Did you know…Chemistry of destruction
…that one person holds the distinction for being the most destructive engineer of all time? He was not a weapons engineer, or a military man, but an engineer with a penchant for chemistry.
There are a host of bad chemicals that we pump into our atmosphere and some, like lead, will never really leave us. Lead collects in our bone marrow and if you build up too much, it will kill you. Those of us born before 1986 have, on average, 625 times more lead in our bodies than people living a century ago. Although lead was used in innumerable consumer products, the greatest contributor to the lead levels in our bodies today was leaded gasoline.
Lead, in the form of tetra ethyl lead, was added to gasoline because it eliminated engine knock, and it took until 1986 to get it permanently removed from the consumer market (it was first sold in 1923).
Another nasty chemical that has haunted the human race are chloroflourcarbons (CFCs). Invented as an alternative to gases traditionally used for cooling that were extremely deadly, CFCs were nonflammable, noncorrosive, and safe to breathe.
Unfortunately, one pound of CFC’s can annihilate 70,000 pounds of ozone. If you could evenly distribute all of the ozone we have in the upper atmosphere, the layer would be a uniform 1/8 inch thick, so there is not alot of it. Also, a molecule of CFCs is 10,000 times more efficient at retaining heat than a molecule of carbon dioxide. So it removes beneficial ozone, exacerbates the greenhouse effect, and will exist for about 100 years.
Here is the kicker; one man invented both of these chemicals. His name was Thomas Midgley Jr. and the world would be alot healthier of a place if he had stuck to being an engineer.
Another example of: “Just because you can, does not mean you should”