Happy Earth Day! If you want to offset your carbon emissions I will personally cover the first month of your subscription at https://ve42.co/wren (for the first 100 people to sign up)

Why am I being recommended these videos by YT. Some stoopid guy made an error like really old time ago and we have to learn about it??? Why !!!!!!

PS: I hate earth !!!

3rd comment lol

Do the lead pencils we use have the same lead? ✏️✏️✏️

Bro I am waiting for the new n updated video on electricity

The FAA has been dragging their feet on approving unleaded aviation fuel for years even though a fleet-wide replacement (G100UL) has passed all of the necessary certification tests multiple times. Naturally, approving it would create economic winners and losers, so I guess that's the holdup?

The timing of infrastructure changes always coincides with keeping money in the same pockets.

Peer reviewed data proves that decay is accelerated by other materials.

At least the aviation version is "low lead" (100LL). I think that's about half of the normal lead level.

sadlife. but in order to solve this we have brilliant ad. xD makes us 20 times smarter by watching yt tutorials

you mean AVgas yes, but only for piston engines. Jet engines, which are responsible for 90% of the emissions, use JetA.

This man just managed to cover history, psychology, science, chemistry, math, and human studies.

Honestly I got really mad because at first he moved between so many subjects, but boy this is the most amazing video ever imo

…and animation!

A true renaissance man.

Textbook pessimism. The statement is true, in part, but is definitely not the whole story and is presented in a selective manner that disregards this fact.

And geology!

Can't call it "by accident" if he activly tries to keep the truth about the toxicity away from the public. He and his boss are surely in the top ten of worst human being ever lived on this planet. It does not matter if it was intentional or not. The damage he had done is irredeemable.

is he worse than hitler? because he tried to make money and didn't think it would be that big a deal?

I could also add MSGs, GMOs, pesticides, herbicides, hormones, and other artificial things in common USA foods that are wreaking havoc on our bodies

@Megan J hormones? GMOS? Wha

@Megan J lmao

I love that Michael Stevens, Tom Scott and Derek Muller have all covered Thomas Midgely Jr.'s life and inventions. And I've watched all of these videos numerous times, including this more recent one. And that's not to say they're all the same. The focus on Clair Patterson in this video is phenomenal, a true scientist who should be taught about in all schools.

Clair Patterson’s story is told in an episode of Cosmos too.

Honestly this dude seems so cool

why not just say their channel names? you know them personally or you're just trying to sound cool?

@johnbeans4297  Because I'm talking about the people who covered it. Michael Stevens isn't Vsauce and Derek Muller isn't Veritasium. Those are their YouTube channels, not their names. Referring to a person's actions by their name is standard, and they have never gone by those "names". They are just the names of the YouTube channels where they put their content. Also, Tom Scott's channel is called "Tom Scott", so... Your question would make some sense if those were pseudonyms, but they aren't. Even then though, it's not remotely weird to use a person's real name when referencing them. If I knew them personally, why would I say their last names?

99 Percent Invisible also did a story on it which covers less of the science but more of the political theatre and lobbying involved which delayed the ban as long as it did.

Pretty insane if you keep in mind that a very similar problem nowadays has come up with plastic. And people don’t want to get rid of it due to the same reasons - cost effective, practical, flexible in use.

Yes but you don't get poisoned to death when touching/licking plastic, unlike lead.

@Sergmanny Rolic They discovered we have plastic particles in our lungs. No one knows how that will affect us long term.

@Elina Well then, now what?

I love how educational these videos are, but I can't help getting angry at the idea that we could be smarter, safer, and more advanced as a species if it weren't for these short initial moments in our history

To make it even worse, the business owners knew but saw the dollar signs. Capitalism strikes again.

Imagine being the person responsible for making an entire generation dumber on average. That’s a sad legacy to leave behind.

And now the younger ones are suffering from it

There seem to be a lot of groups contesting for the title, nowadays.

have you been on truth social? Patterson's record is being challenged daily.

Thank you for all your informative episodes. 15% of all aviation fuel contains lead. Eagles fly and sore up to 20,000 ft. Air is cycled twice through the lungs of an eagle (twice that of humans) to ensure lungs are always inflated. The leading cause of eagle deaths is from environmental lead poisoning.

