Bulletproof: The AP Companion

When Data Serves Agendas: Who's Behind the Science You Trust?

• Nicole • Season 1 • Episode 10

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The phrase "trust the science" sounds reassuring, but what happens when scientific research is driven by profit rather than truth? This eye-opening episode kicks off a three-part series on the dangers of accepting scientific claims at face value, starting with one of history's most shocking examples: leaded gasoline.

Journey back to 1922 Detroit, where car engines suffered from a persistent "knocking" problem. When General Motors chemist Thomas Midgley discovered tetraethyl lead as a solution, the company saw dollar signs – a patentable, profitable additive they could control entirely. Despite knowing lead's toxicity (Midgley himself suffered lead poisoning), they marketed it under the innocent name "ethyl," deliberately hiding its dangers from the public.

The hero of this scientific detective story is Claire Patterson, a quiet geochemist who wasn't looking to become an activist. While trying to determine the Earth's age, he discovered alarming lead contamination everywhere. His research conclusively linked rising lead levels to leaded gasoline, contradicting decades of industry claims. When Patterson published his findings, he faced immediate backlash – denied funding, removed from committees, and professionally blackballed.

Yet Patterson persisted, building ultraclean labs to produce irrefutable evidence and testifying before Congress. His courage led to leaded gasoline being phased out beginning in 1975, resulting in an 80% drop in children's blood lead levels by the 1990s. This single act of scientific integrity saved millions of lives.

This powerful story reminds us that being scientifically literate isn't about accepting claims from authority figures – it's about asking critical questions. Who profits from this research? What alternatives were dismissed? What questions weren't asked? Science at its best isn't about silencing skepticism; it's about pursuing truth, no matter where it leads.

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Speaker 1:

we live in a world that loves to say trust the science, but science isn't a slogan, it's a method, and real science doesn't ask you to trust, it asks you to think. What's coming next is a three-part series about the dangers of accepting scientific claims at face value, because behind some of history's most catastrophic public health failures leaded gasoline eugenics, monsanto's chemical empire. You will find research, you will find experts and you will find data. You will also find motive, whether it's power control or profit. When money and influence drive the questions, the results stop serving truth and start serving somebody's agenda. In this series, we're pulling back the curtain. You'll learn how to spot red flags in the research, how to ask the questions no headline actually wants you to ask and reclaim your ability to think critically, even when someone in a lab coat is telling you otherwise, because the goal of science isn't authority, it's truth. Let's begin. Welcome to Bulletproof, the show that helps you think deeper, question harder and study smarter.

Speaker 1:

Today kicks off a three-part series about something we all think that we understand Scientific research. We've all heard someone say well, the data shows. Or a study found. And most people stop asking questions right there, the data showed it. Right, a study found this. We entirely neglect all of the in-betweens, all of the human interpretation, all of the human motive that's behind any interpretation of data. There's always a point to it, there's always a motive, and we wrongly assume that those motives are all pure, that they're for the good of all, and that is just not the case. We don't like to investigate deeper because that's incongruent with the core of our being. It's offensive to our sensibilities when somebody could be doing the wrong thing, really for the sake of themselves and at the expense of so many. But here's the truth Just because something is published doesn't mean that it is solid. Just because someone cites a statistic doesn't mean that it's relevant, and just because it's science does not mean that it is honest. If you're going to succeed in school and in life, you've got to learn how to read like a scientist and how to think like a skeptic.

Speaker 1:

So in this first episode we're going to look at one of the most shocking examples of manipulated science in modern history. History. It's leaded gasoline. We'll talk about how this neurotoxin was knowingly promoted for profit, how legitimate scientists were silenced and how one quiet geochemist named Claire Patterson changed the course of public health with nothing but pure persistence. This is not just a history lesson. This is a warning, because what happened with leaded gas? It's still happening today, just in other ways. We've got to be able to pick them out and we've got to be able to illuminate them for exactly what they are. So let's dig in Now.

Speaker 1:

I want you to close your eyes, and not if you're driving. Don't close your eyes if you're driving, but if you're just sitting in a chair at your house, like, close your eyes right now and we're going to go way, way back. So I want you to imagine it's the fall of 1922. You're a middle-class car owner in Detroit. It's the home of the booming automobile industry, and you have just finished a long shift at the Ford Motor Company plant. You climb into your brand new Model T, proud as ever of the symbol of American innovation, sitting in your driveway. But as you pull out onto the road, your engine starts to rattle, and it's not like it's a soft hum, it's not like it's a minor little hiccup, like those things that you go.

