LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Jeremy Elice, the former head of Legendary Pictures‘ television division, has landed at Starz with a new deal, a spokesman for the cable network told TheWrap on Monday.
Under the two-year agreement, Starz will have first-look rights at projects from Elice‘s new company, Elice Island Entertainment.
In addition to his stint at Legendary, Elice was also a development executive at AMC, where he was instrumental in bringing the hits “Breaking Bad” and “The Walking Dead” to the network.
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In a move that underlines how many Chinese citizens now work in Africa, China’s quarantine officials recently urged greater efforts to make sure that a yellow fever epidemic now raging in Sudan does not come back to China.
Local health authorities were asked to scan all travelers arriving from Sudan for fevers. Chinese citizens planning travel to Sudan were advised to get yellow fever shots. Customs officers were told that containers arriving from Sudan might have stray infected mosquitoes inside.
Sudan’s epidemic is considered the world’s worst in 20 years. Sweden, Britain and other donors have paid for vaccinations. The United States Navy’s laboratory in Egypt has helped with diagnoses.
Estimates of the number of Chinese working in Africa, many in the oil and mining industries or on major construction projects, range from 500,000 to 1 million. Experts on AIDS have previously warned that the workers could become a new means of bringing that disease to China, which has a low H.I.V.-infection rate.
ProMED-mail, a Web site that follows emerging diseases, has tracked reports about the Sudan outbreak, with its moderators adding valuable context. China’s mosquito-killing winters make a large yellow fever outbreak there unlikely, moderators said. But Sudan’s containment efforts are troubled. For example, vaccinated people cannot get cards proving they have had shots, but the cards are reported to be for sale at police checkpoints.
Australia’s now-endemic dengue fever, according to ProMED moderators, may have come from mosquitoes arriving in containers from East Timor.
Bags of contaminated soil outside the Naraha-Minami school near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
NARAHA, Japan — The decontamination crews at a deserted elementary school here are at the forefront of what Japan says is the most ambitious radiological cleanup the world has seen, one that promised to draw on cutting-edge technology from across the globe.
Ko Sasaki for The New York Times
Workers reflected in the glass of the Naraha-Minami Elementary School
But much of the work at the Naraha-Minami Elementary School, about 12 miles away from the ravaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, tells another story. For eight hours a day, construction workers blast buildings with water, cut grass and shovel dirt and foliage into big black plastic bags — which, with nowhere to go, dot Naraha’s landscape like funeral mounds.
More than a year and a half since the nuclear crisis, much of Japan’s post-Fukushima cleanup remains primitive, slapdash and bereft of the cleanup methods lauded by government scientists as effective in removing harmful radioactive cesium from the environment.
Local businesses that responded to a government call to research and develop decontamination methods have found themselves largely left out. American and other foreign companies with proven expertise in environmental remediation, invited to Japan in June to show off their technologies, have similarly found little scope to participate.
Recent reports in the local media of cleanup crews dumping contaminated soil and leaves into rivers has focused attention on the sloppiness of the cleanup.
“What’s happening on the ground is a disgrace,” said Masafumi Shiga, president of Shiga Toso, a refurbishing company based in Iwaki, Fukushima. The company developed a more effective and safer way to remove cesium from concrete without using water, which could repollute the environment. “We’ve been ready to help for ages, but they say they’ve got their own way of cleaning up,” he said.
Shiga Toso’s technology was tested and identified by government scientists as “fit to deploy immediately,” but it has been used only at two small locations, including a concrete drain at the Naraha-Minami school.
Instead, both the central and local governments have handed over much of the 1 trillion yen decontamination effort to Japan’s largest construction companies. The politically connected companies have little radiological cleanup expertise and critics say they have cut corners to employ primitive — even potentially hazardous — techniques.
The construction companies have the great advantage of available manpower. Here in Naraha, about 1,500 cleanup workers are deployed every day to power-spray buildings, scrape soil off fields, and remove fallen leaves and undergrowth from forests and mountains, according to an official at the Maeda Corporation, which is in charge of the cleanup.
That number, the official said, will soon rise to 2,000, a large deployment rarely seen on even large-sale projects like dams and bridges.
The construction companies suggest new technologies may work, but are not necessarily cost-effective.
