0:15

Pushkin. Thomas

0:24

Midgley Junior was born on College

0:26

Hill in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, May

0:28

eighteenth, eighteen eighty nine. His

0:30

father, Thomas Midgley Senior, was

0:33

a prolific inventor in a variety of fields,

0:35

but notably that of automobile

0:38

times, and his mother had

0:40

the eulogy for and invente,

0:43

a hero of industrial science who

0:45

changed the world, and who died

0:48

tragically young, aged just

0:50

fifty five. Thomas Midgley

0:52

Junior studied mechanical engineering,

0:55

but he was just as fascinated by chemistry.

0:58

As a young researcher employed by

1:00

General Motors, Midgley took to carrying

1:03

a copy of the Periodic Table around

1:05

in his pocket to inform his quest

1:07

for new ideas. By

1:09

the end of his life, Midgley had

1:11

accumulated over a hundred patents.

1:15

We're going to hear about three

1:17

of his inventions. In

1:19

nineteen sixteen, Midgley became

1:22

a member of our research staff and began

1:24

then his long association with me and

1:26

his remarkably productive career in

1:28

research. The eulogist is Charles

1:31

Boss Kettering, himself

1:33

an inventor of some renown. Kettering

1:36

was Thomas Midgley's boss in the General

1:38

Motors Research department. He

1:41

went on to become a lifelong friend,

1:43

mentor, and business associate

1:46

as the two men built lucrative

1:48

careers with General Motors and the

1:50

DuPont Corporation. What do

1:52

you want me to do next? Boss? That

1:55

simple question and the answer to it

1:57

turned out to be the beginning of a great adventure

1:59

in the life of a most versatile man.

2:02

Versatile Indeed, the brain

2:04

children of Thomas Midgley touched many

2:07

areas of life. This pudgy,

2:09

bespectacled inventor seemed

2:11

to personify the mid twentieth

2:14

century ideal of progress,

2:17

as summed up by DuPont in their famous

2:19

nineteen thirties advertising slogan

2:22

better things for better living,

2:24

living through chemistry Chemistry.

2:27

In his eulogy, Boss Kettering

2:30

runs through Midgley's long list

2:32

of accomplishments Presidents

2:34

of the American Chemical Society, winner

2:37

of the Nichols Medal, the Perkin

2:39

Medal, the Priestly Medal, the

2:41

Willard Gibbs Medal, the Longstreth

2:44

Medal, honorary doctorates from

2:46

the College of Wooster, and the

2:49

Ohio State University. Kettering

2:52

quotes the citation from Ohio

2:54

State. Midgeley contributed

2:56

so greatly to more pleasant and efficient

2:58

living. He has made science a

3:00

liberator, and we rejoice with him

3:03

and the satisfactions that must be his in

3:05

seeing the fruits of his labor. Posterity

3:08

will acknow their permanent value.

3:12

Posterity alas, was

3:15

not as kind to Midgley as

3:17

his many admirers had expected,

3:20

but they were absolutely right

3:22

to say that he would change the

3:24

world. He did, he

3:27

made it much much worse.

3:32

I'm Tim Harford and

3:34

you're listening to cautionary tales?

4:15

What do you want me to do? An X boss? One

4:17

day, when Thomas Midgley asked

4:20

that question of Charles Kettering, the

4:22

Boss had a problem he wanted Midgley

4:24

to solve. The problem had

4:26

to do with refrigeration. At

4:28

the time, people didn't have fridges

4:30

at home. It was too dangerous. The

4:33

chemicals you needed for the cooling coils

4:36

were either toxic or flammable,

4:38

so refrigeration was mainly used

4:40

in industrial settings by trained

4:43

personnel. Even then,

4:45

accidents were common. Kettering

4:48

wanted Midchley to invent away to cool

4:51

things safely. Midgley

4:53

took the periodic table out

4:55

of his pocket. He soon

4:58

zeroed in on florine as

5:00

a promising element for creating a

5:02

compound that might have the right properties.

5:05

As Kettering's eulogy recalls,

5:08

he had a helpers prepared such

5:10

a compound, dichlorodifluoromethane.