Speaker 1:

Oh, I wonder if that's going to happen again. That's not what this is. This is a loud, rhythmic, pinging sound that gets more and more obnoxious as you press down on your gas pedal. It's called an engine knock. And back then it wasn't just annoying, like it could actually ruin your engine. And then where's your Model T at? It's just going to be sitting in the driveway Like you don't get to look cool driving it around at that point. So you take it to the neighborhood mechanic who explains to you that it's actually low-octane fuel that you're using and because that ignites too early in the engine cylinder, that that's what's causing that knock, and if you're not careful that could crack a piston one day. So you try switching fuels, you try adjusting timing, you even try driving more slowly uphill, all of these things that we think, okay, this could slow down the combustion, maybe we can delay it a little bit so that we're not doing that too early, we're not knocking. Nothing actually helps. And it turns out that you're not alone when you're talking about this over the water cooler. Other people are having the same exact issue as you, and not just a few like basically everybody. Exact issue as you, and not just a few like basically everybody. Engine knock is such a widespread problem that car manufacturers are scrambling to find a solution to it. It's affecting their sales and it's hurting their reputations so effectively. We've got an engineering crisis on our hands Now.

Speaker 1:

At General Motors, you know the big GM, charles Kettering was the chief engineer at this time and he knew that he needed to go ahead and figure out a solution to this problem. Otherwise he was not going to be in a job for very long. So he found a young and ambitious chemist on staff. His name was Thomas Midgley and he called him into his office and he went all right, midge, here's what's going on. This is affecting sales. We're all going to be out of a job if we don't find a solution to this. So I need you to go and solve this combustion issue. Like I don't even care what it takes, like Like blank check. Go figure it out, bring me a solution.

Speaker 1:

So Midgley started experimenting with different types of fuel additives that he thought could possibly prevent the premature ignition and, by the way, that is really the right guy for the job. If you're talking about the kinetics of a reaction and the fact that this is happening far too soon, a chemist is the right dude to go to. He knows all kinds of different ways to speed up a reaction or to slow down a reaction. So he got to work. Testing dozens of compounds. He tried iodine, aniline, different alcohols and some kind of sort of worked, but none of them were actually ideal and in fact the closest that he got to something that really could work was adding ethanol. Now, if you don't know, ethanol is an alcohol that's derived from corn, the same deal that people do when they're making moonshine. Okay, that's also derived from corn and it's ethanol. It's cheap and it's effective, but it can't be patented. So GM couldn't corner the market on it.

Speaker 1:

Testing tetraethyl lead and that oftentimes gets shorted to TEL and what he found was that with just the teeniest, tiniest, little baby amount of tetraethyl lead about one part per thousand the knocking was dramatically reduced. The engine runs smooth, it runs quietly, it's powerful. This is actually a huge breakthrough. So Midgley brought that back to Kettering and Kettering was thrilled. Kettering immediately got himself on the phone and got GM partnered with Standard Oil and DuPont. If you recognize the name DuPont, that's because they actually have been polluting our nation for longer than not for sure, but this is not the first issue that we've had with them. Lead-aid gasoline was not DuPont's first issue, it wasn't their last issue. Frankly, they're pretty irresponsible as far as corporations go. That aside, gm partners with Standard Oil and DuPont in order to mass produce tetraethyl lead, and they formed what was called the Ethyl Corporation.

Speaker 1:

They promoted TEL as a miracle additive, branding it ethyl gasoline. Huh, handy, how they left the lead part out of there. Right, it's tetraethyl lead and they're just actually calling it ethyl gasoline. It seems like. Maybe that's like I want to call it a white lie, but it's a little bit more nefarious than a white lie, so maybe I'll come back to you with a different word for that. Ooh, weaponized, it's weaponized something. Weaponized incompetence. No, they're not incompetent, so I can't say it's weaponized incompetence. I'm going to come back to you with the word that. I actually think that that is so. Thesaurus in my head is working right now. Now again, they promoted this as an absolute miracle. They intentionally avoided using the word lead, because it turns out, people weren't dumb and we already knew that lead was toxic. In fact, we've known that lead was toxic since you know, way, way, way long before that.

