You may know of contemporary global pollution measures, but do you know how they came to be? It all started with lead, and here's why.
You probably know that lead is a poison, but it is neurological in nature, meaning that increased dosages of lead from any source can lead to impaired brain function, hallucinations, heart failure and death. It is never released from the body, but accumulates in the bones and blood of the polluted individual.
What little of lead's effects are known to humans up until the 1940's was entirely wrong, mainly because the only funded scientific research into it was fund exclusively by manufacturer's of lead and lead additives.Most of those operated under the idea of directly asking volunteers to inhale or consume lead, then measuring the fecal and urine matter for lead... But since lead is never released from the body, lead was considered entirely safe.
In-depth lead studies only ever took places after Clair Cameron Patterson discovered that lead had contaminated almost every sample he took to help him determine the age of the Earth and had been skewing age estimates ever since carbon dating came into practice.
Clair developed the world's first practices for decontaminated labs, and used them to measure lead levels in ice core samples taken from Greenland. By measuring the lead levels in each successive layer of ice, he could easily deduce when lead concentration had started to increase in the atmosphere.
Unsurprisingly, he found that when Tetraethyl lead had been introduced to mainstream production in 1923, used in gasoline engines to keep the engine from rattling, lead had begun to spread directly into the atmosphere through vehicle exhaust.
Before 1923, there was almost no lead in the atmosphere at all. Since that time, atmospheric lead climbed steadily and dangerously, poisoning every human in existence. He immediately began campaigning against tetraethyl lead, which enjoyed usage in everything from paint to toothpaste tubes to soldering techniques used on almost every form of sealed food containers sold to millions of unsuspecting consumers daily.
Almost immediately, Clair was cut off from every source of funding he'd ever had. including supposedly unbiased scientific communities such as the United States Public Health service. The American Petroleum Society not only prevented him from gaining any funding, but ensured he could never get a job in Science again They even offered his employers substantial bribes to either shut Clair of or fire him.
The lead poison epidemic continued unabated until an independent council determined that lead levels had risen substantially since 1923. The Clean Air Act of 1970 helped, but leaded gasoline was still sold until 1986 (Lead soldering was still allowed all the way up until 1993). Lead was finally being recognized as a real danger to society, after 62 years of poisoning and killing thousands and causing unknown amounts of damage to every species on earth.
Almost immediately, lead levels in the blood of Americans fell by almost 80%. There was absolutely no doubt that the lead industry had created and spent 60 years covering up for the fact that their factories were literal death traps that had poisoned their workers, driving thousands insane and killing hundreds. Because of the massive earnings that they'd made preventing an engine from shaking, they were able to afford the money it took to hush any problems they had caused.
Today, the average American has 625 times more blood than we had before 1923. Lead did not just 'go away.' To this day lead levels are continuing through the entire human race, persisting even in children born after the epidemic. Atmospheric lead still climbs at about 100,000 metric tons per year, mostly legally, from mining smelting and industrial activities.
Anytime someone makes disparaging remarks about "hippies complaining about climate change" or "unnecessary regulations in manufacturing," remind yourself that you were most likely born and lived your entire life until this point unaware that your brain functions as it does because in 1923, the rattling of engines was a big enough problem to poison the human race for 60 years.
This entire post is from my friend on facebook.
Credit goes to him, i want to show him that bring on steemit will be better than being on facebook, so lets show him!
He said his idea to write this came from This
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