When workers at Standard Oil's experimental refinery in New Jersey (Esso) starting to literally go off their rocker in the early 1920s, the state asked New York City's first medical examiner, Charles Norris, then head of one of the leading toxicology labs in the world, to investigate the problem. The company said the workers were simply suffering mental breakdowns from overwork. It was not long before Alexander Gettler, the examiner's chief forensic chemist, isolated the cause of the mental symptoms: lead poisoning. Lead was known to the ancient Romans as a poison. Standard Oil was adding the new miracle chemical, tetraethyl lead (TEL) to its ethyl gasoline product to reduce engine wear and improve performance. The investigation result caused the the medical examiner to call for the banning of the additive to gasoline sold in the city. Both Standard Oil and General Motors, co-owners of Ethyl Corporation, put their political muscle to work and the early call for banning lead additive to Ethyl gasoline was ignored. A superior performing fuel mixture of benzene and alcohol was in use in Europe that did not cause engine knocking, but it was not a proprietary formulation. By the 1970s 200,000 tons of lead was added to gasoline in the US annually. Dupont took over the production of tetra-ethyl lead. Its corporate mottto is "better living through chemistry". Only after more than half a century of exposure was the neurotoxin finally taken out of gasoline.
So it is really no surprise to a unpatriotic, big-mouthed crank like US Person that the coal industry has been posioning West Virginia's water supplies almost unabated for more than a century. Chemical laden waste water is pumped directly into the ground where it leeches into the water table and turns drinkable well water into a poison cocktail. The Elk River spill of coal washing chemical that caused about 300,000 to go without municipal water for five days is just the latest tip of a much bigger toxic plume. Local wells in Boone County were already poisoned, forcing residents to adopt a municipal system that sources water from fifty miles away. A professor of aquatic biology at Wheeling's Jesuit University says the clock is ticking on southern West Virginia's water supplies. In less than two decades the area's water could become undrinkable. To add insulting: the company, code-named "Freedom Industries", that spilled 4-methyl-cyclohexane methanol was founded by a twice-convicted felon, and his premises were not inspected for years. Good news: we will find an "Earth 2.0" in ten to fifteen years. That is good news because humans have already trashed this one almost beyond recovery. Wake US up when you break the light barrier.