5:13

It proved to have just the properties required.

5:16

It is highly stable, noninflammable,

5:18

and altogether without harmful effects

5:21

on man or animals. Dichloro

5:24

difluoromethane it

5:26

did seem to be all together without

5:29

harmful effects. Midgeley tested

5:31

this by replacing all the nitrogen

5:33

in air with dichlorodifluoromethane

5:37

and seeing what happened to animals

5:40

who breathed it in. Happily,

5:42

for the animals, they were completely

5:44

fine. Midgley wasn't

5:46

just an inventor, He was a showman.

5:49

He presented his new product in

5:51

a dramatic lecture to the American

5:54

Chemical Society. Midgley

5:56

lights a candle. He produces

5:58

a container of dichlorodifluoromethane.

6:02

He sucks it in a long, deep

6:05

sculp, filling his lungs, and

6:08

then slowly and

6:10

gently he breathes

6:13

out over the candle. The

6:16

flame goes out. It's

6:18

a bravura performance. Dichlorodifluomethane

6:23

belongs to a class of chemicals called

6:25

CFC's, or chlorofluura

6:28

carbons. Under Midgley's

6:30

guidance, General Motors and the DuPont

6:33

Corporation start to produce a whole

6:35

range of CFCs. They give

6:37

them the trade name free On. Thanks

6:40

to these new non hazardous coolants,

6:43

people soon had refrigerators in their

6:45

own homes. That was a game

6:47

changer. Food stayed fresh.

6:50

The housewives of America could spend less

6:52

time endlessly shopping for groceries.

6:55

Food poisoning was easier to avoid,

6:58

and it wasn't just fridges. Air

7:00

conditioners too. Even better,

7:02

it soon turned out that CFCs

7:04

had uses beyond cooling. They

7:07

were ideal for making air assaul

7:09

sprays, insect repellance, air

7:11

freshness, hairspray deodorance.

7:14

It was just like DuPont said, better

7:17

things for better living through

7:20

chemistry. In

7:23

the summer of nineteen seventy three,

7:26

nearly three decades after Thomas Midgley's

7:29

untimely death, a chemistry

7:31

professor named Sherwood Rowland

7:33

welcomes a new postdoctoral researcher

7:36

to his team at the University of California.

7:38

Irvine Mariomelina

7:41

is from Mexico. He's thirty years old,

7:44

and he needs Professor Roland

7:46

to give him a project to work on. Roland

7:49

recalls something he heard over coffee

7:51

at a conference the previous year about

7:54

a precise new way of measuring

7:57

trace gases in the atmosphere, gases

8:00

like dichlorodifluoromethane.

8:02

It turns out that CFCs are present

8:05

in the air around US at two hundred

8:07

and thirty parts per trillion.

8:09

That's like detecting a drop of gin

8:12

in a swimming pool of tonic. Roland

8:15

is intrigued to hear that, not because

8:18

the amount sounds so small to him,

8:20

but because it sounds so big. He

8:23

knows that it's only a few decades

8:25

since CFCs started to

8:27

be manufactured on an industrial scale,

8:30

not much more than that dropful can

8:32

ever have been produced. Roland

8:35

is a radio chemist. He studies

8:37

how particles react and decay.

8:40

Most chemicals break down in the environment

8:43

sooner or later, but CFCs

8:46

just seemed to be hanging around.

8:49

So he makes a suggestion to marry

8:51

O Malina, why don't you look

8:53

into CFCs. Malina

8:55

recalls, we thought it would be a nice

8:58

interesting academic exercise.

9:00

We both knew that these CFCs were rather

9:03

stable, so there was nothing obvious that would

9:05

damage them soon after they'd be released.

9:08

That's about as much which as I knew at the time.

9:10

If CFCs aren't interacting much

9:12

with anything in the atmosphere close to Earth,

9:15

Malina reasoned, they'll eventually

9:18

drift upwards to the stratosphere,

9:20

where the air is thinner. It

9:22

would take decades, but they'd get there.

9:25

When they did, they'd encounter more

9:28

ultraviolet bee waves from

9:30

the Sun and maybe that

9:32

would cause the CFCs to break down.

