Does anyone know

[KmH]

anything about one of my heros - Claire Patterson?

Or anything about my #1 anti-hero, Thomas Midgley Jr., the single most enviornmentally destructive organism that has ever lived on planet Earth.

 

[LokiZ]

One of his own inventions killed Thomas Midgley Jr.

 

[KmH]

One of his own inventions killed Thomas Midgley Jr.

Yep!

Midgley was bedridden and being a mechanical engineer designed a cable and pulley system to use to get himself get into and out of bed.

One day, one of the cables somehow got wrapped around his neck and he was strangled to death.

Though he was trained as a mechanical engineer, Midgley was interested in chemical engineering and while working for a subsidiary of General Motors discovered, in late 1921, that adding lead to gasoline greatly reduced 'engine knock'.

Consequently, General Motors, Standard Oil of California, and Du Pont formed a new company called the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation.

It was well known at the time that lead was harmful to humans and people today have several hundred times more lead in their blood streams than people did prior to the adding of lead to gasoline.

The sale of leaded gasoline was finally banned on 1/1/1996.

Thomas Midgley Jr. also invented Chloroflourocarbons which are still famously destroying the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere.

Midgley got wrapped up in his contraption and was killed before it became clear his second major chemical invention was even worse than his first.