Environmental groups compare the potential risks to the dangers now associated with tetraethyl lead, a compound containing lead that was the predominant octane enhancer until it was phased out, beginning in 1979, because of its adverse affect on catalytic converters and for health reasons.
32.
Thomas Midgley ( who held a PhD and was the inventor of tetraethyl lead and halogenated hydrocarbon refrigerants ) said of trial and error, " the trick is to turn a wild goose chase into a fox hunt " ( quoted in Hughes 2004 ).
33.
Houdry later became interested in automotive catalysts, and the catalytic converter was one of approximately 100 patents that he received, but nothing came of it until the 1970s because the tetraethyl lead that was still in use in the 1950s and 1960s poisoned the catalyst.
34.
The federal government did not require industry to begin to phase out the use of tetraethyl lead as an anti-knock additive in gasoline until the 1970s, long after Turkevich had found a way to alter the hydrocarbon molecules in petroleum from linear chains to rings.
35.
A special " sprint " version of the Merlin II, running on a special " racing fuel " of gasoline, benzol and methanol, with a small amount of tetraethyl lead was able to generate 2, 100 hp ( 1, 565 kW ) for short periods.
36.
Joseph, Jr . ran the " Sun Shipbuilding Company ", which would become the largest private shipyard and biggest producer of oil tankers in America by World War II . As visionary of the company, it was Pew who was behind the effort to develop gasoline without tetraethyl lead, creating Blue Sunoco.
37.
Meanwhile, every other major producer has stopped making the additives, known as tetraethyl lead, or TEL . That has left Great Lakes with an unexpected flood of profits and 90 percent of a market that no one else will enter because of the environmental problems associated with lead and the huge capital costs of building a new plant.
38.
However, after two deaths and several cases of lead poisoning at the TEL prototype plant in Dayton, Ohio, the staff at Dayton was said in 1924 to be " depressed to the point of considering giving up the whole tetraethyl lead program . " Over the course of the next year, eight more people would die at DuPont's Deepwater, New Jersey plant.
