---
title: 'Ethyl: how leaded petrol was named, defended and kept on sale'
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/leaded-gasoline-ethyl/
description: tetraethyl lead was sold under a trade name that left out "lead", and after five workers died making it in 1924 the companies answered with a public…
section: Case studies
---

![Illustration: an interwar radio-and-newsreel intelligence collage with a 1930s map of Europe and propaganda poster proofs.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/detail/hero-interwar.jpg)

[Case studies](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/)

# Ethyl: how leaded petrol was named, defended and kept on sale

At a glance

Tetraethyl lead was sold under a trade name that left out "lead", and after five workers died making it in 1924 the companies answered with a public demonstration by its inventor, an industry-funded scientist…

- **When:** May 20, 1925
- **Actor:** General Motors Research Corporation, Standard Oil Company of New Jersey and their joint venture,…
- **Target:** U.S. motorists, newspaper readers, the U.S. Public Health Service and, later, regulators and…
- **Source:** Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- **Confidence:** **documented** Primary documents, court records, official disclosures
- **Techniques:** [Euphemism / doublespeak](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/euphemism/) [Testimonial](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/testimonial/) [Card stacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/card-stacking/) [Glittering generalities](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/glittering-generalities/)

Full details

- **Actor:** General Motors Research Corporation, Standard Oil Company of New Jersey and their joint venture, the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation (later Ethyl Corporation); Robert A. Kehoe as Ethyl's medical adviser
- **Target:** U.S. motorists, newspaper readers, the U.S. Public Health Service and, later, regulators and legislators

On this page

- [What happened](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/leaded-gasoline-ethyl/#what-happened)
- [How it works](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/leaded-gasoline-ethyl/#how-it-works)
- [Then and now](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/leaded-gasoline-ethyl/#then-and-now)
- [Positions on the record](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/leaded-gasoline-ethyl/#positions-on-the-record)
- [Same-method test](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/leaded-gasoline-ethyl/#same-method-test)
- [How to spot it](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/leaded-gasoline-ethyl/#how-to-spot-it)
- [Images](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/leaded-gasoline-ethyl/#images)
- [Sources](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/leaded-gasoline-ethyl/#sources)

On this page

**In one line:** tetraethyl lead was sold under a trade name that left out "lead", and after five workers died making it in 1924 the companies answered with a public demonstration by its inventor, an industry-funded scientist, and a standard that the product would stay on sale until someone proved it harmful. Needleman dates that standard's hold to about 1926 to 1965.

![Diagram: a lead additive is sold under the name Ethyl; after worker deaths the inventor demonstrates it on his own hands; at a 1925 federal conference the companies offer to stop only if harm is shown; a 1926 committee finds no grounds to ban but asks for more study; industry-funded research supplies most of the data until Patterson's 1965 challenge and the EPA phase-down](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/leaded-gasoline-ethyl-diagram.svg)

## What happened

- **9 December 1921.** At the General Motors Research Corporation in Dayton, Ohio, Thomas Midgley Jr. reports to his director, Charles F. Kettering, that tetraethyl lead (TEL) stops engine "knock". Historian William Kovarik reports that Kettering suggested the name "Ethyl".
- **1923.** Midgley takes a long break in Miami after lead poisoning, writing: "I find that my lungs have been affected and that it is necessary to drop all work and get a large supply of fresh air" (quoted by Kovarik). The U.S. Bureau of Mines starts a TEL health study financed by General Motors. Kovarik writes that Kettering and the Bureau agreed on this, and quotes the superintendent of the Bureau's Pittsburgh station explaining that official correspondence used the trade name "Ethyl" rather than "lead", "as this term is apt to prejudice somewhat against its use."
- **18 August 1924.** General Motors and Standard Oil of New Jersey form the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation, each holding half. GM held the use patent and Standard Oil the manufacturing process.
- **26 October 1924 onward.** At Standard Oil's TEL unit at Bayway, New Jersey, the first of five workers dies on 26 October and the others within about a week; dozens more are hospitalised with hallucinations and tremors. Newspapers and workers call the unit the "loony gas" building. Later histories report that New York City, Philadelphia and New Jersey banned or restricted its sale.
- **30 October 1924.** At a press conference, Midgley pours TEL over his hands and inhales its vapour for about 60 seconds, saying he could do so every day without harm.
- **May 1925.** Ethyl suspends sales. On **20 May** the Surgeon General holds a conference in Washington. Frank Howard of Standard Oil calls TEL "this apparent gift of God" that lets a gallon of gasoline "go perhaps 50 percent further". Kehoe, speaking for the Ethyl companies, says: "If it can be shown that an actual danger to the public is had as a result of the treatment of the gasoline with lead, the distribution of gasoline with lead in it will be discontinued from that moment." Yandell Henderson of Yale warns that harm would come on "so insidiously" that leaded fuel would be in universal use "before the public and the government awaken to the situation." Alice Hamilton says: "There are thousands of things better than lead to put in gasoline."
- **1926.** The Surgeon General's committee reports (Public Health Bulletin 163) that there are "no good grounds for prohibiting the use of ethyl gasoline ... as a motor fuel, provided that its distribution and use are controlled by proper regulations." It adds that "longer experience may show that even such slight storage of lead as was observed in these studies may lead eventually to recognizable lead poisoning or to chronic degenerative diseases of a less obvious character," and that the investigation "must not be allowed to lapse." Sales resume.
- **1928 to 1965.** Kehoe writes in 1928 that, since the committee found no evidence of immediate danger, it was thought the studies should not be repeated "at public expense, but that they should be continued at the expense of the industry most concerned" (quoted by Kitman). From 1930 he directs the Kettering Laboratory at the University of Cincinnati, funded by GM, DuPont and Ethyl. Needleman writes that between 1926 and 1965 most data on lead toxicity came from that one laboratory.
- **1965 to 1966.** Geochemist Clair Patterson publishes "Contaminated and natural lead environments of man" (*Archives of Environmental Health*), describing a "severe chronic lead insult" in the U.S. population. At 1966 Senate hearings chaired by Edmund Muskie, Kehoe testifies that "the evidence at the present time is better than it has been at any time that this is not a present hazard."
- **1973 to 1996.** The EPA issues its first lead phase-down rules in 1973. In *Ethyl Corp. v. EPA* a D.C. Circuit panel first sets the rules aside; the full court, en banc, upholds them in 1976. On-road leaded gasoline is banned in the U.S. from 1 January 1996.
- **30 August 2021.** The UN Environment Programme announces that leaded petrol is no longer used anywhere, after Algeria used its last stocks in July 2021.

