Will the Sun Ever Set on Lead?

Associated Octel's fiftieth-anniversary catalogue affectionately quotes a letter the company received from a former technical services manager in 1982, when Britain's antilead campaign kicked off in earnest: "Many funerals have been arranged for lead in petrol--1926, 1943, 1954, 1970, etc.--as I can recall. The grave has been dug, the service arranged, the coffin prepared, the parson and mourners instructed, but the body just would not lie down in the coffin."

Though the catalogue was published in 1988, the sentimental hope that it's not over yet is secretly still held by Octel and Ethyl, and all the others who continue to push leaded gasoline. But the body of tetraethyl lead must be made to lie down in its coffin. The five-year phaseout of leaded gasoline favored by the World Bank in 1996 makes inarguable moral and business sense--two things that don't always go together, especially at the World Bank. The only ones arguing otherwise are Octel, Ethyl and the small coterie of self-interested researchers and narrowly trained toxicological technicians who've lived on the industry's tab for the last thirty years, since Robert Kehoe stepped down.

Many European nations have banned leaded gas for 2000. Progress has been made. But somehow Ethyl and Octel will be splitting Third World profits for years to come. If the science was ever in doubt (and it really wasn't), the facts are now incontrovertible. Leaded gasoline is dangerous. When safer alternatives are available, as they always have been, leaded gasoline's benefits are nil. It is not good for cars, and it prevents the use of modern emissions reduction equipment, like catalytic converters, which, owing to the greenhouse effect, the world needs more desperately now than ever. TEL's most crass (and main) historic selling point is no longer valid: It isn't even cheap.

There is at least one simple lesson to be drawn from the tetraethyl lead story. Industry cannot be trusted to regulate itself, as Clair Patterson--the man who dated the earth and single-handedly deflated ethylized science--once remarked. "It is not just a mistake for public health agencies to cooperate and collaborate with industries in investigating and deciding whether public health is endangered--it is a direct abrogation and violation of the duties and responsibilities of those public health organizations."

As for General Motors, Du Pont, Standard Oil, Ethyl, Associated Octel and rest of the lead cabal, it's conceivable they'll be hauled into court sooner or later, which is one reason these companies all take such an active interest in so-called tort reform legislation. You would too, if you had been a key actor in one of the most tortious episodes of twentieth-century industrial history. We can hope that Congress doesn't give them a free pass, but no matter what, it will be the citizenry that will pay any financial bills coming due. They've already paid with their health. Many of the effects of childhood lead exposure are irreversible.

These businesses should be shut down. And to make sure they don't forget their heinous experience, all these companies ought to open their archives to independent review, to assist in assembling the information that will help lay TEL down to eternal rest, to help show the world what went wrong when common sense was put on hold in the name of profit. In the face of all that is known today, the leaderships of foreign countries who continue to poison their people with TEL should be harangued to phase out lead from their gasoline--on a daily basis, by the United Nations as well as by governments, agencies and medical officials from around the world. Until then, the merchants of tetraethyl lead--or any other unnecessary additive known to be dangerous--are no better than criminals. They should be dealt with accordingly. Maybe in this new century they will be.

The author wishes to thank for their assistance and to acknowledge the research of Professor William Kovarik, Dr. Herbert Needleman, Professors David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz, Dr. Jerome Nriagu, Dr. Amy Kyle, Richard Merritt, Richard Bremner and Alan Loeb. He would also like to express particular gratitude to his research associate, Bill Krauss, his editor, Richard Lingeman, and his fact-checker, Michael Kunichika.

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