Work

The Secret History of Lead

Jamie Lincoln Kitman’s 2000 article in The Nation on tetraethyl lead, General Motors, du Pont and Standard Oil of New Jersey.

2 links, 0 backed by primary records

The debate

What it found

They got together and put lead, a known poison, into gasoline, for profit.1

Who disputes it

Ethyl Corporation 2000
a distorted interpretation of known historic events and documents that have long been in the public record2
A spokesperson read the statement to AlterNet and, the column says, would not say how the article distorted events.

Each side is quoted in its own words. Whether a finding holds is not decided here.

Connections 2

Ethyl Corporation 2000 According to Ethyl Corporation Scholarship & press 2
A spokesperson read the statement to AlterNet and, the column says, would not say how the article distorted events.

Thomas Midgley Jr. the article’s account of the 1921 finding and the 1924 demonstration Scholarship & press 1

Timeline 2 dates

2000 The Secret History of Lead
2000 Ethyl Corporation disputes a finding of The Secret History of Lead According to Ethyl Corporation

Proof 2 sources

The Secret History of Lead (Jamie Lincoln Kitman, The Nation, March 2000), The Nation, 20 Mar 2000. Scholarship & press
They got together and put lead, a known poison, into gasoline, for profit.
On December 9, 1921, a young engineer named Thomas Midgley Jr. , working in the laboratory of the General Motors Research Corporation in Dayton, Ohio, reported to his boss, Charles Kettering , that he’d discovered that tetraethyl lead
Corporate Focus: Lead Keeps on Killing, AlterNet, Apr 2000. Scholarship & press
a distorted interpretation of known historic events and documents that have long been in the public record

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