"The Thing That Everyone Gets Wrong About the Leaded Gasoline Story Is the Story"

Leaded gasoline is significant in industrial history as the archetypal Second Industrial Revolution pollutant. Given its importance, it has been seen as fortunate that those who worked to launch leaded gasoline provided so many historical accounts. However, the reanalysis I present in this paper makes clear that those accounts were part of an exercise in corporate self-promotion. New evidence shows that the literature created by its proprietors – General Motors, Standard Oil of New Jersey, DuPont, and their progeny the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation – was not just factually incorrect but intentionally falsified. Initially, this justified taking patent rights for discoveries made using federal funding and expertise. In the long term the falsification enabled them to propagate a narrative claiming credit for a breakthrough in applied chemistry and advancements in transportation utility having tremendous public benefits. Opposing that self-laudatory narrative, a later body of literature makes harsh criticisms of leaded gasoline, including the now-familiar conspiracy theory about ethanol. Taken together, the literature on leaded gasoline consists of a pro-industry mythology and an anti-industry counter-mythology, both of them unreliable. My new findings put the evidence into a strict chronology, which I use to address four current misperceptions: 1- that tetraethyl lead was the product of private enterprise; 2- that the choice of tetraethyl lead as the antiknock to be commercialized involved suppression of ethanol; 3- that the business model adopted for commercializing tetraethyl lead involved free, unhindered consumer choice; and 4- that the toxicological hazard for tetraethyl lead was decided on the merits. Being the archetype, the story of leaded gasoline must be told without distortion if its lessons are to be gained. This paper seeks to dispel – and ultimately eradicate – the myths on both sides. This is important not just because of current regulatory debates but because the leaded story is the subject of an upcoming Hollywood film that will give lasting impressions. The current moment calls for a more accurate treatment of this critical story.