9:34

Because UVB waves are pretty

9:36

destructive. They're the main reason

9:38

why too much sunshine can give you skin

9:41

cancer. In fact, if

9:43

the Earth had no protection from UVB

9:45

radiation, life on land might

9:48

not be possible. What

9:52

does protect the Earth the

9:54

ozone layer. Ozone is

9:56

a gas made from oxygen atoms

9:59

up in the stratosphere, a thin layer

10:01

of ozone blocks most of the Sun's

10:04

UVB radiation. Mario

10:06

Malina sat down to work out what

10:08

would happen and to a CFC molecule

10:10

When it drifts up to the stratosphere,

10:13

it would get hit by a wave of UVB

10:16

radiation that would knock off

10:18

a chlorine atom. The chlorine atom

10:20

would soon meet an ozone molecule.

10:23

When it did, it would split the ozone

10:25

apart and form oxygen

10:27

and chlorine monoxide instead. But

10:30

that's not the end of the story. Because chlorine

10:33

monoxide isn't stable. It breaks

10:35

down quickly. That frees

10:37

up the chlorine atom again to

10:40

take out another ozone

10:42

molecule, and the cycle repeats,

10:44

chlorine atoms pinballing around

10:46

the stratosphere, hopping ozone

10:49

as they go. Melina

10:54

was intrigued by this, but not alarmed.

10:56

After all, there weren't that many CFC

10:59

molecules in the atmosphere. It was a drop

11:01

in a swimming pool. They couldn't possibly

11:03

destroy enough of the ozone layer to cause

11:06

a problem, could they.

11:09

Malina got the data showing

11:11

how much CFC gas had been produced.

11:14

He sat down with a pencil, paper

11:17

and a calculator and did

11:19

the sums. That can't be

11:21

right. He checked them. He checked

11:23

them again, and again. He checked

11:25

them a dozen times. That

11:27

night. When he got home, Malina's

11:30

wife asked how his day had been. The

11:32

work's going well, Malina said,

11:36

But it looks like the end of the world. Cautionary

11:46

tales will be back in

11:48

a moment. At

12:02

the University of California, Irvine,

12:05

Mario, Melina tracks down Sherwood

12:07

Rowland and may have found something important.

12:10

Roland checks Melina's sums. He

12:14

checks them again. That can't be right,

12:16

but it was. The CFCs

12:18

drifting slowly up towards the stratosphere

12:21

were a ticking time bomb. Barely

12:24

forty years had passed since DuPont

12:26

started to manufacture their CFCs

12:29

under the Freon brand on an industrial

12:32

scale. That wasn't long enough

12:34

to expect any obvious impact yet,

12:37

but more and more CFCs were being

12:39

produced every year. If

12:42

that continued, what might it mean

12:44

by say, the middle of the twenty

12:46

first century. Melina

12:48

and Rowland calculated that up to

12:51

half the ozone layer could

12:53

disappear. As Malina had put

12:55

it, it looked like the end

12:57

of the world. The two

12:59

scientists wrote up their research. They

13:02

published it in Nature in

13:04

the summer of nineteen seventy four, and

13:08

hardly any noticed. A

13:10

few reporters got in touch from local

13:12

newspapers. That was nice, but

13:15

this wasn't really a local story.

13:17

An executive from DuPont phoned

13:20

Sherwood Rowland. I read your

13:22

paper. I was appalled. Thanks

13:24

for getting in touch. It is appalling

13:27

throughout your paper. You talk about free On.

13:30

Don't you know that Freon's are DuPont's

13:32

registered brand name. You need to refer

13:34

to CFCs generically, not free

13:36

On specifically. I have to tell you

13:38

we take this very seriously. Oh

13:43

okay. Roland and Melina

13:46

were dispirited. They're

13:48

discovered the end of the world and

13:51

nobody cared. They looked

13:53

for another opportunity to get attention.