Its kind of nuts that lead is not regulated in aviation fuel. I live right next to a small airport in a busy large city and literally nobody knows about lead from this fuel. Nevermind the international airport. It is literally less than 100 meters away from condo buildings.

​@Tony Ko leaded fuel is used in light piston aircraft, so most major international airports won't have much, if any, increased lead in the environment.

Are you trying to imply that aviation exhaust is the source of the lead poisoning eagles, rather than bioaccumulation of dumped lead in the fish they catch?😂

I first learned about Clare Patterson watching Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. Definitely an amazing man. Using science and fighting against oil companies who cared more about profit than public health.

who still cares more about profit than really anything else.

My ex-husband was a senior executive at ExxonMobil. When he retired, he said that his biggest regret was not to have pushed for the unleaded solutions in fuels much earlier.

My late brother worked as a logistics manager for many oil companies around the world. The stories he told of death and corruption were awful.

you did well to divorce him

you gotta love doing something evil and then planning an apology down the road so you can get the best of both worlds

I'm a bit late, I'm afraid. But i have to say, this video and the one about Fritz Harber are two of the greatest on YouTube, as far as I know. The amount of work, the graphics, the story, the entire research and the way you and maybe your team filtered the information to keep the whole video interesting and informative is incredible. You telling a story and as you mentioned yourself in the beginning, its a show. Its an entire documentary but so fascinating or gripping, that you enjoy the entire journey. Its history, science and somehow like discovering a mystery. Absolutely great work. For me its a piece of art and to do that with that much knowledge and information speaks for itself.

Just as a point of order: he didn't 'accidentally' harm or kill millions of people. He (and others) knew the consequences of their actions but was prepared for others to py the (ultimate) price for his pieces of silver. Greed is, and will continue to be, the downfall of mankind.

Bingo baby.

It is not innate human greed that is the problem, it is the current economic system that makes, encourages and celebrates greed.

Stream Young Loud 😈

@Noah R. And that's why we need a more social economic system aimed fulfilling people's needs and the needs of our environment, instead of maximising private profit.

@Simon Indeed, EAT THE RICH and replace the system.

Watching this brought back one of the worst cases of sadistic child abuse I ever heard about. A friend many years ago adopted a brother and sister who were impaired. Their biological father had intentionally fed them powdered lead paint in their cereal for an extended period of time. I never found out whether he was charged or penalyzed. Sadly there are many American people to this day who are being poisoned because our government has neglected to repair lead piping that approximately 15-22 million people are still getting through their taps. Rarely if ever is it brought up in the media.

One case of abuse is bad, but Millions of babies are born impaired with FAS because their mothers drink alcohol while carrying them, knowing the damage they are causing. Women get a pass and society picks up the tab. Perhaps this father just needed "education" too😑

I was given a homework to write a presentation about an invention. I chose cars. I was wondering what i should add to my text but then i remembered this video existed. I wrote a short summary of this story and the teacher liked it. Thanks so much.

Good thing you remembered this video. Bet you didn't get much lead exposure then😅

​@ThatDroneGuy Wow... That's a lot of negativity.

@ThatDroneGuy maybe instead of crying in a comment section you could idk.. go and enjoy your life? No need to be so negative about a kid lol

​@Sofia what did this drone guy wrote?

As someone who works with solder, this worries me, I knew lead is harmful, but I didnt know that ANY amount of lead was harmful. Thanks for this piece of excellent periodism.

Lead poisoning is no joke, I work in the metal recycling industry and have been exposed to large amount of lead, my last lead blood test was 26.7μg/dL with the lab results saying levels should be

i hope you get better soon, lead poisoning is awful.

That's terrible! Would you leave the industry to avoid further exposure? 😥

I know how it feels, I live where the groundwater(drinking water) are polluted with lead and many other chemicals since the industries basically have no oversight and dump everything everywhere they can. Especially the river, I have hard time remembering anything, hands always jittery, and many other health problems. And sadly, even today, nothing is done to prevent this pollutions. Eventually profits are always more important than lives.

I'm sorry to hear about the issues you have and hope you're able to alleviate the effects they have on you. The answer to your question is money. In the end it's always money.

I worked at a smelter. Cadmium and the like tis no joke. Wear and clean your respirator properly.