![Proceedings of the 20 May 1925 conference, Public Health Bulletin No. 158](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/leaded-gasoline-ethyl-1925-proceedings.jpg)

*Title page of the 1925 conference proceedings (Public Health Bulletin No. 158), where the "gift of God" and Kehoe's burden-of-proof offer are recorded. U.S. Public Health Service, public domain.*

## How it works

- [Euphemism / doublespeak](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/euphemism/): the product was sold as "Ethyl", a word taken from the compound's chemical name that leaves out the lead. What is documented is narrower than some later retellings: Kovarik quotes a Bureau of Mines official saying the trade name was used in correspondence instead of "lead" because that word "is apt to prejudice somewhat against its use." That the brand name was chosen for the same reason is an inference. This page has not seen a document that shows it.
- [Testimonial](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/testimonial/): the public case rested on two vouchers tied to the companies. Midgley, the inventor, handled the chemical in front of reporters. Accounts of the event do not record him mentioning his own 1923 lead poisoning. Kehoe, Ethyl's chief medical adviser, then became the main scientific voice on lead safety for four decades, and his laboratory was funded by the companies that made and sold TEL.
- [Card stacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/card-stacking/): the 1926 committee's "no good grounds" finding was the line that travelled. Its caveats (seven months was too short, chronic effects might show later, the study "must not be allowed to lapse") did not stop sales. The companies said there was no practical alternative. Kovarik argues that this was false and points to alcohol-blend fuels that GM researchers had studied. Hamilton made a similar point at the 1925 conference.
- [Glittering generalities](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/glittering-generalities/): "this apparent gift of God" is a virtue phrase used at a hearing called to decide a health question. Howard paired it with a testable fuel-economy claim ("perhaps 50 percent further"). He did not pair it with a health finding.
- **The burden-of-proof rule** (the "Kehoe paradigm" or "Kehoe rule", named by later critics). Jerome Nriagu (1998) describes it as a "show me the data" rule: the product stays on sale until opponents prove actual harm. Since most of the data came from industry-funded work, the people who had to meet the standard did not control the evidence. This rule is a way of setting the terms of proof, not a technique id in the taxonomy. The page records it under testimonial and card-stacking rather than creating a tag.

![Atlantic Ethyl pump with the words "Ethyl Brand of Anti-Knock Compound", Leola, Pennsylvania](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/leaded-gasoline-ethyl-pump.jpg)

*The Ethyl label on an Atlantic pump on Route 23, Leola, Pennsylvania, photographed in 1982 by John Margolies. The label reads "Ethyl Brand of Anti-Knock Compound" and "Ethyl Gasoline Corporation New York, U.S.A." Library of Congress, public domain.*

## Then and now

![A Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers (1954)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/frank-statement-1954.png)

*[A Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/frank-statement-1954/), Tobacco Industry Research Committee, 1954. Public domain.*