“In such a big undertaking, cost-effectiveness becomes very important,” said Takeshi Nishikawa, an executive based in Fukushima for the Kajima Corporation, Japan’s largest construction company. The company is in charge of the cleanup in the city of Tamura, a part of which lies within the 12-mile exclusion zone. “We bring skills and expertise to the project,” Mr. Nishikawa said.
Kajima also built the reactor buildings for all six reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, leading some critics to question why control of the cleanup effort has been left to companies with deep ties to the nuclear industry.
Also worrying, industry experts say, are cleanup methods used by the construction companies that create loose contamination that can become airborne or enter the water.
At many sites, contaminated runoff from cleanup projects is not fully recovered and is being released into the environment, multiple people involved in the decontamination work said.
Makiko Inoue contributed reporting from Tokyo.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: January 8, 2013
Earlier versions of this article misspelled the name of the construction company in charge of the cleanup of the city of Tamura. It is the Kajima Corporation, not Kashima.
Women pushing strollers stopped to peer at handguns in glass cases. Men squinted through scopes. The "clack-clack" of stun guns crackled overhead. A man meandered through the crowd, a black rifle slung over his back with a cardboard sign: "For sale: $1,700."
Less than a month after a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at a Connecticut elementary school, business was brisk at one of the nation's largest gun shows, held this weekend at the Ontario Convention Center, where vendors and patrons alike expressed fear of possible new federal restrictions on guns.
Ryan Girard, 41, surveyed the crowd at the Crossroads of the West show Sunday afternoon, a box of ammunition in his hands. "It's out of control this weekend," he said. "People are just scared of what could or could not happen."
Girard said he tried to go to the show Saturday but the out-the-door line was more than four hours long. He opted to come back about 6 a.m. Sunday, three hours before the event opened. He said about 500 people already had staked out spots by the time he arrived.
"I'll tell you right now, Obama is the No.1 gun salesman in the nation," Girard said. "The NRA should give him an award."
President Obama, who has voiced support of a federal ban on assault weapons since his 2008 campaign, tasked his administration with reviewing gun policy shortly after the Newtown, Conn., massacre. Several lawmakers have pledged support of new gun measures, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who promised to introduce an assault-weapons ban similar to the one she wrote in 1994. That ban expired in 2004.
California is home to some of the nation's toughest gun laws. The state has bans on assault weapons and on ammunition clips holding more than 10 rounds, strong background check requirements and a 10-day waiting period for sales.
Businesses and trade associations across the country have reported a surge in gun and ammunition sales in recent weeks. The FBI reported 2.78 million firearm background checks were conducted in December — the highest monthly figure since routine background checks were first required in November 1998.
Although gun sales are typically higher in December because of the holidays, last month's background check figure was up more than 900,000 from December 2011. It was also nearly three times the number of checks conducted in October 2001, a month after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
But, the agency said, a "one-to-one correlation" between background checks and gun sales could not be made because of "varying state laws and purchase scenarios."
Frequent vendors said they have seen a noticeable increase in sales.
"It's crazy," said Ken Hunt, 51. "Everyone's nervous about what the government's going to do."
Hunt sat in front of a table lined with plastic bags of steel and brass shell casings. Sales were up, he said, and so were prices. A few weeks ago, Hunt said, he sold 10,000 .223 casings for $500. On Sunday he sold packages of 500 for $75 — triple the price per casing.
Chris Kaufman, 62, worked at one of the largest ammunition booths at the show. It brought three semi trucks of merchandise, and three-quarters was gone Saturday. The stand bought out the inventory of a closing business so it would have enough to sell the next day.
The booth, which travels to major gun shows throughout California, Nevada and Arizona, is seeing five to 10 times as much business as normal, Kaufman said.
Although gun events in some parts of the country also reported larger-than-usual crowds, several other shows have been canceled, including several near Newtown.
Hector Garcia, 49, who managed a booth at the Ontario show, said that as a father of two young children, he has thought a lot about the elementary school shooting. But he doesn't think additional legislation will necessarily help.
"Everybody feels bad, no doubt," he said. "But banning guns and restricting people is not going to do anything to prevent that crazy person."
Fears of gun restrictions are nothing new. Many vendors said they've seen similar, although smaller, surges after Obama and President Clinton were elected — "every time the political winds seem to blow," Kaufman said.