This answers a question I had as a child.why did Fred Flintstone call the dinosaur that filled his car eythel.honestly,a great and very informative history lesson.thank you.

Clair Patterson was a big part of getting lead out of gasoline. He didn't just do the research, he testified to lawmakers as well. He's one of those true heroes that we shamefully never get told about in school.

gioyu comi I would say he grossly underestimated how bad they were rather, given he expected 10 times less lead in bones today as opposed to thousands of years ago. Who can say though if he was trying to be optimistic and ignore "skepticism" from others or were completely ignorant, he's still terrible for knowingly exposing himself to the chemicals just to fool others and make a profit. I think greed can make many go far even to risk their own life than risk being honest and losing everything, but I'm not sure he might've risked as much if he knew what he know today, especially since he did a lot of the studies himself on lead to find out, whether out of conscience or to save his invention's reputation.

So that's why millions of kids were uninterested in school in the late 50s and 60s 17:10 And we pay tax es., it should be re versed for poi son ing the pub lic !!

@Tyragon no. You've mixed it up, it was PATTERSON that measured and expected 10 times less, and found his predictions blown out of the water. Rewatch at 16:04 Midgley spent months recovering from lead poisoning in Florida and avoiding his own product. If anyone was to know about the effects of lead first hand it would have been him.

That's why they taught us in school that "ethics comes first before knowledge." Even if he did it unknownly of its dangers, its ethical to study all its effects, and lesen to people when they try to warn you.

As a car guy I have to point out that lead is still used in many high octane race fuel blends, they’re intended to be used with cars on track that no longer have emissions systems because I guess lead and catalytic converters don’t mix. Once you’re getting to octane levels of 100 or higher it’s pretty much standard to find TEL still in use, some drag strips and gas pumps near racetracks will even have it on the pumps as an option

in england it's still sold at a few stations for ordinary use and i sometimes use a real TEL additive but usually a synthetic replacement

This was well done! I’m growing to enjoy your content. Keep it up and thank you for the work you and the team put into it.

Learned a lot about lead! The amount of work done here is priceless. Thanks

This was super well done. Thanks for making quality content that actually matters 👍

This isn't mentioned in the video, but Clair Patterson was blacklisted for speaking out against lead in gasoline. When the government finally formed a National Research Council panel to investigate it eight years after Patterson raised the alarm, he was excluded despite being the world's leading expert on the subject. Before publishing his paper in 1963, his work was largely funded by oil companies to the tune of around $20k per year. That funding was immediately rescinded, and he also lost a contract with the Public Health Service. The oil industry asked the Atomic Energy Commission to stop funding his work, and members of the board at Caltech tried to have him silenced. He spent most of his life in relative obscurity because of the efforts to blacklist him. Some of that has changed in the past decade or so, and these days, a lot of people know who he is.

Sounds very familiar.

Never heard of him until today. This is such a sobering video.

It was mentioned in the second version of Cosmos when Neil Tyson took over.

My dad was born in 1913 and grew up around these "crank" cars. He turned a crank, the engine started the the crank hit my dad's arm and broke it. The auto has killed millions but no one would dare suggest that it had never been invented. When humans want something badly enough, they'll put up with massive fatality counts that result from it.

Its the very reason why we're here and not still sitting in the fields hunting with sticks and stones.

All they had to do was implement a ratchet into the thing

This is a super informative and revealing piece of important history. Thanks Derek for bring this to the attention of many!

Havent learned much since school, fell into addiction. First thing i been able to watch on my own device in awhile. Thanks and bless everybody here trying to learn.

This was one of the most informative videos I have ever seen on YouTube. This is a must-watch video.

@veritasium You described one of the effects of lead poisoning was that it strips the mylenin off of nerve cells. This is exactly the description of what the disease Multiple Sclerosis does! I'd be curious of your source, since my wife suffers from MS, and I've not come across this fact in my research thus far.

It's interesting that the person who caused the harm in this case did so much of it and did it with a huge amount of support. Meanwhile, the person who tried to undo it had to go to great lengths to prove there was a problem and was still seen as extreme at the time.

Hmm reminds me of Pfizer 🤣

@Sean Hubbard 🤣 You mean gene therapy?