Speaker 1:

So actually there was an expedition looking for the Northwest Passage. Okay, hold on, it's coming back to me. It's coming back to me. Okay, the Franklin Expedition was one. Okay, the Franklin Expedition was one. Yeah, yep, franklin Expedition.

Speaker 1:

So this was in the 1800s and this was led by the British Royal Navy and Sir John Franklin. So what he did was that he took the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror to go and try and chart the Northwest Passage. They were trying to find an easier way through than going all the way around South America. Well, all 129 men on that passage, they all died. They disappeared entirely, and it actually took decades of forensic and archaeological evidence to suggest that it was actually lead poisoning that played a major role in that cruise demise. So if you don't know, one, go watch the documentary because it is fantastic.

Speaker 1:

But two, what actually was happening here was when they got way up north, their ships got iced in and they thought that this was just going to be for like one winter and they were like okay, well, we'll just hunker down. We have plenty of canned food and we can make it through this winter. When the ice melts in the spring, then we'll just go home and try again later, right, like this kind of like how sometimes I'm like, oh, this day is not going how I wanted it to, so I think my best option is to go to bed and try again tomorrow. I think my best option is to go to bed and try again tomorrow. That was their plan. Well, that went way far south. Well, like, not literally south. They would have probably loved it if they'd gone literally south. That would have gotten them out of the ice. But that went way far south when their ships actually the ice didn't melt enough for them to get out that next summer, so then they were stuck for an entire other winter.

Speaker 1:

Well, this was a prolonged period of time where they were eating this tinned food and those cans were sealed with a lead based solder and that solder leached into the food. And so all of the medical reports from, you know, the ship physician were talking about how, you know, these sailors were losing their teeth, they were turning black, they were essentially just rotting away, and this is very, very classic lead poisoning. But you know, when they did recover those remains, they showed extremely high levels of lead in the bones and the tissues of those sailors. So we already knew that this was definitely a big, big problem. Okay, this was a really, really, really big problem.

Speaker 1:

Now, when this new fuel hit the market, if your neighborhood gas station started offering it, you were immediately driving right down there and you drove down there with a knock. You left without one. You filled up for the first time in weeks and your car runs quietly and you go. Okay, now I could focus on the radio. This is great. No more repair bills. It feels like magic. You just got money back in your pocket. You don't have to replace a cracked piston. But what you don't know, because nobody told you, was that that magic inside your gas tank was actually a potent neurotoxin that accumulates in your bloodstream every single time you breathe in exhaust. So it doesn't even matter if you're getting the gas. You could not be part of the problem at all, but you're still going to get lead in your body and your bones and your children playing out by the road, they're breathing even more of it.

Speaker 1:

And guys remember that was in the way back times where, like, all you had to do is be home by the time that the streetlights came on and, by the way, I don't even think that they were street lights ever then it was the guy that came around and lit all of the uh. He lit the street lights with, you know, his little, his little torch. Okay, so this was. There was much less of. Uh, you know, knowing where your kids were and that they were safe and that they weren't bringing in car exhaust or sorry, breathing in car exhaust all full of lead.

Speaker 1:

Well, we again parents, didn't know there was lead in there because the the ethyl corporation, kept that part all to themselves. Now why? Why? Why, when we knew that lead was toxic, why were they letting this happen? Why was the Ethel corporation doing this? And GM Motors why were they doing this? Well, when engineers discovered that that stopped the knocking, well, they went we have to use this. And they patented tetraethyl lead and they sold it as a highly profitable and proprietary additive. They branded it as ethyl. Okay, you could call it whatever you want. So they called it ethyl, so they wouldn't have to say that there was lead.

Speaker 1:

Now the other alternatives to fix that engine knock did exist, one of them being ethanol, which comes from corn. We talked about that just a little earlier. And ethanol that comes from corn, that's safe, it's non-toxic, but it couldn't be patented and so companies couldn't make any money from it. So here we are Follow a man's money and you will find his treasure. Well, it turns out that their treasure was just more money and not at all about human life or the good of the public or anyone around them. And don't you know? And here's what I really wonder, is you know? Was charles kettering married? Did he have kids? Did he go home and sit around the dinner table and did he look at his wife and kids and say, yeah, I'm actually really okay with you guys being poisoned because I have a lot of money and I am on the up ladder at work? Everybody thinks I'm freaking fantastic and this is just all real. Like, this is really really good for me. Like, did he? Is that really what went through his mind when he laid his head down on the pillow at night? Was he like killing people? But man, I'm not worried about the power bill, you're not going to have to worry about it when everyone's dead, okay, anyways.