But many said the crowds in Ontario were unlike anything they had seen before. Harold Holmes, 51, said he usually goes to a show in San Diego but chose the Ontario event because of its timing.
"It's right before the Legislature has time to act," he said, several boxes of ammunition sitting in a wheeled cart at his feet.
Holmes said he was shopping for extra ammunition for an antique military rifle and pistol — "just to stock up," he said. "Just in case."
The only pause to Sunday's activities at the Ontario gun show came when a woman's voice over the loudspeaker asked attendees to stop and "find a flag … so we can honor our beloved country." She then began reciting the Pledge of Allegiance as attendees doffed their hats. A quote attributed to George Washington — "The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference. They deserve a place of honor with all that is good." — was read moments before.
Two lines wound around the ammunition booth, one side for pistols, the other for rifles. An employee walked a man and woman past thinning boxes of bullets, stopping at the end of the booth to point to an empty shelf.
Our good friends at Google run a daily puzzle challenge and asked us to help get them out to the geeky masses. Each day’s puzzle will task your googling skills a little more, leading you to Google mastery. Each morning at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time you’ll see a new puzzle posted here.
SPOILER WARNING: We leave the comments on so people can work together to find the answer. As such, if you want to figure it out all by yourself, DON’T READ THE COMMENTS!
Also, with the knowledge that because others may publish their answers before you do, if you want to be able to search for information without accidentally seeing the answer somewhere, you can use the Google-a-Day site’s search tool, which will automatically filter out published answers, to give you a spoiler-free experience.
And now, without further ado, we give you…
TODAY’S PUZZLE:
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Ken is a husband and father from the San Francisco Bay Area, where he works as a civil engineer. He also wrote the NYT bestselling book "Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects for Dads and Kids to Share."
SYDNEY (AP) — They’re starring in a play about a woman reluctant to age and the perils of passing time, but veteran actors James Earl Jones and Angela Lansbury say that life in their 80s continues to be exciting thanks to their determination to keep doing what they love.
Jones and Lansbury, in Australia to star in a touring production of Alfred Uhry‘s Pulitzer-Prize winning play “Driving Miss Daisy,” say the thrill of performing has propelled them throughout their decades-long careers and gives them the energy necessary to keep up with their often grueling schedules.
“First of all, wake up. Wake up and try to get your bones moving,” a grinning Jones, who turns 82 this month, said Monday ahead of the cast’s first rehearsal. “And then be enthusiastic about what you do. I’m very enthusiastic about acting still. I love the process of creating a character.”
For 87-year-old Lansbury, whose seven-decade career has spanned stage, film and television, performing live gives her a rush that can’t be matched on the screen.
“You get on stage and you really can let it out,” she said, throwing her arms wide. “You’re not hampered by camera angles or lighting.”
Lansbury, nominated for three Oscars and beloved for her role as amateur detective Jessica Fletcher on the long-running TV series “Murder, She Wrote,” said it was the stage that gave her a jolt of fresh inspiration later in life.
“Coming back to the theater about seven years ago turned the tide for me, it really did. Because it gave me a career after 70,” she said. “I could still work in the theater and play great roles, but it wasn’t so easy to continue as a motion picture actress. Which I was very glad of — I didn’t like the way we were making movies … the kind of roles I would like to play didn’t seem to exist. But I love the theater and, as it turned out, it was the thing to do.”
Both actors jumped at the chance to perform in “Driving Miss Daisy,” which began as an off-Broadway play and inspired the Oscar-winning film starring Jessica Tandy and Morgan Freeman. The play follows the evolving friendship of Daisy and her chauffeur Hoke in the American South over 25 years.
“When I saw Morgan do it, I said ‘I’d like to play that role,’” Jones said. “I thought I understood (Hoke) and I want to understand him more.”
Jones was also attracted to the role because of Hoke’s illiteracy. Jones, famous for his distinctive baritone voice, suffered from a debilitating stutter as a child that left him virtually mute until he was 14. An English teacher mentored him until he discovered his voice, which then led to his acting career. Now, he finds particular fulfillment when playing characters who struggle with language.
“Hoke Colburn is such a character. He’s illiterate, but he speaks English … and uses it very effectively and very poetically,” Jones said. “That’s what I love about the role, trying to understand how he re-weaves language so he gets himself across.”
Lansbury said it was the play’s setting in the American South that helped attract her to the role of Daisy.
