Poisoning the Sky: The Damaging Impact of Thomas Midgley Jr

Climate change can sometimes be filled with doom and gloom, but whilst progress may be slow it is still happening. There is a change in the air towards the environmental friendliness of battery-powered cars and renewable electricity to move away from our dependence on fossil fuels. This takes time and a lot of willpower from not just the public, but those in power.

Whilst the more cynical among us may argue that this large-scale change may never come to fruition, it is important to remember that it has happened before. Governments and international bodies such as the UN have spent decades unravelling the damage caused by just one individual. Thomas Midgley Jr.

Midgely was a chemical engineer born in Pennsylvania in 1889 and whilst he may not have been aware of the damage he would inflict upon the world at the time (he did, but we will get into that later) he is, by every metric imaginable, the least environmentally friendly person to have ever existed.

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In the early years of the automobile, there was a phenomenon known as ‘knocking’ that was increasingly becoming an issue for the industry. Knocking is the technical term for a noise coming from the engine when there is an inconsistency in the timing of the ignition of fuel.

As fuel is lit by the spark plug, a flame front is created. The aim is for this to move steadily in little pockets across the fuel in order to achieve the greatest amount of work possible. Knocking is when different parts of the fuel ignite out of sync with one another. This uneven burn causes little shockwaves or knocks, to travel across the engine and the amount of work from the engine is much lower and can damage the engine over time.

The best way to visualise it is Pop Rocks. When you place these in your mouth, they randomly pop all over your mouth, causing audible ‘pops’ (knocks) in your mouth. If we wanted to achieve the best and loudest pop possible, we would want the rocks at the back of our mouth to pop first, then the next row, and then the next. Each row adds to the energy of the sound wave before it – this is the clean burn engine manufacturers want from their fuel.

In the late 1910s, Midgley was tasked to solve the issue and set about mixing thousands of different chemicals with petrol to reduce the knocking. After a few hundred attempts, he discovered ethanol to be the best at reducing the knocking – but there was one problem. It just wasn’t profitable.

Prohibition in the United States had made ethanol a relatively cheap commodity that could easily and cheaply be made from surplus grains. So off to the drawing board, or lab, Midgley went – this time under the automobile giant that was General Motors. After just a few months he discovered the substance ‘tetraethyl lead’ reduced the knocking, and better still because it was relatively useless as a compound, it could be patented, and a patent equalled profit.

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I mentioned that Midgely knew of the dangerous effects of lead at the time and this is because it was common knowledge among not just scientists, but the general public. Even the Greek physician Dioscorides wrote that lead makes the mind “give way” some 2000 years before Midgely was even a glint in his father’s eye. Today some historians even suggest that lead poisoning brought down the Roman Empire. Lead poisoning has also been linked to the deaths of Beethoven and Caravaggio, as well as being the cause of many historic bouts of colic.

General Motors knew the public was aware of the dangers of lead and ensured that ‘lead’ was not in any of the advertising for their product, instead choosing to call it ‘Ethyl’. They worked with other car and oil manufacturers to ensure the regulations in the US were altered to ensure the unregulated sale of Ethyl. Midgley was also on the defence for his invention and took part in a now infamous press event on 30th October 1924 in which he demonstrated the safety of Ethyl by inhaling its vapours for a solid 60 seconds in front of hundreds of reporters. Ironically (or despicable depending on your viewpoint), Midgley had been absent from work in the months prior to the press conference to recover from a bout of lead poisoning.

In the UK, leaded petrol was still on sale for almost 80 years since its knocking-preventing properties were discovered. In line with an EU directive on the sale of leaded petrol, the UK announced in 1998 that the beginning of the next millennium would be one without leaded petrol – banning its sale almost entirely on 1st January 2000. Even with the dangerous effects being known at the time, there were many car enthusiasts calling the process unnecessary. They argued people should be able to make a choice between a dangerous chemical that is responsible for countless deaths over the decades or ethanol-enriched fuel that not only doesn’t kill as many people but is also beneficial for the environment.

So, how bad was his invention overall? In short, very.

In a study during the 1970s, Herbert Needleman showed a correlation between lead pollution and a decrease in the academic performance of children, even in very low concentrations. Needleman was the first person to show a link between lead pollution and children’s lower IQ levels, lower attention spans, reduced language proficiency, increased behavioural problems, and an increase in ‘delinquent’ behaviour such as shoplifting and bullying. Needleman discovered the lower a child’s academic ability, the larger the concentration of lead in their bones, with Needleman even suggesting that lead caused brain poisoning that interfered with a child’s ability to restrain negative impulses.