13:55

The Annual meeting of the American Chemical

13:58

Society was coming up, the very

14:00

same event that Thomas Midgeley had

14:02

wowed forty four years earlier

14:05

by filling his lungs with die chlorodie

14:08

fluo methane and softly

14:10

extinguishing a candle. Roland

14:13

and Malina submitted their paper

14:15

to the annual meeting, but lots

14:18

of papers get submitted, so it's the

14:20

job of the American Chemical Society's

14:22

news manager to decide which papers

14:25

to publicize. Her name was

14:27

Dorothy Smith. She decided

14:30

to go big, much

14:32

to the displeasure of DuPont.

14:35

Hello, I've just seen your press

14:37

release. You're making a big thing of this paper

14:40

on CFC's and ozone. Yes,

14:42

it seems important. We think

14:44

it's an insignificant story. A

14:46

lot of people are interested. Dorothy

14:50

Smith stood her ground. She

14:52

put Roland and Malina on stage

14:54

at a press conference, and finally

14:57

their work started to gain some traction.

15:00

Environmental activists called for a

15:02

ban on CFCs. A few

15:04

politicians took up the cause, but

15:07

the industry fought back. Yes,

15:09

the scientific theory seemed sound,

15:11

but that's all it was theory.

15:15

No ozone depletion has ever

15:17

been detected, despite the most sophisticated

15:20

analysis. All ozone

15:22

depletion figures to date are computer

15:24

projections based on a series of

15:26

uncertain assumptions. The

15:29

initial burst of attention slowly

15:31

began to fade. Roland

15:33

and Melina kept speaking out,

15:36

but fewer and fewer people were

15:38

bothering to listen. Progress

15:40

towards banning CFC's ground

15:43

to a halt. It was clear

15:45

that only one thing might reboot

15:48

the interest of the world's governments. Hard

15:51

evidence of damage to the

15:53

ozone layer. But if it took

15:55

decades for CFCs to drift

15:57

up to the stratosphere, the first

15:59

ones to be manufactured would only

16:02

just be making it there. Would

16:04

the evidence come in time to

16:07

avert disaster. We'll

16:13

pick up the story of CFCs

16:15

and the Ozone Layer. But I promised

16:17

you three inventions by Thomas

16:20

Midgley, and as we'll see,

16:22

those three inventions have

16:24

a theme, that theme unanticipated

16:28

consequences. I mentioned

16:31

that Thomas Midgley died young. How

16:33

did he die exactly? Bosquetoing's

16:36

eulogy tiptoed around that delicate

16:39

question. In the early fall of nineteen

16:42

forty, Midgeley was struck by an acute

16:44

attack of poliomyelidis, which

16:46

deprived him of the use of his legs and

16:48

made him a semi invalid. Midgeley

16:51

died unexpectedly on November second,

16:53

nineteen forty four, at the age of fifty

16:56

five, confined to

16:58

his bed by polio. Midgley

17:00

had applied his inventive mind to

17:03

devising a series of pullies

17:05

and ropes by which he could move himself

17:07

around. He eyed

17:09

unexpectedly when a rope in

17:11

this device got wrapped around

17:13

his neck and strangled him.