In 1954 U.S. tobacco companies answered new cancer studies by announcing their own research committee, as told in [The tobacco industry's smoking-and-health doubt campaign, 1953 to 1998](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/tobacco-doubt-campaign/). Leaded petrol followed a similar path 30 years earlier: after the 1926 report, lead research passed largely to work funded by the industry. The differences are real. The tobacco case ended in a 2006 federal court finding (Judge Kessler) of a decades-long effort to keep doubt alive. Leaded petrol has no comparable court finding against the companies. The main legal ruling, *Ethyl Corp. v. EPA* (1976), dealt with the regulator's power to act on risk before harm was proven. In 1925 a federal agency also reviewed TEL in public and chose regulated sale over a ban. Other industry-research cases in this archive: [Fossil-fuel industry climate doubt campaigns, 1977 to the 2000s](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/climate-doubt-campaigns/) and [The Sugar Research Foundation and the 1967 heart disease review](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/sugar-research-foundation/).

## Positions on the record

- **The industry's stated case (1920s to 1970s):** TEL solved engine knock and made higher-compression engines and better fuel economy possible. The 1924 deaths occurred in manufacture, and the 1926 committee's answer was regulation of manufacture and distribution, not a ban. Kehoe held that the lead levels found in people were natural and not harmful. His stated method was to act on measured exposure data rather than on expectation, which Nriagu calls "show me the data". The 1975 D.C. Circuit panel agreed with Ethyl that the EPA's first rules were not supported, before the en banc court reversed it.
- **Critics' position:** Henderson and Hamilton (1925) warned of slow, widespread harm. Patterson (1965) reported that lead levels in Americans were far above natural levels. Rosner and Markowitz (1985), Needleman (2000) and Kovarik (2005) argue that known hazards were played down, alternatives set aside, and that one industry-funded source dominated the science for decades. Kitman (The Nation, 2000) makes the same case as journalism.
- **This archive's reading:** documented are the 1924 deaths, Midgley's demonstration and his earlier illness, the 1925 conference record (Howard's phrase, Kehoe's offer, the warnings), the 1926 report with its caveats, Kehoe's industry funding and testimony, the 1976 court ruling, the EPA rules and the 2021 end of use. The avoidance of "lead" in 1923 correspondence is documented through Kovarik's archival quote. **Not shown:** that the brand name itself was chosen to hide lead, or that anyone at the 1925 conference knew then of the low-dose effects found later. UNEP estimates that ending leaded petrol prevents more than 1.2 million premature deaths a year.

## Same-method test

Any actor who answers a health warning with a public demonstration and a rule that the product stays until harm is proven would be scored the same way, and more so if it also funds most of the research. That includes a government, a union, a campaign group or a firm. One documented non-industry case is the U.K. government's handling of BSE. In May 1990 agriculture minister John Gummer was photographed feeding a beefburger to his daughter to show that British beef was safe. Officials said there was no evidence that BSE could pass to humans until 20 March 1996, when the government announced that BSE had probably been transmitted to humans as a new variant of CJD. The BSE Inquiry chaired by Lord Phillips (report, October 2000) described the government's approach as a campaign of reassurance and concluded that it was a mistake. It pairs a minister's demonstration with a "no evidence of harm" standard, as in 1924 and 1925. The scale and the actors differ: a ministry, not a seller, and a new disease, not a known poison.

## How to spot it

- Ask who carries the burden of proof. "It stays until you prove harm" and "it waits until it is shown safe" are policy choices, and a statement should say which one it uses.
- Ask who paid for the evidence and whether anyone else could check it. One funded source that supplies most of the data is a warning sign, whatever its conclusions.
- Read the whole finding. A "no grounds to ban" headline may come with caveats asking for more study, as in 1926.
- A person handling a substance in public is a demonstration, not a study. Check the speaker's own record with the substance.
- Check what a brand name or trade term leaves out, and whether internal papers use a different word.

## Images

| Image | Source | Licence |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Mechanism diagram (above) | Drawn for FRAME from the sourced facts on this page (`make_diagrams.py`) | CC BY 4.0, FRAME |
| 1925 conference proceedings, title page | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1925_Proceedings_of_a_Conference_to_Determine_Whether_or_not_there_is_a_Public_Health_Question_in_the_Manufacture,_Distribution,_or_Use_of_Tetraethyl_Lead_Gasoline.pdf), U.S. Public Health Service | Public domain (U.S. government work) |
| Atlantic Ethyl pump, Leola, Pennsylvania (1982) | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%22ETHYL_BRAND_OF_ANTI-KNOCK_COMPOUND%22_%22ETHYL_GASOLINE_CORPORATION_NEW_YORK,_U.S.A.%22_-_Atlantic_Ethyl_pump,_Rt._23,_Leola,_Pennsylvania_LCCN2017707812_(cropped).tif), John Margolies, Library of Congress | Public domain |
| *A Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers* (1954) | FRAME gallery, from Wikimedia Commons | Public domain (published without notice) |