People who fight against power structures are always labelled as extreme by those who want to hold on to their power

Thank you. Excellent video and great history as usual. Learned a lot. The only thing I'd add to your explanation is that the freed chlorine atom not only bonds to ozone, but then it subsequently reacts with atomic oxygen and eventually separates into free chlorine again and again and again. 1 chlorine atom is said to/(measured?) breakdown 100,000 ozone molecules. That's why is so bad in trace amounts.

In Argentina, the water pipes for homes were made of lead and even today there are still millions of homes in this condition. I can still remember the unpleasant taste of the water in my grandmother's house, which I later learned was due to lead.

An interesting thing to note, that was briefly touched on in this presentation, was the accumulation of lead in the bones. I would like to know what research has been done identifying neonatal lead poisoning caused by the feeding of mothers milk. The second child of my cousin was diagnosed with lead poisoning, although there was no lead paint to be found in their house (a trace on a window sill in an unused room). My theory has always been that she ingested lead through nursing.

Probably

I strangely feel happy of his strangulation of the device that he also made. He is actually that guy in the Zombie movies that frequently survived in the first scenes by brilliant strategies and putting lives of others to death but dies horribly at the end.

He died a hero, inventing the device that ended the life of the man who poisoned the world and destroyed the ozone layer.

I think that he is reflection of the time he lived in. People back then had less to almost no awareness to environmental and health effects of stuff they invent or use daily. Inverters like him, usually thought on the single goal of improving performance, or certain characteristics with almost no regards to other aspects. Only later after we've witnessed the effects those inventions, we became more aware, and also regulations have changed accordingly.

The moment that Midgley pretended that Ethyl wasn't dangerous (especially after HE, HIMSELF, had just recovered from lead poisoning) was the moment that it was no longer an "ACCIDENT" that he poisoned the world.

The amount of times this kind of disregard for human safety has happened disgusts me.

@Jim Werther quite the monologue just to disagree with literally every scientist in the world saying that lead is dangerous. Your proof being "trust me bro, my dad is smart"

The moment we failed to listen to Ben Franklin was when it stopped being an accident.

In all reality, the companies, banks, and other companies involved would have simply hired someone else to advertise the product anyway. Most likely a worker, I mean - they used the radium girls. The advertising point was safety, and "nothing says safe better than breathing it!"

This guy does a great job. Thank you for this work!

In 7th grade science class the teacher passed around samples of various elements. The lead sample was in a glass bottle with thoroughly taped on lid. The guy sitting next to me, James, took the tape off, removed the lid, and took a big whiff. He went into a coughing fit, unable to breathe, pounding on his own chest. The teacher came over, took the bottle and said "Lead is poisonous."

Teacher is based

Sure

So ducktape is a terrible safety measure againist lead? Shocker

Today in things that didnt happen

Can you do an episode on glyphosate and another on industrial seed oils? I think humans are having similar problems due to use of these chemicals which are incompatible with human biology/microbiomes.

Man !!! Mind blowing... What an immeasurable effort to put these in just one video. Everything you said is newer to me and you covered everything about lead in all the aspects. Respect bro🙏😯

they just went down the guy's wikipedia page almost line for line...

And I still worry about one of my sons. When he was with his mom for a weekend he got shot with a pellet gun. But kept it secret for a few days. When I discovered it I took him to the doctor. But the doctor said it's fine if it stays in his body. But it's a lead pellet.

They don’t use lead anymore

@Aaron Helsby really, well that's that's good to know. Thank you for the info.

@Mark Lindgren normally Tin and bismuth

Being able to correlate historical events related to human civilization like the rise and fall of empires and the Black Death by observing lead levels in the ice cores in Greenland is so crazy.

@Cewla it was both the poles and greenland

Earth is a closed system 🤷‍♂️

Stream Young Loud. 😈

@Ø It is not, it gets sun energy

@BHBalast Earth is a closed system, but not an Isolated system. Closed systems absorb/release energy with outside, but isolated systems do not.

One of the best video, I have ever seen, you are truly genius and humane. I hope your work will make people more conscious and will lead to a better world. A world which is not driven by greed of few but by the well-being of humanity.

