The World Has Finally Stopped Using Leaded Gasoline. Algeria Used The Last Stockpile

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In this Dec. 1955 file photo, a man posts a price for leaded gasoline at a station in Everett, Mass. The United Nations said on Monday that the world is no longer using the toxic fuel, bringing an end to a century of damaging pollution.

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A toxic breakthrough

In 1921, researchers at General Motors discovered that adding a compound called tetraethyl lead to gasoline could improve engine performance. (Not-so-fun fact: Thomas Midgley Jr., a scientist who played a key role in what proved to be a calamitous discovery, also developed chlorofluorocarbons, a class of refrigerants that went on to destroy the ozone layer.)

There were other additives that could serve the same purpose — today, ethanol is widely used as a far safer alternative. But lead quickly became the standard.

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In this July 26, 2013, file photo, a motorist fills up with gasoline containing ethanol in Des Moines, Iowa. Today, ethanol is one of the gasoline additives that achieves the same anti-knock benefits that tetraethyl lead provided.

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That turned out to be disastrously false. Children, in particular, are vulnerable to even minute amounts of lead exposure, and the use of leaded gasoline has been linked to lower IQs and higher rates of violent crime. Lead exposure also causes heart disease, cancer and other diseases, and when burned in an engine, lead can easily contaminates air, water and soil.

It took decades for scientists to establish the damage that leaded gasoline was causing. By that point, virtually all the gasoline in the world had lead added to it.

Developed countries phased it out first

In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency started an effort to phase out leaded gasoline in 1973. Starting in the ’70s, new vehicles were designed to run on unleaded. In fact, the new, cleaner generation of cars couldn’t run on leaded gasoline — it would destroy their catalytic converters.

The new unleaded gasoline was more expensive, but the transition was unstoppable.

By the mid-’80s, most gasoline used in the U.S. was unleaded, although leaded gasoline for passenger cars wasn’t fully banned in the U.S. until 1996. (Today, leaded fuel can only be used in aircraft and off-road vehicles.)

Most other high-income countries followed suit.

But in much of the developing world, leaded gasoline continued to be in widespread use at the turn of the millennium. So in 2002, the UNEP launched an effort to work with governments and industry to phase out leaded fuel everywhere.

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In this Dec. 23, 1973 file photo, cars line up in two directions at a gas station in New York City.

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But unlike with leaded gasoline, he says, a «two-track» approach won’t work for climate. With leaded gasoline, rich countries cleaned up their air decades before the rest of the planet did, and were able to ignore the fact that lead pollution continued in poorer countries.

«Climate change is global,» he said. «You’ll still be affected by climate change if we don’t fix the whole global fleet.»

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