### Image gaps

- **Pre-1931 Ethyl magazine and newspaper advertisements.** U.S. works published before 1931 are public domain, but no scan tied to Ethyl was found on Commons in this search. **This gap can be filled** from a library scan of a 1920s magazine.
- **Photos of Midgley's October 1924 press conference and of the Bayway TEL unit.** No openly licensed copy was found. News photographs from 1924 would be public domain in the U.S. if one can be traced.
- **A portrait of Midgley.** A studio portrait by Blank & Stoller is on [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Portrait_of_Thomas_Midgley_Jr..jpg), but its only rights statement is the Science History Institute's "no known copyright restrictions", not a verified public-domain status, so it is not hosted here. **This gap can be filled** if its first publication date is confirmed.
- **The 1926 report (Public Health Bulletin 163).** It is on Commons as a public-domain PDF and could be added beside the 1925 proceedings. It was left out here to keep the page to the strongest images.
- **Kehoe's Kettering Laboratory papers and the Bureau of Mines correspondence.** Held at the University of Cincinnati and the U.S. National Archives, and known here only through Kovarik's and Needleman's quotations.

## Sources

- [Rosner and Markowitz, "A 'gift of God'?: the public health controversy over leaded gasoline during the 1920s", *American Journal of Public Health* 75(4), 1985](https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.75.4.344)
- [Kovarik, "Ethyl-leaded gasoline: how a classic occupational disease became an international public health disaster", *Int. J. Occup. Environ. Health* 11(4), 2005](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1179/oeh.2005.11.4.384)
- [Kovarik, "Charles F. Kettering and the 1921 discovery of tetraethyl lead"](https://environmentalhistory.org/people/charles-f-kettering-and-the-1921-discovery-of-tetraethyl-lead/)
- [Needleman, "The removal of lead from gasoline: historical and personal reflections", *Environmental Research* 84(1), 2000](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0013935100940696)
- [Nriagu, "Clair Patterson and Robert Kehoe's paradigm of 'show me the data' on environmental lead poisoning", *Environmental Research* 78(2), 1998](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0013935197938081)
- [Needleman and Gee, "Lead in petrol 'makes the mind give way'", EEA, *Late lessons from early warnings II*, ch. 3, 2013](https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/late-lessons-2/late-lessons-chapters/late-lessons-ii-chapter-3/view)
- [U.S. Public Health Service, Proceedings of the 1925 tetraethyl lead conference (Public Health Bulletin 158)](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1925_Proceedings_of_a_Conference_to_Determine_Whether_or_not_there_is_a_Public_Health_Question_in_the_Manufacture,_Distribution,_or_Use_of_Tetraethyl_Lead_Gasoline.pdf)
- [U.S. Public Health Service, The Use of Tetraethyl Lead Gasoline in its Relation to Public Health (Public Health Bulletin 163), 1926](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1926_The_Use_of_Tetraethyl_Lead_Gasoline_in_its_Relation_to_Public_Health.pdf)
- [Kovarik, "A century of tragedy", The Conversation, 2021](https://theconversation.com/a-century-of-tragedy-how-the-car-and-gas-industry-knew-about-the-health-risks-of-leaded-fuel-but-sold-it-for-100-years-anyway-173395)
- [Kitman, "The Secret History of Lead", *The Nation*, 20 March 2000 (journalism)](https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/secret-history-lead/)
- [Ethyl Corp. v. EPA, 541 F.2d 1 (D.C. Cir. 1976) (en banc)](https://opencasebook.org/casebooks/8962-administrative-law/resources/3.3.4.1-ethyl-corp-v-epa-541-f2d-1-dc-cir-1976/)
- [EPA, "EPA Takes Final Step in Phaseout of Leaded Gasoline", 29 January 1996](https://www.epa.gov/archive/epa/aboutepa/epa-takes-final-step-phaseout-leaded-gasoline.html)
- [Federal Register 61 FR 3832, Prohibition on Gasoline Containing Lead or Lead Additives for Highway Use, 2 February 1996](https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/FR-1996-02-02/96-2231)
- [UNEP, "Era of leaded petrol over, eliminating a major threat to human and planetary health", 30 August 2021](https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/era-leaded-petrol-over-eliminating-major-threat-human-and-planetary)
- [University of Cincinnati Libraries, Robert A. Kehoe Archival Collection](https://findingaids.libraries.uc.edu/repositories/4/resources/63)
- The BSE Inquiry, report of the committee chaired by Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, October 2000, as presented to the House of Commons: [Hansard, 26 October 2000](https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/2000/oct/26/bse-inquiry-report); [Farmers Weekly on Gummer's evidence to the inquiry](https://www.fwi.co.uk/news/gummer-on-menu-at-bse-inquiry-4).