

Question is would USA risk direct conflict with a country if they could actually suffer some actual losses of combatants on their own soil? They might, but I think it would substantially lower the risk. Same applies to most current conflicts. And about non traditional fights, maybe there would be less of those as big countries would be more careful about their actions. Also I believe that if every school kid had a gu…

> would USA risk direct conflict with a country if they could actually suffer some actual losses of combatants on their own soil?

That’s a very interesting question! So much of the US foreign policy is predicated on the fact that there will never, ever be a war on American soil. It would definitely change the risk dessinent and the political acceptability of aggressive foreign policy.

Re: Thomas Midgley Jr. invented leaded gasoline and chlorofluorocarbons

#137

Post by dang »

Weneedlead wrote: post #115
than3 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mods will deal with you for breaking their rules. You are not my problem to fix.

I don't think I broke any rules, and my comments are on topic. Anyway, why do you fight so hard? You would get cured too.

Single-purpose accounts aren't allowed on HN. We don't want flamewars either, which is what you've been creating and fueling in this thread.

I think it's weirdly interesting that you're advocating for lead as nutrient, but accounts that post this kind of thing usually overdo it, since they have a pre-existing agenda and are not using the site for curiosity. We may need lead, but we don't need that, so please stop.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Thomas Midgley Jr. invented leaded gasoline and chlorofluorocarbons

#138

Post by Weneedlead »

dang wrote: post #137
Weneedlead wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I broke any rules, and my comments are on topic. Anyway, why do you fight so hard? You would get cured too.

Single-purpose accounts aren't allowed on HN. We don't want flamewars either, which is what you've been creating and fueling in this thread. I think it's weirdly interesting that you're advocating for lead as nutrient, but accounts that post this kind of thing usually overdo it, since they have a pre-existing agenda and are not using the site for curiosity. We may need lead, but we don't need that, so please stop. ht…

I really mean it, though. It does seem to be the other way round than what's claimed, and I really don't know what to do with it.

Re: Thomas Midgley Jr. invented leaded gasoline and chlorofluorocarbons

#139

Post by eternityforest »

Weneedlead wrote: post #117
eternityforest wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's uncontroversial at all. People's health is better for lots of reasons unrelated to lead, so it's very hard to compare. We no longer die of pathogens and injuries as much, even COVID is not as bad as some historical plagues. There's new hazards that didn't exist then, but a some of them are exactly due to the body doing harmful things with surplus nutrition, that's what obesity is. Toxins activate t…

>any more than the baseline level Again. Can't you see it's a circular argument? How did you determine that it's the 'baseline'? >people are likely getting more lead than 100 years ago. People used to get much more. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03054...

"baseline" meaning "the minimal level of activation one gets without any currently-uncommon exogenous thing that activates it.".

There are lots of experiments where they give mice a gene for reduced function of something, or knock something out entirely and they actually live longer.

To me that shows that some functions might exist for increased performance or endurance, to a degree no longer needed in civilized society, at the cost of more disease risk, and we might not necessarily want everything firing on all cylinders.

Without further study, I don't see why we'd assume that activating proteins indicates it's a good thing.

That lead thing is from one specific study in Japan. They(Like most places) did not have a long life expectancy before modernization, and they mentioned they probably got it from white lead used by their mothers, which would not be a global universal thing.

Their life expectancy was also rather short back then in seems, probably for reasons unrelated to lead, but that still means it's close to impossible to say whether they had good nutrition or not, since even absolutely terrible diets might not have effects for a decade, unless there's enough total food for obesity to happen.

Re: Thomas Midgley Jr. invented leaded gasoline and chlorofluorocarbons

#140

Post by dang »

Weneedlead wrote: post #138
dang wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Single-purpose accounts aren't allowed on HN. We don't want flamewars either, which is what you've been creating and fueling in this thread. I think it's weirdly interesting that you're advocating for lead as nutrient, but accounts that post this kind of thing usually overdo it, since they have a pre-existing agenda and are not using the site for curiosity. We may need lead, but we don't need that, so please stop. ht…

I really mean it, though. It does seem to be the other way round than what's claimed, and I really don't know what to do with it.

I know you really mean it! but that doesn't change any of the above. In fact it makes it more important, since it's harder to stop posting like this when you really mean it.

It's difficult and frustrating to represent a minority view on the internet, especially one as rare as yours, which the vast majority of the audience are simply not going to understand or accept. What we often see is that contrarian/minority commenters compensate for this frustration by digging in and becoming sort of fixated on the point, intensifying their advocacy for the truth as they see it.

This can get you sucked into a loop where you keep turning up the volume and frequency of your posts in order to try to get a hearing, or to lash out at the majority, who often respond unfairly,—but all this only intensifies the resistance and outrage the majority comes back with. The way this dynamic ends is that we have to ban the account that's provoking the continued conflict—even if they're the one who is right (which sometimes, of course, a contrarian is). That sucks, but the only alternative would be flamewars everywhere, and that would suck worse.

The only thing I know that can help with this is accepting in one's heart that humans are nearly entirely wrong about nearly everything, and making peace with it. For this it can help to realize that it's probably as true of oneself as it is of anyone else. Also, people don't choose their views—for the most part we're conditioned by our backgrounds. Those don't move much, so it's hard for anyone to change their views, and it's certainly not going to happen in response to an internet commenter who appears fixated on a topic.

So it's not in your own interest to post like this, because it will actually entrench the others in their opposing view. If you allow yourself to keep upping the ante, you end up discrediting whatever truth you're trying to advocate. The only way to avoid this to deflate 90% if not 99% of the pressure you're putting on the topic—which I know is not easy, when you probably have many reasons to feel strongly about it.

Here are some past explanations I've made to other users in similar situations, in case any of it is helpful:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

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