Event

Early federal questions about tetraethyl lead, 1922-1923

Before ethyl gasoline went on sale, the Public Health Service raised the question of a health hazard with General Motors and du Pont.

2 links, 1 backed by primary records

Connections 2

U.S. Public Health Service Surgeon General Cumming said in 1925 it was interested two years before Primary record 1
Thomas Midgley Jr. answered the Surgeon General’s question, by The Nation’s account Scholarship & press 2

Timeline 1 date

Proof 2 sources

Proceedings of a Conference to Determine Whether or Not There Is a Public Health Question in the Manufacture, Distribution, or Use of Tetraethyl Lead Gasoline (Public Health Bulletin No. 158), U.S. Public Health Service, Treasury Department, 1925. Primary record
We were therefore interested two years ago when we learned that one of the large corporations in this country in its endeavor to increase the efficiency of fuel used in internal combustion engines was experimenting with certain lead compounds to be used in commercial gasoline.
The Secret History of Lead (Jamie Lincoln Kitman, The Nation, March 2000), The Nation, 20 Mar 2000. Scholarship & press
no actual experimental data has been taken.

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