“I understand the southern mentality,” she said. “I went to drama school with a number of young women who came from (the South) and I never forgot them and I never forgot the way they spoke. Their accents were so interesting to me.”
The role is a big change from her 12-year run as Jessica Fletcher on “Murder, She Wrote,” and the change is welcome. While Lansbury has a soft spot for the mystery writer, she admits she doesn’t miss her much.
“I was happy to retire her. I’m constantly reminded of her by people who are still very fond of watching the show. … I can’t get away from it!” she said with a laugh. “I’m more famous for Jessica Fletcher than anything.”
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Officials at New Mexico’s largest jail want to end its methadone program. Addicts like Penny Strayer hope otherwise.
ALBUQUERQUE — It has been almost four decades since Betty Jo Lopez started using heroin.
Her face gray and wizened well beyond her 59 years, Ms. Lopez would almost certainly still be addicted, if not for the fact that she is locked away in jail, not to mention the cup of pinkish liquid she downs every morning.
“It’s the only thing that allows me to live a normal life,” Ms. Lopez said of the concoction, which contains methadone, a drug used to treat opiate dependence. “These nurses that give it to me, they’re like my guardian angels.”
For the last six years, the Metropolitan Detention Center, New Mexico’s largest jail, has been administering methadone to inmates with drug addictions, one of a small number of jails and prisons around the country that do so.
At this vast complex, sprawled out among the mesas west of downtown Albuquerque, any inmate who was enrolled at a methadone clinic just before being arrested can get the drug behind bars. Pregnant inmates addicted to heroin are also eligible.
Here in New Mexico, which has long been plagued by one of the nation’s worst heroin scourges, there is no shortage of participants — hundreds each year — who have gone through the program.
In November, however, the jail’s warden, Ramon Rustin, said he wanted to stop treating inmates with methadone. Mr. Rustin said the program, which had been costing Bernalillo County about $10,000 a month, was too expensive.
Moreover, Mr. Rustin, a former warden of the Allegheny County Jail in Pennsylvania and a 32-year veteran of corrections work, said he did not believe that the program truly worked.
Of the hundred or so inmates receiving daily methadone doses, he said, there was little evidence of a reduction in recidivism, one of the program’s main selling points.
“My concern is that the courts and other authorities think that jail has become a treatment program, that it has become the community provider,” he said. “But jail is not the answer. Methadone programs belong in the community, not here.”
Mr. Rustin’s public stance has angered many in Albuquerque, where drug addiction has been passed down through generations in impoverished pockets of the city, as it has elsewhere across New Mexico.
Recovery advocates and community members argue that cutting people off from methadone is too dangerous, akin to taking insulin from a diabetic.
The New Mexico office of the Drug Policy Alliance, which promotes an overhaul to drug policy, has implored Mr. Rustin to reconsider his stance, saying in a letter that he did not have the medical expertise to make such a decision.
Last month, the Bernalillo County Commission ordered Mr. Rustin to extend the program, which also relies on about $200,000 in state financing annually, for two months until its results could be studied further.
“Addiction needs to be treated like any other health issue,” said Maggie Hart Stebbins, a county commissioner who supports the program.
“If we can treat addiction at the jail to the point where they stay clean and don’t reoffend, that saves us the cost of reincarcerating that person,” she said.
Hard data, though, is difficult to come by — hence the county’s coming review.
Darren Webb, the director of Recovery Services of New Mexico, a private contractor that runs the methadone program, said inmates were tracked after their release to ensure that they remained enrolled at outside methadone clinics.
While the outcome was never certain, Mr. Webb said, he maintained that providing methadone to inmates would give them a better chance of staying out of jail once they were released. “When they get out, they won’t be committing the same crimes they would if they were using,” he said. “They are functioning adults.”
In a study published in 2009 in The Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, researchers found that male inmates in Baltimore who were treated with methadone were far more likely to continue their treatment in the community than inmates who received only counseling.
Those who received methadone behind bars were also more likely to be free of opioids and cocaine than those who received only counseling or started methadone treatment after their release.
LAS VEGAS — Your smartphone is the screen in your pocket. Your computer is the screen on your desk. Your tablet is a screen for the couch.
Ethan Miller/Getty Images
Samsung’s exhibit at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show, which attracted 140,000 to the Las Vegas Convention Center.
