Some technologies actually have had unintended side effects, but not always the ones we saw coming. Artificial lights are killing all the insects which nobody really worried about and cars do kill tons of people, which we worried about in the 1920s. I don't know what the deal was with leaded gasoline, that one was just bizarre.

All in all, it's just really hard to anticipate how society and technology will interact. We think about the environment now but I don't know if any systematic progress has been made on predicting the human factor.

screened windows (society will collapse because you won’t hear your neighbours and pedestrians on the street, we’ll all become hermits and die holed up in our homes)

This one has actually come true to a certain measurable degree (see Bowling Alone, written at what is now the midpoint of the trend), but I don't think it's down to window screens.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Leaded gasoline has a really crazy story. People have known that lead is highly toxic since the mid 1800s, and when tetraethyl lead was invented by Thomas midgley Jr in the 1910s, pretty much everybody at GM knew how toxic it was. Dozens of workers died from exposure, and Thomas himself was sick with lead poisoning when it was unveiled to the public. GM even went as far as naming it "ethyl" to avoid public backlash.

The reason it wasn't banned until the 90s was because health officials in the 20s thought that exposure to drivers was so low that it wouldn't reach toxic levels until decades down the line. Like, the 1970s. This wasn't reviewed until the mid 70s and by that point the consequences were disastrous.There were some studies between the 20s and 70s, but most didn't gain much traction. Many adults and children had increased levels of lead in their blood and lead has contaminated the groundwater and polluted the air. For instance, there is NO safe level of lead in blood, and Herbert needleman in the early 70s found some American schoolchildren had as much as 14 micrograms per deciliter This is the reason it wasn't banned until the 90s in most countries. One could say we're still recovering from that in some ways.

And the worst part? They could have used ethanol, an organic substance that's a major additive in alcoholic beverages. It also prevents engine knocking and is highly flammable, but otherwise not even close to as toxic as TEL was. You still woudlnt want to breathe it in, but it probably wouldn't have polluted our air and ground so much. GM refused to use ethanol though because it couldn't be patented (being naturally produced?) and it wouldn't be very profitable to use it to prevent knocking. TEL was far more profitable.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Right? The general public could be told that it was a tiny amount that was harmless, but any doctor could have done the napkin math, so how did it gain traction in the first place? GM pulled off quite something there. I've seen a pretty convincing argument that the lead poisoning was responsible for the high 1970s crime rate.

They could have used ethanol, an organic substance that’s a major additive in alcoholic beverages.

That literally is the alcohol, actually. It's not quite as good though, which is why small planes still use leaded.

Mandatory mention that Thomas Midgley Jr. also invented the CFCs that fucked the ozone layer, and was eventually strangled by his own mobility pulley system invention. Truly a legend of cursedness.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Thanks for the correction about ethanol, I'm not big into alcohol so I didn't know what to write lol