Safety first

[sawyl]

Reading through Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, I came across the following crunchy nugget:

...when employees at one [ tetraethyl lead ] plant developed irreversible delusions, a spokesman blandly informed reporters: 'These men probably went insane because they worked too hard.'

Shockingly Bryson also cites a publication from 2001, inevitable written by the same company, which claimed that, "research has failed to show that leaded gasoline poses a threat to human health or the environment."

Yikes. It's a bit like claiming that fags are just healthy lung snacks or that uranium is just nature's way of giving you a nice green glow.