It is not just in children. There is also the ‘lead-crime hypothesis’ which argues that an increase in lead levels in the blood, beginning in the early 1940s, was been a major driver in the increase in crime in the United States. Its subsequent banning also strongly correlates with a significant decrease in crime.

Leaded petrol has been banned worldwide with only Algeria still selling it until their reserves run dry. The UN in 2011 estimated that its eradication has resulted in 1.2 million fewer deaths, an increase in average global intelligence and 60 million fewer crimes committed.

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Refrigeration during the 1920s relied on numerous compounds that were impractical. They flammable, toxic and were generally dangerous to human health. Compounds such as ammonia, methyl chloride, and sulfur dioxide were becoming increasingly more common in people’s homes. In 1929, the American Medical Association began an investigation into deaths in regard to refrigerators and air conditioners and discovered that methyl chloride was a factor in numerous deaths. Their recommendation was to increase regulations on the use of toxic compounds.

Fearing increased costs and further regulation, manufacturers of the compounds, refrigerators and air conditioning units began research into developing a new, safer refrigerant. A joint effort with DuPont and General Motors aimed to solve the issue. From this collaboration, Thomas J. Midgley and Charles Franklin Kettering developed the “miracle compound” known as Freon.

Freon is the brand name, owned by DuPont, for the compounds known as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). Although not all CFCs are Freons and not all Freons are CFCs but for ease and simplicity, I will use the term CFCs and Freons interchangeably.

The reason Kettering and Midgley describe CFCs as miracle compounds is that they kind of… are. They are brilliant refrigerants, non-flammable, non-toxic, colourless, and relatively stable gases or liquids. In a similar stunt to breathing in leaded petrol to prove its non-toxicity, Midgley inhaled Freon and used his exhaled breath to blow out a candle. Ever the showman.

In the first five years after its invention, Freons has been sold in over 8 million refrigerators and quickly became the industry standard. In 1932, Frigidaire (a company owned by General Motors) invented the first self-contained in-house air conditioner known as the ‘atmospheric cabinet’. In the years following its creation, CFCs began to be used in aerosol cans and asthma inhalers as a propellant, but its miracle status did not last for long.

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In the early 1970s, two scientists Frank Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina began researching the atmospheric interactions of CFCs. In their landmark paper published in Nature in 1974, they discovered that when CFCs entered the upper atmosphere and combined with solar radiation (in a process known as photodissociation), they decomposed into chlorine and chlorine monoxide which in turn led to a decrease in atmospheric ozone.

The chemical reaction of chlorine, from decomposed CFCs, and Ozone created Chlorine Oxide and Oxygen.
Cl + O₃ → ClO + O₂

This paper was groundbreaking. In the months after it was published, the US government launched an investigation into the effects of CFCs and their potential effects. In 1985, the British Antarctic Survey not only confirmed the theories of Rowland and Molina true but also discovered a large atmospheric hole in the ozone layer above Antarctica. All this together prompted the international community to create the first internationally ratified UN treaty, the Montreal Protocol.

The Montreal Protocol began the regulation and eventually banning of CFCs around the world. Since its signing, 98% of all the ozone-depleting compounds have been banned from use, and it has worked. In 2020, the first signs of the ‘ozone hole’ healing became clear. The whole world had come together to improve the Earth’s atmosphere, for the first time ever.

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Thomas J Midgley, the man who invented two of the worst compounds for the Earth’s atmosphere CFCs and tetraethyl lead and resulted in life-changing, and planet-changing consequences that we are still feeling the effects of decades since their invention.

Midgley continued to invent in the decades since until he contracted polio at the age of 51. Preparing for his eventual demise, he invented a system of pulleys and levers to help him to get in and out of bed. In 1944, he became tangled in his invention and eventually died of strangulation.

Whilst he may have been the planet’s most dangerous inhabitant, he did show us one thing. When we understand science and have faith in our world leaders, we can come together to create change. Not just change for the here and now, but change for all future generations.

In the ever-growing climate crisis, the events that brought us together in the last may be the foundation for our collaboration in the future.