Yuriko Nakao/Reuters
Sony, which exhibited 84-inch TVs at an electronics show last October in Chiba, Japan, will show its wares in Las Vegas.
Almost every major electronic device you own is a black rectangle that is brought to life by software and content. So how can hardware companies make their products stand out in a sea of black rectangles?
That challenge will be on display at the Las Vegas Convention Center on Tuesday through Friday at the 46th annual Consumer Electronics Show, one of the largest technology conventions based on attendance, which is expected to exceed 150,000 this year. And one that is particularly acute for television makers. “The hardware is no longer what’s driving the future,” said James L. McQuivey, an analyst for Forrester Research. “The hardware is kind of boring.”
More exciting things are happening in software, Mr. McQuivey said. For example, dozens of tablets are on the market, but Apple and Amazon lead the pack because of the impressive apps and digital content available for their devices, he said.
This year, television makers like Samsung, Sony, LG and Panasonic are trying to grab attention by supersizing their television screens and quadrupling the level of detail in their images. And manufacturers continue to push the idea of “smart” sets by adding apps and other interactive elements.
For the electronics industry, the television is an important but increasingly difficult product to sell. Just seven years ago, big-screen sets that cost thousands of dollars were major profit generators. But more recently, even as televisions have gotten bigger and better looking, they have dropped significantly in price amid heated competition.
To make matters worse, consumers are buying new televisions as often as they buy a new car, not as often as a new computer or phone. And people can now watch video on smartphones, tablets and computers, reducing the need to buy a television at all.
Sales of televisions over the holiday season were down 2 percent from the previous year, according to Stephen Baker, an analyst for the NPD Group. Mr. Baker said one problem for television makers was that bigger screens, ranging from 50 inches to 55 inches were taking sales from televisions in the 40- to 49-inch range, once an especially popular category.
The average selling price of a 45- or 49-inch set was $615, but sets in the range of 50 to 54 inches actually had a lower average price, $520, Mr. Baker said. This is because people who bought the smaller televisions opted for features like LED screen technology and Internet capability, but more budget-conscious consumers chose size over other features.
As they try to prop up profits, electronics makers are trying hard to establish a new high-end category of televisions. They are promoting what they call Ultra High-Definition televisions, which have four times as many pixels as their high-definition predecessors. Some of these new televisions can cost as much as a car, like Sony’s 84-inch Ultra HDTV, which is priced at $25,000. But Sony says it will unveil Ultra HDTVs at the show that are smaller and less expensive.
Mike Lucas, a senior vice president at Sony, called its 84-inch set the Ferrari of televisions. But he said that with the new versions, “we’re moving out from the Ferrari world and more into the Audi, Lexus and Mercedes side of the world.” He declined to say how much the smaller Ultra HD sets would cost, but said they would be more expensive than the older HDTVs.
Samsung will also introduce new televisions this week, including an Ultra HDTV that emphasizes software. Joe Stinziano, senior vice president for home entertainment at Samsung Electronics America, said a majority of the new Samsung sets this year would be smart televisions — Internet-enabled televisions that run apps for things like Netflix and Facebook.
“The television has always been the center of the entertainment of the home,” Mr. Stinziano said. “Now it will be the center of a connected home.”
An alleged maternity hotel operating out of a hilltop mansion in Chino Hills has apparently shut down after city officials obtained a temporary restraining order against its owners.
The mansion allegedly housed women from China who traveled to California to give birth to American citizen babies.
In a Dec. 7 court filing, Chino Hills officials describe a seven-bedroom house divided into 17 bedrooms and 17 bathrooms, with mothers and their babies staying in 10 of the rooms. The owners did not obtain permits to remodel the property, nor were they allowed to operate a business in a residential zone, the complaint stated.
Neighbors on Woodglen Drive complained of cars speeding in and out of the mansion's driveway. In September, about 2,000 gallons of raw sewage spilled down the hill because of an overloaded septic system.
Last month, a group called Not in Chino Hills staged a protest against the facility.
City officials who inspected the alleged hotel said conditions inside were dangerous, with exposed wiring, missing smoke alarms and holes in the bedroom floors. They found brochures titled "USA Los Angeles Hermas International Club Guidance on How to Have an American Baby," according to the Dec. 7 complaint. One woman said she paid $150 a day for her room. A receipt from another guest totaled $27,000 for a stay of several months, the complaint said.