Speaker 1:

So we have to think about somebody's motivation when they're telling us something, because all GM and the Ethel Corporation said was oh my gosh, this is magic, it's going to fix your car engine, and we just think that, like, they've done something really good for us. Like this is gonna fix my model t and I don't have to buy a new car or a new piston head. Well, there's always a secondary motivation and it's your job as the consumer or the reader or the student to go and find it. That's how you don't get bamboozled in life. So what was their secondary motivation once? Actually, their primary motivation was that TEL, tetraethyl lead it was. It was patentable, it was exclusive, it was incredibly lucrative because once they patented it then everybody else would have to pay them for that solution. That's how patents work.

Speaker 1:

So if we're thinking about those key profit differences, ethanol could not be patented. It was a common chemical. I mean, essentially it's grain alcohol. Anybody could make it. So like if you think about who could make and sell ethanol as an additive for gasoline, like if you think about who could make and sell ethanol as an additive for gasoline farmers, farmers could do a little side hustle and make some ethanol, sell it as that byproduct for fuel. So small producers and fuel blenders could legally produce ethanol and that again was not going to make any money for GM or the DuPont or Standard Oil or like they had a vested combined interest in this and it was money. Now again, with ethanol it didn't cost very much to make, it didn't cost very much to sell and so there was a really low margin on those profits. Most of the value there was going to be in the actual distribution of it, not in the proprietary control. So you couldn't own the rights to it.

Speaker 1:

Where tetraethyl lead was patented, and you know, gm DuPont and Standard Oil owned that formula and the rights to producing it and selling it. So anybody else that wanted to do so would have to license it, meaning they would have to pay royalties. And if you don't know what licensing is, that's like when the lunchbox company wants to put Mickey Mouse on their lunchboxes so they could sell more lunchboxes, well, they have to license it. They have to have a licensing contract with Disney that tells them when and where and how much they can sell of those Mickey Mouse lunchboxes. So same deal here. So let's say, shell is selling gasoline but they don't want engine knock either. They have to buy and pay royalties for that TEL additive to the Ethel Corporation.

Speaker 1:

Okay, and it also required special handling because of course like why would it not? It's full of lead and so, because it was so toxic, only the ethyl group could actually legally blend it safely. And that gave them even more control. They really have stacked the deck in their favor. And if you start looking, you are going to start seeing this across the board. You know when we start to.

Speaker 1:

You know, do research, do a study. Typically, there is a goal to that and one. We need to find that goal. What is the motivation? Who's profiting off of it? And two, two, how are they stacking the deck in their favor? That's a very human thing and we would be naive and remiss to think that, you know, those in research are not doing this right. Let's be pleasantly surprised when we do all of our research and we don't find that. Let's assume that that is the standard.

Speaker 1:

Now, as far as estimated profit, ethel Corporation made approximately $200 million just in royalties over the first few decades. And, by the way, that's in early 20th century dollars. In the now times, dollars that would be over $3 billion. That's nothing to sneeze at. I don't even have a sneeze to sneeze at that like that's a lot of money, um. And so you know, gm, there's actually a memo that surfaced. It surfaced um from the 1920s, and this is a quote. This quote pains me. Here's what it said Ethanol is our biggest competitor, but we can't make any money from it. Tetraethyl lead is our only profitable anti-NOx solution Woof. So it's right there. It's plain, plain to see, it's in black and white that it's not just that we're trying to stop that knock for the consumer.

Speaker 1:

This is not about the good of the consumer. They could have done that with ethanol. It also had to be wildly profitable to them and that profit was worth poisoning a nation who so now GM controlled not just car manufacturing but what fuel those cars need to run best. And this is a brilliant, albeit deeply, deeply problematic vertical integration. Super, super smart, absolutely brilliant, genius level business. Very, very problematic, because where is the oversight? Where are the checks and the balances? What is going to keep consumers safe?

Speaker 1:

Now, tel could be added to gasoline in really very small quantities remember like one per one, part per thousand and it didn't require any significant changes to the engine design or infrastructure. So ethanol, in contrast, would have required some different handling, distribution, a few little regulatory changes. And look, I know myself, paperwork is the last thing that I want to do, and so I'm willing to bet that 1920s, you know, humans probably also didn't very much want to do paperwork. That would then, you know, lead to those regulatory changes. So I'm going to call this one laziness. It's nicer to say lazy than you know. You wanted money so you poisoned an entire nation, but that also happened, all right.