17:18

So one of Mitchelly's inventions

17:21

had ended up killing him, and

17:23

another was going to destroy the ozone

17:25

layer and fry the planet. It's

17:28

fair to say that unanticipated

17:30

consequences is the right description

17:33

for both these inventions. The

17:36

phrase unanticipated consequences

17:38

was coined a few years before

17:41

Mitchley's death in a much cited

17:43

article by the great American sociologist

17:46

Robert K. Murton. That

17:49

article was called the Unanticipated

17:52

Consequences of Purposive Social

17:55

Action. Throughout history,

17:57

Murton argued, philosophers

17:59

have grappled with the idea of unanticipated

18:02

consequences, using various

18:04

different words to describe it, but

18:07

nobody had thought systematically about

18:10

how unanticipated consequences

18:12

come about. Murton set

18:14

himself the task of categorizing all

18:17

the possible ways in which our actions

18:19

might backfire. Simple error

18:21

is one way we might get unanticipated

18:23

consequences. We think we know what

18:25

will happen, but we're wrong. Another

18:28

is what Murton called the imperious

18:31

immediacy of interest. Roughly

18:33

speaking, we're so keen to solve

18:36

some pressing problem that we don't much care

18:38

what else might happen down the line. And

18:41

then there's ignorance when

18:43

we don't have the knowledge that would be necessary

18:46

to anticipate what might happen. In

18:48

some cases, that might be because

18:51

we haven't put in the time and energy

18:53

that would be necessary to get that knowledge,

18:56

or maybe the situation is so novel we

18:58

can't imagine what we might need to

19:00

know. That's a good description

19:03

of what happened with CFCs. Mitchelly

19:05

had tried to get some knowledge about potential

19:08

risks by making animals breathe

19:10

in dichlorodifluomethane,

19:13

but the interaction with ozone came

19:15

completely out of the blue. This

19:18

phrase of Robert K. Merton, unanticipated

19:21

consequences has a twist. To

19:23

find out what it is, we need

19:26

to turn to the third of Thomas Midgley's

19:28

disastrous brain waves, arguably

19:32

the worst of all. It came

19:34

again from that fateful

19:37

question, what do you want me

19:39

to do next? Boss? This

19:41

time, the problem Charles Kettering

19:43

wanted Midgley to solve was engine

19:47

knock, when you red

19:49

your car and it sounds like you're firing

19:52

a machine gun. It's not

19:54

a common sound nowadays, but

19:56

it blighted the lives of early motorists.

19:59

General motors wanted to invent a product

20:01

that would stop it, but nobody

20:04

even understood why it happened. Thomas

20:06

Midgeley worked it out in a internal

20:09

combustion engine, a piston in

20:11

a cylinder compresses a mixture

20:13

of air and fuel until

20:16

a spark plug ignites it. Engine

20:18

knock happens when the mixture explodes

20:21

before the piston has compressed

20:23

it fully. It's not

20:25

just an unpleasant noise. It

20:27

can damage the engine. But

20:31

where would you even start to look

20:33

for a solution? Kettuing and Midgley

20:36

talked it over. We thought

20:38

that maybe if the fuel were colored red,

20:41

it would absorb more radiant heat and

20:43

evaporate more completely, thus

20:45

preventing the rough combustion. This

20:48

theory came to us then, because we both

20:50

happen to know that the leaves of the trailing

20:52

arbutists are red on the back, and

20:55

that they grow and bloom under the

20:57

snow. Midgley went

20:59

to a chemist's shop and bought iodine.

21:01

He put the iodine in some fuel, which

21:04

turned it red, and he ran the

21:06

engine no Knock and

21:09

Kettering were astonished. But was

21:11

it really the color red that was stopping

21:14

the knock? Midgley tried other ways

21:16

of dying fuel, but with no

21:18

success. Apparently it wasn't

21:21

the red color, but something else about

21:23

the iodine. The leaves of the trailing

21:25

arbutus had been a red

21:27

herring. Midgley then

21:29

tried ethyl iodide, which

21:32

has iodine but no color.

21:35

It stopped the knock just as well. Unfortunately,

21:38

it also corroded the engine. Undeterred,

21:42

Midgeley pulled the periodic table

21:44

from his pocket and began to work

21:46

his way through it. Many anti

21:48

knock agents were discovered along the way. Compounds

21:51

of iodine of nitrogen are

21:54

phosphorus, of arsenic, of

21:56

antimony, of selenium, of

21:59

tellurium, but everyone

22:01

had some limitation or shortcoming

22:04

which prevented it from being used in a practical

22:06

way. Eventually, Thomas's

22:09

perseverance paid off. He discovered

22:12

something that he could add to gasoline

22:14

that would stop engine knock without

22:17

damaging the engine, tetra

22:19

ethyl lead. Thomas

22:22

Midgley had invented leaded

22:24

gasoline because

22:26

of Midgley's invention, I'm

22:28

about five iq points

22:31

stupider than I would otherwise have

22:33

been, and so are you if

22:35

you're around my age or older, because

22:37

you too, will have spent your childhood

22:40

inhaling fumes of leaded gasoline

22:42

from car exhausts. The air

22:44

pollution messed up brain development for

22:46

whole generations of kids, and

22:49

it caused cancers and heart disease.

22:51

And strokes. It's estimated

22:54

that leaded gasoline hastened

22:56

tens of millions of deaths.

