Freon caught on and became ubiquitous in refrigerators, cooling units and aerosol spray cans as propellants. Lauded, Midgley won almost every prestigious award in his profession. Aside from TEL and freon, Midgley also held about other patents. It is only in recent decades that the damaging consequences of his inventions became known.
Businesses of the day often disregarded the potential impact of pollutants in the environment either by underestimating the impact of those pollutants or thinking that it was a negligible problem. Neither was there any appreciable regulation of potential pollutants. In the case of CFCs, he believed them to be less harmful than exploding refrigerators.
In , Midgley contracted polio and was paralyzed. Ever the inventor, he developed a harness system of ropes and pulleys to help him maneuver and get out of bed. In an ironic twist, his invention strangled him to death on November 2, But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Twice a week we compile our most fascinating features and deliver them straight to you.
Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault. The trouble was that ethanol was simply too easy and cheap to produce. Like the fact that in February , when Ethyl first went on sale, Midgley himself had to take the whole month off work due to ill-health caused by the lead fumes. Or like the fact that workers at the factories that made the fuel kept on dying a lot. While some toxins will become less dangerous with time, lead builds up—in the air, in the soil and in the bodies of plants and animals and humans.
The World Health Organization estimates that hundreds of thousands of people die annually world-wide from lead-poisoning illnesses, such as heart disease. Midgley himself did not hang around after inventing leaded petrol. Ever the tinkerer, he quickly moved on to other areas of investigation—and he still had his second catastrophic mistake to make. The goal was simple: to find a cheap, non-flammable, non-toxic substance that would do the same job as the current refrigerants.
Studying the chemical properties of known refrigerants, he quickly identified fluorine as a likely candidate, ideally in a compound with carbon to neutralize its toxic effects. And he pretty much nailed it out of the gate, as one of the initial substances his team created to test was dichlorodifluoromethane. Midgley demonstrated its safety to great acclaim at a meeting of the American Chemical Society, theatrically inhaling a lungful of it and using it to blow out a candle.
Non-toxic, non-flammable and an excellent refrigerant. However, these precautionary warnings went unheeded, and the primary phase-out of leaded gasoline in the US was not completed until The World Bank called for a ban on leaded gasoline in and the European Union banned leaded gasoline in It is estimated that 7 million tons of lead were released into the atmosphere from gasoline in the United States alone. Developmental Endocrine Disruption and Neurotoxicity.
Carla Ng. Supplement Science and Regulatory Challenges. See all webinars and calls.
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