One of my favourite content creators recently made a video that I think a lot of us will appreciate knowing more about. It is 25 minutes and focuses on the invention of leaded gasoline.
https://odysee.com/@veritasium:f/the-man-who-accidentally-killed-the-most:c
I think that video is clickbait, like so many. One could make the same observation about many things e.g. the invention of the engine, the car, the aircraft, and especially food, especially processed food, especially meat which, via heart disease and cancer, kills more than anything else.
“Veritasium” is all about clickbait. They generate vast discussions on forums, using the old method of picking a topic which takes effort to dispute. There is a vast thread on EEVBLOG regarding a Veritasium video on how electricity travels.
While u deniably a very dangerous substance, and, quite possibly the cause of countless deaths, we simy have no means to actually point to single (or simple) causes of deaths.
The sugar industry, tobacco, tires (micro particles) and and and. If you add up the statistically calculated deaths for several better analyzed problem areas, you find that these reach / exceed natural mortality ;-)
We often do not know what precisely we are dying from.
Still, Ethyl is a prime example of a solution becoming a problem and affected industry trying just about anything to ignore & deny it. That is the sad part IMHO
The title is clickbait, for sure.
Clickbait, propaganda and desinformation is one of the single largest problems our society has at this stage. And this “documentary” is just one in a swamp of many.
That is the problem with the fact that everyone can now publish unverified trash for a world wide audience to see. Youtube and other streaming platforms have become a real threat because of it augmented by “social” media, which in fact are about as anti social as possible.
Before we had the internet, such trash would never have made it past the scrutiny of publishers in such quantity and with such a world wide outreach. It is really a question how to deal with this in the future. I somehow think that it can not be allowed to go on like this.
It’s not rocket science that lead is nasty but are we sure about quantities in today aircraft vs 1960 cars?
- Avgas 91UL is NO Lead
- Avgas 100LL is LOW Lead
Both are under regulated thresholds (even by REACH in Europe), the former 91UL has no lead anyway 
It’s a very relevant information, there are far more serious risks in a SEP than lead exposure (unless someone with PhD in multimedia will come up with a video explain every SEP crash by low IQ pilots exposed to TEL)
Peter wrote:
One could make the same observation about many things e.g. the invention of the engine, the car, the aircraft, and especially food, especially processed food, especially meat which, via heart disease and cancer, kills more than anything else.
I haven’t looked at the video (and don’t intend to), but it is known that the figures for violent crime quite closely follow the figures for leaded gasoline use, with a 20-year lag.
I recall it has been shown that the pattern of star constellations 15000 years ago closely resembles the layout of fire stations in New York City. This relates to a famous book, only slightly less notorious than one of a similar name which was also a really great read, as one might expect, it having been written by a self confessed charlatan And half the claims in the climate change arena show correlations with lots of stuff. That’s the great thing about correlations; to paraphrase the old joke about British Standards (BSxxxx) “there are so many to choose from”
Health damage and low IQ from lead TEL exposure is unquestionable, there is plenty of data on that
The claims on TEL vs level of crimes in society is “way too complex to infer statistically”, I think education, poverty and urbanisation has way more effects on crime levels…if you ignore lack of sex (or too much of it without durex) and watching Hollywood films
PS: on plotting curves, there is a link between solar spots and starting war followed by fiscal stimulus, obviously, you need 3-factor and levels of correlation to get that conclusion
Ibra wrote:
Health damage and low IQ from lead TEL exposure is unquestionable, there is plenty of data on that
Indeed. As you, say there is an unquestionable casual link between TEL and brain damage. That is quite different from the web site Peter mentions (which I have been aware of for many years) which searches for whatever correlations can be found between obviously (in most cases) unrelated things.
Then, of course, there is this.
Ibra wrote:
It’s not rocket science that lead is nasty but are we sure about quantities in today aircraft vs 1960 cars?- Avgas 91UL is NO Lead
- Avgas 100LL is LOW Lead
I’ve been told that 100LL is low lead compared to previous aviation gasoline, but is still more lead than car gasoline had…