Agreed, very well said. ❤

That was so interesting to hear and in the same time shocking. Amazing what chain of reactions one "small" change/discovery can produce 🙄 But in their defense for both events, both inventions, it would actually take years and years of study for them to realize that the "discovery" is not so good.

But it was mentioned that all of them knew that lead wasn't good for general public yet they went ahead with their sales

I’ve been wondering for years who would do a longer-form covering of Midgely. It’s almost unfathomable that someone so seemingly mundane could do so much harm but… there it is

Patterson is such an amazingly analytical researcher!

It's kinda ironic for an inventor to be killed by his own invention - yet on the other side of the coin, some people could say that it's a karmic justice given that he messed up the environment in more than one way. Yet thanks to him we now know better at the same time.

I worked as an apprentice in a lead smelter back in the early 90’s, blood tests for lead contamination were carried out monthly, you would be removed from the smelter if the contamination was about 30ppm, my usual levels were around 11-15ppm. The smelter was based in a small mining town in a rural and remote part of Australia and we were sent to one of the capital cities for 6 weeks for college component required as part of our training for the apprenticeship. My accomodation was in a block of flats situated on a main road in the city, with constant traffic, this was in the early 90’s and lead additives to fuel hadn’t yet been phased out. At the completion of that block of college, and on returning to work, my first day back coincided with the blood test for lead, and it came back higher than I’d ever had, only a couple of ppm lower than the allowable threshold. I put it down to the lead additives in the fuel from the city traffic, it’s bizarre to think that it’s safer to work in a lead smelter than it was to live beside a high traffic area.

Horrifying. Thank you for sharing, really puts this issue into perspective.

Nice to hear an Aussie perspective on the issue too. How ironic..

@Callum Price a small town called Mount Isa have the highest lead concentration in Australia

Makes sense though. When you melt lead now one is very carefully not to reach the temperature at which it vaporized, so you can't breath it in. Not true with leaded gasoline.

Wow. The amount of research in this video is overwhelming. More power to you.

I imagine Veritasium could easily make far more money in advertising by catering to more convenient "truths". For that, a world of respect.

Love the animations! Helps a lot to visualise and take the information in

This guy is a genius, a bit evil yes, but a genius

Didnt GM have a head engineer recovering from lead poisoning and wrote a letter about how safe it was as he was in the hospital dealing w lead poisoning in the 70s? Also had hundreds of employees inside the plant were it was being developed who were sick and they just ignored it.

Telling Patterson's story in parallel with Midgley's is such a good choice, really shows that the side effects of leaded gasoline were not something unknown to the generation that implemented it. they just valued easy profit over human life. Though one thing that irks me about the way that science history (and most history for that matter) is presented by stories like these is showing Patterson alone on a boat or in the arctic gathering samples. Scientists work in teams and the research credited to Midgley or Patterson is not the work of one man but a whole bunch and the people who support them.

Midgley, an inventor with some of the best worst inventions 😅

I think this narrative is mentioned in the book the theory of everything. And it is probably the main source of this video.

I mean at the end of the day he has to keep idiots like us interested so.

Thank god they don't value easy profit over human life anymore... Oh wait🤔

Go back to cleaning the lab equipment buddy

It definitely wasn't accidental. Also, can you imagine how different things would be if Byron Carter never stopped to help the lady with her car?

Wow. He mentions George Tilton. Dr. Tilton was my geochemistry professor at university, He was one of the better professors that I had. A really decent person without the ego of the other professors.

So nowadays the term "knocking" is more used to describe mechanical engine issues (like rod bearing knock, main bearing knock, piston knock/slap, etc.). This type of knocking is more commonly referred to now as pre-ignition or pre-detenation. Typically it's caused by the engine running too lean (not enough fuel), and it can cause catastrophic engine damage because then it burns WAY hotter than it's supposed to. I've seen pre-detenation melt pistons.

Clyde Patterson is simply one of the most unsung heroes of the 20th century

I worked in the lab at Ethyl corporation relocated to Richmond VA. many years ago now. Charles Kettering also built the first drone for the Army back in the 20’s I believe.

Gives an entire generation lead poisoning. Rips a hole in the ozone. Refuses to elaborate, gets strangled by his own invention.

Greed is the worst drug known to mankind.

