The Man Who Accidentally Killed The Most People In History
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters recommend it whenever leaded fuel, toxic chemicals or corporate profit motives come up, praising its storytelling and accessible science.
What it is
Veritasium tells the story of Thomas Midgley Jr., who introduced leaded gasoline and CFCs, and covers the science behind lead exposure and ozone damage. It also touches on isotope geochemistry used to uncover the history.
Recommended by 6 HN commenters across 6 different months, 2022 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec belltaco · 2023-10 · on “EPA moves towards banning leaded aviation gas”
If you want a fascinating story telling video with a lot of sciency stuff for the relative layman, here's an excellent one by Veritasium on how it happened. "The Man Who Accidentally Killed The Most People In History" [this video]
Recommends wirelesspotat · 2022-04 · on “Regular blood donations can reduce “forever chemicals” in the bloodstream: study”
I don't like how "toxic forever chemicals in the bloodstream" is a normal thing Veritasium has a great YouTube video about this: "The Man Who Accidentally Killed The Most People In History"[0] [0] - [this video]
Recommends jeffxtreme · 2022-05 · on “The impact of childhood lead exposure on adult personality (2021)”
(2021) Veritasium covers the story behind lead in gasoline in [this video] , it's a really interesting albeit sad video. If I recall correctly, he mentions this study in the video.
Recommends blensor · 2022-09 · on “FAA approves unleaded fuel for piston fleet”
Have you seen this Veritasium video about the man who came up with adding tetraethyllead to gasonline and it's negative impact on humanity? [this video] Given how dangerous lead is in even the tiniest quantities it is really surprising that there has not been more pressure to change that.
Recommends thret · 2023-12 · on “U.S. workers say banned weed killer in 50 countries is giving them Parkinson's”
[this video] This youtube channel does a good job of explaining his inventions and just how bad for society they were.
Recommends amiga386 · 2025-12 · on “Why did we use leaded petrol for so long? (2017)”
Veritasium did a great video on Midgley: [this video] And therein they give the reason why ethanol was passed over: a lot of it is required to be effective (~10% of the fuel mixture), seriously dampening the profit margin of fuel sales! It works, but tetraethyl lead is so much cheaper
Cites mrmuagi · 2022-04 · on “Regular blood donations can reduce “forever chemicals” in the bloodstream: study”
The people vested in using lead in fuel said so out of profit motive, but it seems lead was widely known to be harmful for hundreads of years [0] before it was using it fuel. [0] [this video]
Cites sschueller · 2022-04 · on “EU considers banning use of up to 12,000 toxic chemicals”
Good because as we just seen in the latest Vartasium video [1], even chemicals or elements we know are toxic for hundreds of years get pushed into the public and cause huge harm. [1] [this video]