So-called birth tourism is widespread in the San Gabriel Valley, with Chinese-language websites advertising rooms in single-family homes or luxury apartment complexes. The women typically enter the country on tourist visas and stay for about a month after giving birth. The child has the option of returning to the U.S. for schooling, and the parents may petition for a green card when the child turns 21.
The practice does not violate federal immigration laws, but some maternity hotels have run afoul of local ordinances.
On Dec. 27, San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Ben Kayashima granted Chino Hills' request for a temporary restraining order. A hearing is scheduled for Jan. 17 to determine whether the order should be extended.
The Woodglen Drive house now appears to be unoccupied, city spokeswoman Denise Cattern said Thursday.
Hai Yong Wu, one of the owners, could not be reached for comment.
"It's about time. This thing should have shut down a long time ago," said Rossana Mitchell, a founder of Not in Chino Hills. "I'm glad to hear it."
Author’s note: Most people don’t realize that we knew in the 1920s that leaded gasoline was extremely dangerous. And in light of a Mother Jones story this week that looks at the connection between leaded gasoline and crime rates in the United States, I thought it might be worth reviewing that history. The following is an updated version of an earlier post based on information from my book about early 10th century toxicology, The Poisoner’s Handbook.
In the fall of 1924, five bodies from New Jersey were delivered to the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office. You might not expect those out-of-state corpses to cause the chief medical examiner to worry about the dirt blowing in Manhattan streets. But they did.
To understand why you need to know the story of those five dead men, or at least the story of their exposure to a then mysterious industrial poison.
The five men worked at the Standard Oil Refinery in Bayway, New Jersey. All of them spent their days in what plant employees nicknamed “the loony gas building”, a tidy brick structure where workers seemed to sicken as they handled a new gasoline additive. The additive’s technical name was tetraethyl lead or, in industrial shorthand, TEL. It was developed by researchers at General Motors as an anti-knock formula, with the assurance that it was entirely safe to handle.
But, as I wrote in a previous post, men working at the plant quickly gave it the “loony gas” tag because anyone who spent much time handling the additive showed stunning signs of mental deterioration, from memory loss to a stumbling loss of coordination to sudden twitchy bursts of rage. And then in October of 1924, workers in the TEL building began collapsing, going into convulsions, babbling deliriously. By the end of September, 32 of the 49 TEL workers were in the hospital; five of them were dead.
The problem, at that point, was that no one knew exactly why. Oh, they knew – or should have known – that tetraethyl lead was dangerous. As Charles Norris, chief medical examiner for New York City pointed out, the compound had been banned in Europe for years due to its toxic nature. But while U.S. corporations hurried TEL into production in the 1920s, they did not hurry to understand its medical or environmental effects.
In 1922, the U.S. Public Health Service had asked Thomas Midgley, Jr. – the developer of the leaded gasoline process – for copies of all his research into the health consequences of tetraethyl lead (TEL).
Midgley, a scientist at General Motors, replied that no such research existed. And two years later, even with bodies starting to pile up, he had still not looked into the question. Although GM and Standard Oil had formed a joint company to manufacture leaded gasoline – the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation - its research had focused solely on improving the TEL formulas. The companies disliked and frankly avoided the lead issue. They’d deliberately left the word out of their new company name to avoid its negative image.
In response to the worker health crisis at the Bayway plant, Standard Oil suggested that the problem might simply be overwork. Unimpressed, the state of New Jersey ordered a halt to TEL production. And because the compound was so poorly understood, state health officials asked the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office to find out what had happened.
In 1924, New York had the best forensic toxicology department in the country; in fact,, it had one of the few such programs period. The chief chemist was a dark, cigar-smoking, perfectionist named Alexander Gettler, a famously dogged researcher who would sit up late at night designing both experiments and apparatus as needed.
It took Gettler three obsessively focused weeks to figure out how much tetraethyl lead the Standard Oil workers had absorbed before they became ill, went crazy, or died. “This is one of the most difficult of many difficult investigations of the kind which have been carried on at this laboratory,” Norris said, when releasing the results. “This was the first work of its kind, as far as I know. Dr. Gettler had not only to do the work but to invent a considerable part of the method of doing it.”