Speaker 1:

So industry leaders, those like Charles Kettering, like Thomas Midgley, the developers that were at GM they knew it was toxic. Again, we knew this already. Midgley even took a break from work due to lead poisoning Y'all I can't even right now. He had to break from work because he had lead poisoning but then they both went and downplayed the risks in public. Are you joking me? That is like the part that absolutely makes me just want to like lay down on the floor and I also maybe I want to go find this guy and I want to push him down like I want to push him down and be like that was not good, you did bad things. Now there were early reports of factory worker deaths and neurological damage, but those were like I can't even keep a straight face. They dismissed those as isolated incidents Like how head in the sand do we have to be sand? Do we have to be?

Speaker 1:

The Ethyl Corporation ran a really aggressive PR campaign to frame tetraethyl lead as a modern marvel. Guys, have we ever heard that? We have heard about modern marvels before? That turned into really gigantic poop shows dumpster fires. They called concerns emotional or unscientific. Now I'm going to turn emotional whenever you call me emotional I am a woman after all.

Speaker 1:

But to dismiss someone's concern, genuine concern, where a chemist quite literally had to leave work and stay home for a period of time due to lead poisoning. And then we turn around, we go just being emotional. Stop being so emotional, You're being unscientific. No, I think I'm being highly scientific because I am observing somebody with lead poisoning who is the chemist who came up with this. I'm also observing factory worker deaths and neurological damage. This feels pretty scientific to me that my observations are causing me some concern here. Well, they coined the term ethyl to avoid using the word lead in the marketing and so nobody knew. And then when we call people emotional or we call them unscientific, right, like that kind of stuck.

Speaker 1:

And the bottom line here is that tetraethyl lead was promoted because it made engines run better, it was patentable and it was profitable, but it didn't require changing the status quo, even though the dangers were definitely, definitely, well known. It was a textbook case of corporate interests overriding public safety and, with the help of suppressed data, misleading science and also government lobbying. And then let's just go ahead and add into it Nobody's asking questions, nobody's asking questions, nobody's asking questions. So I want to bring a new character into our story here and I mentioned him briefly just a few minutes ago personal hero of mine, claire Patterson. Now, claire Patterson was a quiet American geochemist.

Speaker 1:

He earned his PhD at the University of Chicago under Harrison Brown, who was a really really prominent geochemist, and when he was at Caltech, patterson worked on a project where he was really just trying to determine the age of the earth, and he was doing that using uranium lead dating in zircon crystals, and this was a method that required extraordinary precision and extraordinary contamination control. Now, just as a fun fact, patterson is actually the reason why we know that the earth is 4.55 billion years old, you know today, and that was the original goal of his research. He was not getting into it with any kind of an inclination towards environmental activism and he didn't even know that there was a problem. He was ignorant, like the rest of everybody was. He thought it was ethyl, right. So while he was trying to measure lead isotopes in these ancient zircon samples, he kept getting really inconsistent results and as a chemist, that was really concerning to him, because that means that there's some kind of an independent variable at work that we haven't identified yet. Right, if all of our lab technique is such that we ought to be reproducing our results but we're not. Something's going on there, and we got to figure it out.

Speaker 1:

It turned out the culprit was actually done. There are massive lead contamination in his lab equipment and even in the atmosphere. He realized that lead was literally everywhere, and so he began investigating its presence in the environment, in the air, in the water, in ocean sediments and even in polar ice cores, and what he found was shocking. He found that lead levels had skyrocketed in the modern era as compared to those natural background levels that he would have expected to see. He found ice core samples from Greenland that revealed really a dramatic increase in atmospheric lead, and if you don't know this, geologists are quite adept at dating different layers of the earth. Well, he found and then had it. You had it looked at again and again, and again in order to really really be able to say that that dramatic increase in atmospheric lead. It coincided with the use of leaded gasoline. That data implicated industrial activity, especially the burning of leaded gasoline, as the source of the contamination. Now, again, I'm going to say this wasn't new. We knew what lead did to the human body.

