This is a guest column by Dr. Kelly Mutter – the Psychology Instructor at Lakeland College.
Better than the good old days!
Gasoline is better than it was in the “good old days”. That’s a fact. Lead was used as an additive that made gasoline burn better and engines run smoother, but it created negative effects on our environment and people’s health. Modern unleaded fuel is better than the leaded stuff used in the good old days.
When I was kid, I remember going on family road trips in our 1976 two-door gas guzzling Chrysler. Unlike today, a family vacation usually meant an hours-long car ride, sometimes across two prairie provinces with chain-smoking parents, to visit relatives. No commercial jet to a sunny locale for a pampered all-inclusive family retreat in the 1970s.
Because the Chrysler got about 12 mpg, we made frequent pit-stops to fill up with gasoline. I can still hear dad’s voice saying “fill ‘er up with unleaded” to the gas attendant, as my brother and I raced to the Husky diner for a rare restaurant meal. Leaded gasoline was cheaper than the new unleaded stuff the government was pushing, and I am sure my dad would have preferred to save money on fuel. But Dad’s Chrysler had a catalytic converter, and the lead and its compounds in the cheaper gasoline destroyed catalytic converters!
Unleaded gas? Every time. Was my dad an early environmentalist and a champion of childhood cognitive development? Or was he just forced into paying for something he couldn’t control? Either way, that leaded gasoline turned out to be nasty stuff and he was right to avoid it, whatever his motivations might have been.
Regardless of the extra costs for his fuel, Dad always gave us (his two sons) a few quarters to plug into the mini jukebox song selector, often found on diner tables at roadside gas stations. We would listen to Elton John and eat hot hamburger sandwiches and enjoy chocolate milkshakes (in real glasses) during these stops, and maybe buy a few comic books to help pass the hours of driving ahead of us until the next gas break.
Leaded Gasoline
Gasoline was first distilled from crude oil in 1859 by Edwin Drake in Pennsylvania. Most of it was discarded because there was no commercial use for gasoline at the time.
The first automobile was invented in 1892 and 30 years later, largely thanks to Henry Ford and assembly line production, there were 9 million cars driving the roads. And they all needed fuel. Gasoline was no longer discarded. Instead, it was sold on roadsides in specialty businesses known as gas stations.
This early gasoline naturally helped propel the automotive industry, but its low octane ratings made it susceptible to inconsistent and spontaneous ignition, leading to harmful mechanical pinging and engine-knocking.
Thomas Midgley Jr. (1889-1944) was an American engineer and gifted chemist who introduced lead as an additive to gasoline sometime in the early 1920s. He also gets the nod as the guy who discovered chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in 1928. It seems Midgley Jr. had a successful run in the “Roaring 20s”!
Midgley Jr.’s CFCs, commercially known as Freon, helped solve the difficult problem of keeping things cool, such as food and people. Meanwhile, his idea to add lead to gasoline served to boost its octane rating, thus making it more stable under compression, reducing engine-knocking. Overtime, engine knocking causes wear and tear on various engine parts, so chalk up another win for Midgley Jr.
During the ‘muscle car” era of the 1950s and 60s, automobiles and engines kept getting bigger and more powerful. Chuck Berry sang “Jaguar and Thunderbird”, and the Beach Boys immortalized the Chevy Impala and its powerful “409”, Little GTOs, deuce coupes, hot rod Lincolns, and greased lightning! You get the idea. Big was beautiful. Big was powerful. But a focus on engine performance demanded even higher-octane fuel, which required even more lead as an additive.
There was a problem, though. Cars burning leaded gasoline released toxic lead particles into the air people were breathing. Lead is a harmful neurotoxin and is most harmful when inhaled. Long-term effects of lead exposure are related to serious health detriments, including cardiovascular damage, kidney problems, and reproductive issues in adults. As well, the toxic impact of lead on cognitive neurodevelopment, especially in children, is alarming! Decreased Intelligence, learning disabilities, and behavioural problems--aggression, impulsivity, attention deficits, and hyperactivity—have potential long lasting developmental and societal effects.