22:59

Leaded gasoline completes an astonishing

23:02

trifector. Thomas Midgley

23:05

invented a rope and pulley device that

23:07

killed him, an additive for fuel

23:09

that killed lots of other people, and a

23:11

refrigerant that was on course to

23:13

wipe out life on earth all

23:16

together. How unlucky

23:19

can one man be? But

23:22

luck isn't the whole story. In

23:33

the early nineteen eighties, the radiochemist

23:36

Sherwood Rowland and his colleague Mario

23:38

Melina kept on talking

23:40

about the danger of CFCs to

23:42

the ozone layer. Nobody wanted

23:45

to listen. Roland became more

23:47

and more exasperated. What's the

23:49

use of having developed a science well enough to make

23:51

predictions if in the end all

23:54

we're willing to do is stand around and wait

23:56

for them to come true. The predictions,

23:58

however, were all too easy

24:01

for the industry to dismiss. Remember

24:03

the line from DuPont all

24:06

ozone depletion figures to date are

24:09

computer projections based on a

24:11

series of uncertain assumptions.

24:14

Only actual evidence of

24:16

damage to the ozone layer would get

24:18

CFCs back on the agenda,

24:21

but the evidence would be hard to come

24:23

by. The first CFCs

24:25

to be produced decades earlier would

24:27

only just have reached the stratosphere.

24:30

If they were starting to reduce the levels

24:32

of ozone, that might be hard

24:34

to see for a couple of reasons. First,

24:37

ozone levels fluctuate naturally. Second,

24:41

there are different ways to measure ozone

24:43

from the ground, from satellites, from special

24:45

instruments tied to helium balloons,

24:48

which were most accurate, no

24:50

one was entirely sure. Tantalizing

24:53

hints of evidence began to emerge. Some

24:56

Japanese researchers sent balloons

24:58

to the stratosphere. The ozone

25:00

readings came back worryingly low,

25:03

but you really needed a long term

25:05

series of data points to establish

25:07

there was a trend. The Panese

25:09

team didn't have that, but

25:11

someone else did. For twenty

25:13

five years, an obscure

25:16

organization called the British Antarctic

25:18

Survey had been toiling away

25:21

on a shoestring budget, sending

25:23

researchers to a remote outpost in

25:25

Antarctica to measure all sorts

25:27

of things. They weren't looking for anything

25:30

in particular. They just liked

25:32

to collect data in case it ever

25:34

happened to share anything interesting. For

25:37

twenty five years, we never had.

25:40

Now, in the early nineteen eighties,

25:42

it did. The ozone

25:45

measurements were all over the place. The

25:47

researchers suspected that their instruments

25:50

had gone haywire. They send

25:52

new ones to Antarctica, but the data

25:54

came back the same. At first,

25:57

it seemed random, but when the researchers

25:59

looked more closely, they realized there

26:01

was a pattern to the unusually low

26:03

readings, a pattern related

26:06

to the seasons, a pattern that

26:09

reactions with chlorine could plausibly

26:11

explain. NASA's

26:13

satellites had also picked up some surprisingly

26:16

low readings over the Antarctic solo.

26:19

The computers had initially thrown them

26:22

out as obvious anomalies. Now

26:25

it was clear that something was happening.

26:27

There was still room to doubt. Why was

26:30

it really a chemical reaction caused

26:32

by chlorofleur carbons, or

26:34

was it solar activities or wind

26:37

There was only one way to be sure. NASA

26:40

rushed to put together a team of scientists

26:43

and flew them to Antarctica. In

26:46

charge of the mission was thirty year old

26:48

doctor Susan Solomon, an

26:50

atmospheric chemist, Solomon

26:53

had never been to Antarctica before, and

26:55

she didn't have the right equipment. Her

26:57

team had brought instruments to analyze

27:00

light from the Moon, but they hadn't had time

27:02

to build a tracking device to focus the

27:04

Moon's rays. Instead, someone

27:06

had to sit on the laboratory roof at night

27:09

holding a mirror at just the right angle.

