Talk:Charles F. Kettering/Archives/2021
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Political commentary
Kettering and colleagues' development of leaded gasoline ultimately caused the release of large quantities of lead into the atmosphere as a result of the combustion of leaded gasoline all over the world.[28] Due to the neurotoxic effects of lead, leaded gasoline has been widely banned since the late 1990s. The development of Freon[29] using CFCs has been implicated in the depletion of the ozone layer. But during the first half of the twentieth century, most people, including Kettering and his colleagues, did not appreciate or fully understand the environmental degradation potential of their work on Freon.[citation needed] They were convinced that the lead concerns were negligible.[citation needed] They were not aware of the ozone layer depletion at the time. It took decades for the lessons to be learned.
The above smacks of political commentary and speculation, not fact. I'm struggling to see how such commentary would belong in a supposedly neutral encyclopedic article.
While the deleterious effects of tetraethyl lead and dichlorodifluoromethane are not in dispute, the claim that Kettering and others had no understanding of this is based solely on speculation. Kettering et al likely had some idea that R-12 could have adverse effects on the atmosphere but likely did not consider such effects to be an issue at the time of R-12's development—widespread use of automotive air conditioning did not take place until the 1950s. As a matter of fact, it was many years after the adoption of R-12 as a refrigerant before any correlation between release of R-12 into the atmosphere and damage to the ozone layer was postulated, let alone proved.
As for tetraethyl lead, the hazards of lead ingestion were already known at the time Kettering developed the additive. To suggest that Kettering was ignorant of that is irresponsible unless unimpeachable proof to the contrary can be presented. Given that, I say the above commentary is unsupportable by any primary sources and should be removed or reworded to indicate that it is supposition, not fact.
- I've removed the unsources apologia. For a less pollyannaish analysis, see [1]. EEng 08:10, 29 January 2021 (UTC)