What Is Awesome

I think we all have a friend who is destined to become the wrong kind of professional. The ditzy party animal that wants to be a neurosurgeon, the kid always getting into trouble who wants to go to Harvard Law, you probably know the type. It’s rare, though, that you see someone who becomes an engineer who shouldn’t have.

With this in mind, I would like to tell you the story of perhaps one of the worst scientists to have ever lived. Thomas Midgley Jr. was an ivy league graduate (thanks, Cornell) and mechanical engineer who, despite his training in that specific area, chose to focus in commercial applications of chemistry.

Photo credit: chemcases.com

Five years after graduating from school in 1911, Midgley began work at Dayton Metal Laboratories (sometimes referred to as Dayton Research Laboratories), which was absorbed by General Motors and turned into one of its primary research facilities. Along with his mentor, he had discovered that a combination of lead and sodium when added to chloroethane like so…

4 NaPb + 4 CH₃CH₂Cl –> (CH₃CH₂)₄Pb + 4 NaCl + 3 Pb

…when added to standard gasoline would reduce a phenomenon known as engine knock which was apparently plaguing early motorists.

(My apologies for the chemistry.)

The additive is known as tetra-ethyl lead, sometimes referred to as TEL. It’s what years ago made gasoline “leaded.” Most people know that leaded fuel is bad, but not exactly to what degree. Midgley himeslf in 1923 had to stop all work in his lab and spend some time in Miami for some R&R due to severe lung issues associated with the dangers of working with lead. FYI, here are the effects of lead poisoning according to Wikipedia:

• Excess lethargy, abdominal pain, ^[11] headache.
• Gastrointestinal problems, such as constipation, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, poor appetite, or weight loss, which are common in acute poisoning.
• Neuropathy, such as muscle pain, weakness, tremors, twitches, spasms, or cramps.
• Encephalopathy, which, in extreme circumstances, is characterised by raised intracranial pressure, seizures, comas, or even death.
• Nephropathy, which occurs because the kidneys are the main route of removal of lead from the body. Acute lead poisoning may lead to development of Fanconi syndrome. Chronic lead exposure can lead to a slowly progressive interstitial nephritis. Chronic interstitial nephritis can also develop following an earlier acute lead exposure. Long-term exposure at levels lower than those that cause lead nephropathy have also been reported as nephrotoxic in patients from developed countries that had chronic kidney disease or were at-risk because of hypertension or diabetes mellitus. ^[16]
• Behavioural changes, such as inability to concentrate, hyperactivity, irritability, aggressiveness, mood swings, or insomnia.
• Cognitive problems, such as memory loss.
• Other associated effects, such as metal taste in the mouth, chest pain, anemia, impotence, and other reproductive problems.

An advertisement for Ethyl which appeared in the March, 1932 issue of Better Homes and Gardens. Click to enlarge.

The dangers of working with lead made the entire manufacturing process outrageously hazardous. By 1924, General Motors, Standard Oil (which today is more or less ExxonMobil), and DuPont had created the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation to sell leaded gasoline. Ten factory employees would die of lead poisoning between 1923 and 1924.

Ethyl Corporation headquarters in Virginia (via Flickr)

The company built a new factory in New Jersey (surprise!), but within two months five more employees suffered terrible lead-related brain injuries and eventually death. Remarkably, the company responded to this by stating things along the lines of, “These men went insane because they worked too hard.”

All of these deaths were not great PR for the company or for Midgley, so in a press conference, he poured the straight stuff, TEL, over his hands and then breathed it in for one minute, claiming he could do it every day without harm.

The State of New Jersey shut down the factory several days later and banned the production of TEL without permission by the state.

Midgley required one year of recovery from the publicity stunt.

Leaded gasoline is one of the most significant contributors to atmospheric lead and today, Americans have over 600 times more lead in their blood than those who lived prior to TEL’s introduction. It was banned in the US in 1986, though somehow is still used overseas even today.

Remarkably, Midgley had been made vice president of the Ethyl Corporation since its formation. He was relieved of this position, but remained a GM employee.

His story does not end here though.

In the 1930s, refrigeration technologies were not that great. In fact, refrigerators often used a toxic and combustible combination of gases that had an unfortunate tendency of killing or otherwise severely injuring unsuspecting users. From 1919 to 1980, General Motors also owned Frigidaire, the appliance brand. After the TEL debacle, GM charged Midgley with discovering a safe chemical for use in Frigidaire refrigerators and freezers.

Along with his mentor from Dayton Research who worked with him on TEL, Charles Kettering (the same Kettering of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York), the two set to work on what was to become dichlorodifluoromethane. I’ll space that out for you so you can actually read that: di chloro di fluoro methane. Because chemistry is just full of really long naming protocols, the duo gave the compound the name … Freon, the first chlorinated fluorocarbon, or CFC.

That’s right, the same guy who came up with leaded gasoline also created CFCs, you know, those things that are supposed to be destroying the ozone layer and all that. Talk about the sequel being better than the original. CFCs were banned in the US 64 years after they were developed, in 1994, but given their chemical properties will likely still remain in the atmosphere for quite a number of decades.

For having improved the quality of life so much, Midgley was the recipient of a number of prestigious accolades, including the Priestly Medal, the highest honor from the American Chemical Society, two honorary degrees, induction into the National Academy of Sciences. In 1944, he was named president of the American Chemical Society.

While Midglely was probably not completely aware of the destruction that his creations would wreak upon the earth, his life would end in a glorious amount of karmic irony.

He contracted highly disabling polio at the age of 51 in 1940. Being an inventive sort, Midgley built a rigging of pulleys and ropes which would raise and turn him over in his bed. On November 2, 1944 while trying to use the contraption, he had become entangled in the ropes and was strangled to death.

I think that story wraps itself up quite nicely. It was condensed in a video made for the Live Earth concert events in 2007 in this video:

This post is tagged bad science, chemistry, engineering, environment, history, industry, Thomas Midgley