The End of Leaded Gasoline!
To his credit, Midgley Jr. eventually expressed regret for the damage leaded gasoline and CFCs caused the environment (and he died in 1944! Imagine the level of regret he would experience today if he were still alive). By the 1970s, scientific evidence was clearly demonstrating that lead in our environment was leading to serious health problems. What to do?
By 1990 in Canada, and 1996 in America, leaded gasoline was completely phased out for registered road vehicles. Now, instead of choosing between leaded and unleaded gasoline, dads on road trips with their families can often choose between three grades of gasoline: regular, midgrade, and premium. These grades reflect octane ratings. Higher octane ratings, which still reduce engine knocking, are now achieved through improved refining processes that make gasoline more stable and predictable, without adding lead.
Like my dad before, I burn unleaded gasoline (that I pump myself), but I stream music for free in my SUV (no tabletop jukebox selector for my clan) while my family eats drive-through fast food in plastic and cardboard containers on our way to the next destination! Times change. Sometimes for the better, sometimes not. But the gas is better.
Unfortunately, every gallon of modern unleaded gasoline I use in my SUV still emits about 19 pounds of CO2 into the air. But no more lead emissions! And according to a 2007 report published in The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, the decade following the elimination of lead in gasoline correlated with a 56% decline in violent crime. However, a meta-analysis of the lead-crime hypothesis was published in 2022, and although it supported the relationship between reduced lead pollution and declining violent crime, it cautioned that the impact may be overstated. Instead, the report indicated that exposure to leaded gasoline (along with other sources of lead pollution) may have increased impulsivity and aggressiveness, which often serve as precursors to violent crime.
Other reports indicated that a reduction of lead in our air protects our IQs. A recent American study estimated that individuals born between 1966 and 1970 (that’s me; peak lead exposure) lost an average of 2.6 IQ points related to toxic lead inhalation. It is also hypothesized that lead exposure via car exhaust might be partly responsible for age-related diseases like dementia. I think we can agree, unleaded gasoline today is better than what we had before.
Other Ways Gas is Better Today
Today, in Canada and the United States, gasoline typically contains 10% ethanol (or more). This biofuel helps reduce greenhouse emissions, improves air quality, and lowers our dependence on fossil fuels, while also playing a part in increasing octane ratings.
Do we burn too much gasoline? I think so. But the gas is better and the engines we use to burn gasoline today are more efficient. (I get it. This is the classic “cup-is-half-full” approach to a serious problem, but at least it’s something).
According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), vehicles in 2022 were 35.4% more efficient than those made in 2002. The EPA stated that new vehicles average 26.4 mpg. That’s a big improvement just in this millennium. But let’s go back to 1976, when my father’s Chrysler got 12 miles per gallon. In 2019 (most recent statistics for this unaffected by COVID lockdowns) the average car’s fuel efficiency was more than twice as good.
North Americans responded to improved fuel efficiency by buying more cars and driving more. Let’s compare the good old days (1976) with 2019.
1976:
Average Fuel Efficiency – 12 miles per gallon
Cars per 1,000 Americans – 575
Average miles driven per car – 9,300 miles
Average amount of gas burned per American: 445 gallons
2019:
Average Fuel Efficiency – 25 miles per gallon
Cars per 1,000 Americans – 837
Average miles driven per car – 13,500 miles
Average amount of gas burned per American: 450 gallons
We are driving a lot more miles today but burning about the same amount of fuel. That’s good, I guess. We have more people and more cars, and we are consuming a similar amount of fuel per person as we did nearly 50 years ago. But we probably don’t want to use the 1970s as our measuring stick for eco-friendliness! But it’s not nothing. And there is no lead in the exhaust today from all that burned fuel! That’s better.
Also, vehicle CO2 emissions have decreased substantially. In the last 20 years these emissions have dropped nearly 30%. And thanks to catalytic converters (first introduced in the 1970s), the emissions from gasoline powered vehicles have less carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and hydrocarbons. And no lead! That’s definitely better.
Gas today is better than “the good old days”.