Microgreens: the guy who f*ed the planet – and how we’re still cleaning it up

Leaded petrol has made us measurably dumber.

Scientists suspect that leaded petrol has also made us more aggressive and of course it kills people as well. And the same guy who put lead in fuel also created a miracle refrigerant that tore a hole in the one thing that protected our planet from runaway radiation from the sun.

This is the first of our Microgreens episodes where I spend a short amount of time answering your questions, or talking about something that may not get a whole, full episode.

For the first episode I wanted to talk about the guy who really f*ed the planet twice.

In this episode I share:

• The story of Thomas Midgley Jr.
• The issues with cars in the 1920s and how Thomas fixed it
• How lead got added to petrol
• The repercussions of lead in petrol started rapidly
• Was Thomas Midgley really to blame?
• Thomas's second F up – the problem of leaking fridges
• Understanding the science around lead and why it's so harmful to humans
• Why Freon was Thomas's solution to the killer fridge problem
• The science behind Freon and how it destroyed the ozone layer
• The Montreal Protocol and the healing of the ozone layer

Key quotes:

"Epidemiologists have since pinned a global loss of IQ points to this very factor"

"Higher lead levels also correlate with spikes in violent crime"

"A UN campaign only just got the last countries out of leaded fuel in 2021"

"Back in the 1920s fridges killed people"

"The only reason our planet is habitable at all is because the ozone layer prevents about 90% of that radiation from reaching the earth’s surface"

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