Working with the first four bodies, then checking his results against the body of the last worker killed, who had died screaming in a straitjacket, Gettler discovered that TEL and its lead byproducts formed a recognizable distribution, concentrated in the lungs, the brain, and the bones. The highest levels were in the lungs suggesting that most of the poison had been inhaled; later tests showed that the types of masks used by Standard Oil did not filter out the lead in TEL vapors.
Rubber gloves did protect the hands but if TEL splattered onto unprotected skin, it absorbed alarmingly quickly. The result was intense poisoning with lead, a potent neurotoxin. The loony gas symptoms were, in fact, classic indicators of heavy lead toxicity.
After Norris released his office’s report on tetraethyl lead, New York City banned its sale, and the sale of “any preparation containing lead or other deleterious substances” as an additive to gasoline. So did New Jersey. So did the city of Philadelphia. It was a moment in which health officials in large urban areas were realizing that with increased use of automobiles, it was likely that residents would be increasingly exposed to dangerous lead residues and they moved quickly to protect them.
But fearing that such measures would spread, that they would be forced to find another anti-knock compound, as well as losing considerable money, the manufacturing companies demanded that the federal government take over the investigation and develop its own regulations. U.S. President Calvin Coolidge, a Republican and small-government conservative, moved rapidly in favor of the business interests.
The manufacturers agreed to suspend TEL production and distribution until a federal investigation was completed. In May 1925, the U.S. Surgeon General called a national tetraethyl lead conference, to be followed by the formation of an investigative task force to study the problem. That same year, Midgley published his first health analysis of TEL, which acknowledged a minor health risk at most, insisting that the use of lead compounds,”compared with other chemical industries it is neither grave nor inescapable.”
It was obvious in advance that he’d basically written the conclusion of the federal task force. That panel only included selected industry scientists like Midgely. It had no place for Alexander Gettler or Charles Norris or, in fact, anyone from any city where sales of the gas had been banned, or any agency involved in the producing that first critical analysis of tetraethyl lead.
In January 1926, the public health service released its report which concluded that there was “no danger” posed by adding TEL to gasoline…”no reason to prohibit the sale of leaded gasoline” as long as workers were well protected during the manufacturing process.
The task force did look briefly at risks associated with every day exposure by drivers, automobile attendants, gas station operators, and found that it was minimal. The researchers had indeed found lead residues in dusty corners of garages. In addition, all the drivers tested showed trace amounts of lead in their blood. But a low level of lead could be tolerated, the scientists announced. After all, none of the test subjects showed the extreme behaviors and breakdowns associated with places like the looney gas building. And the worker problem could be handled with some protective gear.
There was one cautionary note, though. The federal panel warned that exposure levels would probably rise as more people took to the roads. Perhaps, at a later point, the scientists suggested, the research should be taken up again. It was always possible that leaded gasoline might “constitute a menace to the general public after prolonged use or other conditions not foreseen at this time.”
But, of course, that would be another generation’s problem. In 1926, citing evidence from the TEL report, the federal government revoked all bans on production and sale of leaded gasoline. The reaction of industry was jubilant; one Standard Oil spokesman likened the compound to a “gift of God,” so great was its potential to improve automobile performance.
In New York City, at least, Charles Norris decided to prepare for the health and environmental problems to come. He suggested that the department scientists do a base-line measurement of lead levels in the dirt and debris blowing across city streets. People died, he pointed out to his staff; and everyone knew that heavy metals like lead tended to accumulate. The resulting comparison of street dirt in 1924 and 1934 found a 50 percent increase in lead levels – a warning, an indicator of damage to come, if anyone had been paying attention.
It was some fifty years later – in 1986 – that the United States formally banned lead as a gasoline additive. By that time, according to some estimates, so much lead had been deposited into soils, streets, building surfaces, that an estimated 68 million children would register toxic levels of lead absorption and some 5,000 American adults would die annually of lead-induced heart disease. As lead affects cognitive function, some neuroscientists also suggested that chronic lead exposure resulted in a measurable drop in IQ scores during the leaded gas era. And more recently, of course, researchers had suggested that TEL exposure and resulting nervous system damage may have contributed to violent crime rates in the 20th century.
Images: 1) Manhattan, 34th Street, 1931/NYC Municipal Archives 2) 1940s gas station, US Route 66, Illinois/Deborah Blum
