Leaded petrol and the Ethyl Corporation

The claim, in its accurate form: tetraethyl lead was added to petrol from the 1920s despite immediate, visible harm to workers, and the case for its safety was largely produced and paid for by the companies selling it.

Workers at a Standard Oil plant died or were hospitalised with psychosis in 1924, and the additive was briefly suspended. A 1925 Public Health Service conference let it return. Robert Kehoe, funded by the industry, dominated the toxicology for decades until Clair Patterson's geochemical work from the 1960s showed how far background lead had risen.

Paraphrased summaries of publicly circulating reports, not verbatim quotes from identified individuals. Unverified by definition.

• “A refinery worker's family described him coming home confused and shaking in the 1920s from the plant that made the additive, and the company describing the cause as overwork.”

  reported harmReported 1924

  Paraphrased from contemporaneous press reports

Confirmed. Patterson's measurements, and later Herbert Needleman's studies linking childhood lead exposure to lost cognitive function, drove the US phase-out from 1975 onward. Blood-lead levels in the population fell sharply and measurably as leaded petrol was withdrawn — one of the clearest exposure-response records in public health. Industry-funded researchers attacked Needleman's work publicly; investigations cleared him. The additive was finally eliminated worldwide in 2021.