ABSTRACT
Organic lead, another octane-enhancing gasoline additive, eventually became the additive of choice for refiners. Lead was less “bulky” than ethanol — in other words, it took up less space in the gas tank. Lead did not suffer, as ethanol did, from an association with an external moral issue — until the 1970s, that is, when lead’s detrimental environmental effects became widely recognized and denounced. The public outcry over these effects, coupled with the discovery of lead’s damaging effects on emission control devices, resulted in the phase-out of the use of leaded gasoline in California, followed by a federal phase-out.