@Devin McLaughlin alcohol is a close second

@Devin McLaughlin wrong, everybody has a little bit of greed, capitalism that enables this greed by putting profit above any human instead of the other way around is the real problem

In a way though, he was a hero or anti hero as he was instrumental in making the world know the dangers of stuff with lead in it in more depth than they had before. Can't really blame him too much for greed with the refrigerant, as it actually seemed safer and better than the existing alternatives of the time, how was he supposed to know about its effect on the Ozone?

Would make a great film.

What an amazing video. Kudos to you, informative and interesting. Time to binge your content!

this episode seems heavily inspired by an episode of Cosmos, many new information for me and amazing to watch, great job 👍

I know it might sound very cheesy and convenient, given the current discourse surrounding the commercial success of the critically acclaimed biographical movie Oppenheimer, but a movie/series on Clair Cameron Patterson's life will make for a very intriguing watch. That man dedicated his life to help humanity from lead poisoning and this is the least he deserves!

When the video started and introduced Patterson working on the Manhattan Project, it was a surprise to see that he was actually the hero of the story 😂

It wasn’t just him. They put it in paint, and they used lead pipes in plumbing. This problem was way bigger than cars.

I feel like "accidentally" only applies to the second time that man caused a global environmental catastrophe, the one with the lead seemed like willful ignorance. It's honestly crazy how much damage to the earth a single man was able to do in his pursuit of short-term gain.

Not willful ignorance... Its was criminal behavior

@Timothy Driscoll You're right, "feigned ignorance" is probably more accurate. He knew, but decided to do it anyway, downplaying the dangers every step of the way

okay, so now you watched this video and you are sooooo smart

I prefer to say a single generation because he definitely couldn’t have done it all alone.

@Péter Kiss You're not making a great case for your own "smartness" right now, what's your point?

This should be made required reading in grade school to teach future generations that knowledge is power and poison & integrity and honesty go a long way.

fun fact: when a scientist ingests his own creation to show his sincerity, there is a chance that it might come out to be one of the deadliest creations in history

This should give us all pause. All of this is perfectly acceptable. As long as a tiny handful of people get extremely rich. It's the basis of our society and is still happening on a global level... With a spike in 2020. Excellent video. Thank you.

This is a really well done informative video. Well done! 👏👏

That was such a brilliantly concise and thorough documentary

Man, this episode has it all! A hero, a villain, a tragic back story, a shocking plot twist. It's got my vote on Sundance.

I want a movie about these events.

And clickbait in the title.

I apologize for this comment but I am not really patient, however I am really curious to hear what the man did. Could someone (who spent 25 minutes watching this video) recap it for me?

@Roby Made fuel out of lead (causing lead pollution - lead is extremely dangerous), and also made a chemical that destroyed the ozone layer

@Jason Gronn Thanks man, I appreciate it.

Charles Kettering produced a lot of great things for humanity but also caused quite a bit of harm

It's weird that a person with relatively zero malicious intent caused so many deaths and a person with pure evil intent saved so many lives.

It was solely midgley that was the evil mad scientist. Patterson was simply the guy that liked rocks a d testing against lead poisoning. The video does it no justice introducing Patterson far too early and making it seem like Patterson was the villain when it was 100% midgley

What a well made episode 👍🏽 cheers

Not "accidentally"... the word is "negligently." Willfully negligent, considering he had suffered lead poisoning himself and still persisted because money overruled his certain knowledge of its toxicity.

Watched this once again and appreciating the production value even more

Let's be honest. Thomas Midgley did not operate in isolation. He had many enablers and was ultimately just an employee of General Motors. By putting the blame on Midgley, it offers a convenient escape from culpability to GM, Standard Oil, DuPont, and many other corporations.

You have a point.

Absolutely.

thanks for pointing that out. what you said is true but the title says “the man” so it makes sense to stick to that for now

Actually I drives me speechless .. if I wasn't chemist and kew about lead's toxic effect. Great summary and I very appreciate you incredible anger reciting most ugliest truth of mankind a second time in the last minutes of your and your team's professional video article. Thank you much. What do you think about making an article about the horrifying truth of thermo-mechanical motors' exhausted particles

Remember when we would see how things like this were bad and then we would make massive changes to make sure we stopped doing them? Those were good times.

