Big Oil's Fight To Keep Lead In Gasoline 50 Years Ago Mirrors Climate: They Knew, They Didn't Care

[hatrack]

It was 1971, less than a year after the world’s first Earth Day, and in Canada an oil giant was worried. “Public concern regarding environmental problems is being translated into legislation rapidly,” Imperial Oil warned in an annual research planning document dated January of that year. “The present trend in legislation will require substantial expenditures to reduce emissions and waste discharge for all facilities and reduce the impact on the environment of the products we sell.”

“Major contributors to atmospheric pollution are the automotive engine and industrial fossil fuel consumers,” Imperial’s 1971 document reports.
"Protection of the environment is the key to predicting the trend not only of technology but of business decisions. Major contributors to atmospheric pollution are the automotive engine and industrial fossil fuel consumers. The conclusions derived from current studies involving lead-free motor gasoline and low sulphur fuel oils will have a major influence on corporate planning strategy." (p. 18)

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One of the top environmental concerns Imperial described then stemmed from the use of lead in gasoline — prized by refineries as a cheap way to make car and truck engines run more smoothly. And the industry’s public relations efforts on lead seemed to be struggling. “The varied positions of members of the oil industry on lead-free gasoline have created a complete state of confusion in the public mind on the subject,” Imperial, largely owned by Exxon, wrote in 1971. Over the following decades, the oil industry lost its battle to keep lead in gasoline, but it may have learned valuable lessons from that fight as public attention turned to another looming crisis caused by fossil fuel pollution — climate change.

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As with climate change, oil giants like Standard Oil were aware of the hazards of leaded gas early on. It was known as early as the 1920s that lead was poisonous and could impact the brain. Like Exxon, Mobil, Chevron, and many other oil majors, Imperial Oil is a descendant of Standard Oil. Imperial was retained as part of Standard Oil of New Jersey following America’s trust-busting court rulings, and later split off into its own firm (largely owned by fellow Standard Oil-descendant Exxon). It was at a Standard Oil New Jersey refinery that some of the first problems with leaded gasoline would become apparent in 1924, when five workers died from their exposure to tetraethyl lead (TEL), the lead additive used in gasoline, as Wired

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https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/12/03/exxon-imperial-oil-canada-climate-change-public-relations

[beachbumbob]

1. like with most things, the problems becomes some one elses, a generation or 2 later

this echos govt financials issues as well

[eppur_se_muova]

2. I posted an extract about that from Devra Davis's book a while back ...

https://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=51906&mesg_id=52158

Here's the book rec to go with that:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10029744417#post2