27:12

The first time Solomon took the roof shift,

27:15

she squinted to direct the mirror's

27:17

reflection, found that

27:19

her eye had frozen

27:22

shut, but the results of the experiments

27:25

pointed only in one direction.

27:28

On October the twentieth, nineteen eighty

27:30

six, journalists gathered

27:32

in Washington, d C. To hear Solomon

27:34

relay her team's preliminary

27:36

findings over a Crackerly satellite

27:39

link from Antarctica. We

27:42

have not conclusively established the cause

27:44

of the oz on whole. However, we

27:47

have strong evidence against theories

27:49

that upward wins or high solar

27:51

activities caused the deplica. We

27:54

suspect a chemical process is

27:56

fundamentally responsible for the formation

27:58

of the whole. Solomon

28:01

was right. More experiments

28:03

confirmed it. The world's

28:05

leaders acted with commendable

28:08

speed. In nineteen eighty seven,

28:10

they agreed the Montreal Protocol

28:12

to phase out CFCs.

28:15

Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina

28:17

shared a Nobel prize. The

28:20

end of the world was averted.

28:24

By now the impacts of leaded

28:26

gasoline on human health were equally

28:28

playing to see. Governments around

28:31

the world were banning that too, albeit

28:33

more slowly. As for Thomas

28:36

Midgley, well with hindsight,

28:38

Boss Kettwing's eulogy sounds

28:41

a little different. Midgley contributed

28:43

so greatly to more pleasant and efficient

28:46

living, so he did say

28:49

refrigerators, aerosols, smoothly

28:52

running gas engines, pleasant and

28:54

efficient, just deadly

28:56

too. Seventy

28:59

years after Kettering's eulogy, the New

29:01

Scientist looked back on Midgley's

29:03

life, memorably describing him

29:05

as a one man environmental

29:09

disaster, far from the epitome

29:11

of industrial progress. He starts

29:14

to look more like a bye word for that phrase

29:16

coined by the great sociologist Robert

29:19

K. Merton, unanticipated

29:21

consequences and

29:25

yet unanticipated consequences

29:28

isn't a phrase you hear much anymore. It's

29:30

given way to unintended consequences.

29:34

Merton himself switched from using

29:36

one phrase to the other. They might

29:38

sound like synonyms, but they're not. A

29:40

professor of political science named

29:43

Frank de Javart points out that

29:45

this shift in language obscures

29:47

a whole category of impacts,

29:50

ones that you don't intend but

29:52

you might nonetheless anticipate.

29:56

Think of a doctor prescribing a drug

29:58

that often has side effects. She

30:00

doesn't want you to suffer the side effects,

30:02

but she does foresee the possibility,

30:05

or at least she should, and

30:07

she should be honest about it. Two. We

30:10

expect doctors to speak truthfully

30:12

about risks and trade offs. Other

30:15

decision makers might not when

30:17

they stand to gain while the risks

30:19

fall on others. In cases like

30:21

that, says de Jarart, we should

30:23

be skeptical when someone apologizes

30:26

for unintended consequences.

30:29

It can be an attempt to evade responsibility

30:31

for harms they didn't intend, but

30:34

should have foreseen. That

30:38

CFCs would destroy the ozone layer

30:40

was genuinely unanticipated

30:42

until Mariomelina sat down with

30:45

his pencil and paper and calculator.

30:47

It simply hadn't occurred to anyone

30:50

as a possibility. But when

30:52

Thomas Midgeley and Boss Kettering

30:55

launched tetra ethyl lead

30:57

as a fuel additive to stop

30:59

engine knock. The danger was

31:01

all too predictable. It had been

31:03

known for centuries that lead

31:06

was poisonous. America's foremost

31:09

expert in lead was doctor Alice

31:11

Hamilton. In nineteen twenty

31:13

five, she pleaded with US

31:15

regulators not to allow

31:18

Midgeley and Kettering to

31:20

put lead in gasoline. I

31:22

am not one of those who believe that the use

31:25

of this leaded gasolene can ever

31:27

be made safe. No lead

31:29

industry has ever, even under

31:32

the strictest control, lost all its

31:34

dangers. Where there is

31:36

lead, some case of lead poisoning

31:39

sooner or later develops. Even

31:41

under the strictest supervision.