"When i first learned about Thomas Midgley and Clair, i was amazed by how much harm or good could do to the environment. Which brings me to the sponsor of this video : *Nestlé.* " - Derek Muller, before burning half of the planet.

Learned a lot. Thank you, Sir.

This video made me just realize the human hubris even more. The more we try to fix things, make things easier, the harder we are actually making it for ourselves. We are not fixing anything, we are currently destroying our planet and poisoning our own people and animals... How is that better exactly? We love to go against the grain and stray from what mother earth gave us, balance of nature itself. Don't fix something that isn't broken. But I realize that we can't really go back now either. We have walked this path so far now that we have to continue on it even if it lead to our own destruction. We cannot go back to tribal society right now, only if we kill ourselves off first and after earth has healed the next lifeforms can thrive once again.

He did NOT "accidentally" kill the most people in history, he had PLENTY of chances to make things better at ANY point.

Indeed. Willfully downplaying and ignoring the hazards, real and potential, can hardly be called accidental. All in the name of making money. Unfortunately that time period in particular has many examples of that kind of behavior, the consequences and results of which the world continues to deal with today. And don't forget industrial lobbying.

Would've been hard for him to undo all of that. Sad, because he was a great scientist and even helped find the age of the Earth and helped nuclear technology, but one innovation had more problems than he could've ever imagined.

The title is just as much of an "accident"

Yeah, he KNEW from the very beginning that his product was harmful and he chose greed and self-interest over the good of his fellow man, that's just plain evil, smh.

Love the video. I made my kids watch it.. they didn't like it at first but they really got into it and enjoyed it

Let's not forget that Patterson, proofed the leads bad effects, was working in manhattan project. Good for him to change his path, from killing people to saving them.

This video is informative, but I wish it was a little more clear. The initial focus on Clair Patterson seems to imply that he was the killer in question, when in fact he fought his whole life to bring exposure to the harmfulness of lead. Midgley is only revealed as the true culprit about halfway through the video. While this makes sense from a storytelling perspective, I just feel bad that thousands of people (who either clicked away earlier or watched the whole thing but confused the two) probably think Patterson was a bad guy now. Even in this section, I've found numerous comments bashing Patterson simply because of the confusion. Sad.

Yeah they could have cleared it up in the comments or alternatively put up their name for an extended time when they pop up in the video. I see a bunch of comments thinking midgley saved the world because he wore glasses and looked like patterson.

To me, the most striking part of this video was that he is supporting carbon offsets, which have been proven to be fraudulent most of the time.

I most definitely would have passed chemistry if he was my teacher!!!!

I think "accidental" is more than a little generous. They knew it was poison. They just chose to ignore it because of the opportunity for profit.

I think they mean accidental as in it wasn't the intent, but I do agree with you.

Which is all the more ironic when you consider that the original intent was to solve the safety issue caused by the cranks. They wanted less people to die, but killed more people instead.

What about the freons? It wasnt mentioned if he knew the dangers it would have on the ozone. Not trying to sympathise with him, just saying that maybe that one was an actual accident.

@Velocirapper that one actually does seem like an accident to me. It is after all very stable and safe to be around. It's not like he would have known that widespread use would have resulted in the gas ending up in the upper atmosphere where it could be chemically altered. That said, someone really should have taught him the precautionary principle of science. Assume that something is dangerous until proven safe.

I'm lucky that my flight school switched exclusively to UL94 as soon as it was approved by the FAA. Unfortunately many other places still use 100LL but hopefully everyone starts to switch over to unleaded avgas soon.

Wow, this is an incredibly insightful video. Top notch!

he didn't "accidentally" kill the most people, he knew what he was doing, he just wanted the money

What a video ! best way of describing whole scenario Great work

Do you make your own animations?? Phenomenal work

These sets are absolutely incredible! It’s insane how far veritasium has come!

Hypocrisy of this guy thinks he is clever and we are stoopid. He is here to educate us?

no

Poetic justice was served to him.

Holy hell its scary to think that if Midgley's inventions were left unchecked...we'd be done for.

I have several videos on the topic of the electric body on my channel. The physiology of the body begins to heal itself if you close the body system to itself. It is possible to do this in our conditions only by creating a high-voltage voltage of high density around the body.