31:45

They had already been ample evidence

31:47

of the risk. At a plant making

31:49

tetra ethyl lead in New Jersey, five

31:52

of the forty nine workers had

31:55

died. Most of the rest had

31:57

been taken to hospital in strait jackets,

31:59

hallucinating, screaming,

32:02

and convulsing. Midgeley

32:04

and Kettuing said that they could make the

32:06

factors is safe for workers.

32:09

If that were true, said Alice Hamilton,

32:11

you'd still have millions of cars belching

32:14

lead in exhaust fumes into the

32:16

air we all breathe. You

32:19

make control conditions within a factory.

32:21

But how are you going to control the whole

32:23

country. Midgley

32:26

insisted there'd be too little lead

32:28

in exhaust fumes to cause any

32:30

problems for human health. He didn't

32:33

intend to poison people, but

32:35

he should have anticipated that

32:38

he might. Alice Hamilton

32:40

did, and she warned him.

32:43

Faced with this kind of criticism, bosquecheuing

32:46

knew that he needed to get public opinion on

32:48

his side. Fortunately for him,

32:50

Thomas Midgley wasn't just an inventor.

32:53

Remember he was that consummate

32:55

showman we heard about earlier, filling

32:58

his lungs with die chlorodie fluo

33:00

methane to blow out a candle. At

33:02

a press conference on leaded gasoline,

33:05

Midgeley put on a similar kind of

33:07

show, produced a container

33:10

of tetra ethyl lead, poured

33:12

the liquid all over his hands, and

33:17

ostentatiously breathed in

33:19

the fumes. I'm not taking

33:22

any chance whatever, nor

33:24

would I take any chance doing that every

33:26

day. The journalists

33:29

were wowed, but

33:31

Midgley must have known how disingenuous

33:34

he was being, and how reckless.

33:37

He had just taken months off work to

33:39

recover from lead poisoning himself,

33:42

kettering and Midgley knew

33:45

the risks. Was there really

33:47

no alternative? Well,

33:50

when governments finally banned leader

33:52

gasoline, scientists found different

33:54

ways to prevent engine knock. When

33:57

governments banned CFC's, scientists

34:00

found alternative ways to make fridges

34:02

and air conditioners and air assouls.

34:06

Science is great. Midgley

34:09

Kettering knew of at least one

34:11

promising potential alternative, ethyl

34:14

alcohol. But any old

34:16

farmer could make ethyl alcohol from

34:18

grain, whereas tetra ethyl

34:20

lead was something that could be

34:22

patented and monetized.

34:25

They just had to get past experts such

34:27

as Alice Hamilton. First. Midgley

34:30

went to work on the job of introducing

34:32

the new product of the public and endeavor,

34:35

which he met with and finally overcame

34:38

many obstacles and much opposition.

34:41

Overcoming obstacles in opposition. It's

34:44

a fitting line for a eulogy, but

34:47

I can't help thinking of another fine

34:49

phrase. The sociologist Robert

34:51

K. Merton, the imperious

34:54

immediacy of interest

34:57

leaded gasoline would make a lot

35:00

of money. Who

35:04

really cared what might happen next.

35:24

For a full list of our sources, please

35:26

see the show notes at Tim Harford

35:28

dot com.

35:31

Cautionary Tales is written by me Tim

35:33

Harford with Andrew Wright. It's

35:36

produced by Ryan Dilley with support

35:38

from Courtney Guarino and Emily Vaughne.

35:40

The sound design and original music

35:43

is the work of Pascal Wise. It

35:45

features the voice talents of Ben Crow, Melanie

35:48

Gutridge, Stella Harford, and

35:50

Rufus Wright. The show also

35:52

wouldn't have been possible without the work of

35:54

Mia La Belle, Jacob Weisberg, Heather

35:57

Fane, John Schnars, Julia

35:59

Barton, Carlie mcgliori, Eric

36:01

Sandler, Royston basserv Maggie

36:03

Taylor, Nicole Morano, Danielle

36:06

Lakhan, and Maya Caaning. Caution

36:09

Retales is a production of Pushkin

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