Speaker 1:

Midgley had to leave work for his lead poisoning. Now Claire Patterson wasn't just going to let this go. He was an honest dude and he wrote a 1965 paper in Archives of Environmental Health showing that industrial lead exposure was not natural and definitely not harmless. It contradicted decades y'all decades of industry-sponsored claims. This was big business and, honestly, patterson, when he knew, let's say it's the night before his article's coming out, I don't think he slept y'all Like.

Speaker 1:

I think he was concerned because I would be If I knew that I had just written something to be published. It was printed, it was ready to go. That was in direct opposition to one of the biggest industries in the country that I lived. Yeah, I don't think I'm going to sleep that night Like that's not. That's gonna feel like a lot of anxiety, a lot of oh boy. I'm going to sleep that night Like that's not. That's going to feel like a lot of anxiety, a lot of oh boy. I'm about to piss some people off. I hope he enjoyed it a little bit. Honestly. I hope he was like I hope that he I mean he had to know, you know what that was going to do, but I like, I really hope he took some delight in it. I really do, claire. I hope he took some delight in it. I really do, claire. I hope he took some delight in it.

Speaker 1:

So, anyway, he argued that humans were being poisoned, especially children, and at an unprecedented scale. And when we say that our children are vulnerable, we do mean that mentally and emotionally. I think that that's usually how we talk about that. It's also physically. It's very, very much physically. Children have a much higher surface area to volume ratio than adults do, and so, you know, a smaller amount of something is going to impact them much more greatly than in, much more quickly than it does an adult. Now, I know that we all know that in terms of medicine, right, that's why we have children's Tylenol versus adult Tylenol. But it works for anything, for any contaminant to the human body, and for heat, for cold, it's literally everything. Our children are vulnerable. We have to protect them.

Speaker 1:

So Claire built a clean room and he did this to eliminate contamination and accurately measure environmental lead. He built one of the world's very first ultra clean labs at Caltech and, to my students, the first chance that you have to experience an ultra clean lab. I'm telling you you have got to do it. It it is such a different experience. You know, there's like this whole little room that you have to go into to, like, you know, scrub up, scrub down. You got to put, you know, the booties on, you got to put stuff over your hair. There's like, it's like a super fan that's in there so that there's no like dust or like dog hair on you Like. It is such a weird feel but it's so, so cool. Okay, anyways, I digress. His clean lab was so important for measuring low lead levels and advancing both geochemistry and public health research. So, using an ultra clean lab and all of those procedures that are put in place to keep it clean on the scientific advancement and two, it really helped him with the quantitative research and really pinpointing those levels.

Speaker 1:

Now I know you're waiting for, uh, the pushback. You're waiting for the clap back, right, because there's no way that the oil and gas industry is just going to take this sitting down right. Well, industry groups like the Ethel Corporation and the Lead Industries Association launched efforts to discredit Clara Patterson. So Patterson was denied research funding, he was blocked from committees, he was professionally blackballed and isolated. Rude, rude he is just presenting his research and talking about his concerns for the human race Denied your funding, that's like getting debanked. So Claire never backed down. He actually testified before Congress. He doubled down and y'all, when you have the truth, it is your responsibility to double down.

Speaker 1:

In the 1970s, patterson testified before government agencies and congressional hearings, and he was arguing for the removal of lead from gasoline, from water systems and from consumer products. Did you know that the paint that used to be used on Hot Wheels was a lead based paint? And what do toddlers do with Hot Wheels Besides, vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom, they put them in their mouths, and so even children were developing learning disabilities because they were constantly licking lead paint, were developing learning disabilities because they were constantly licking lead paint. Okay, and that's where the insult paint liquor comes from, but we don't need to use that anymore because we don't have lead in consumer products. I mean spoiler alert. Patterson got through. Anyways, let's go through. Let me tell you the story though. Okay, so Patterson said. Okay. So Patterson said we are all now living in a contaminated environment with lead concentrations hundreds of times greater than those found in the eventual decision by the EPA. They decided to phase out leaded gasoline, beginning in 1975. So you know, damage done. We're going to phase it out slowly, but at least we've got movement. Do you want to know what happened next? And this is truly the legacy of Claire Patterson. Besides knowing that the earth is 4.55 billion years old because that's also really, really cool this is Patterson's legacy.

Speaker 1:

By the 1990s, lead levels in the blood of American children had dropped by over 80%. I have tingles, I have goosebumps. He wasn't wrong. He kept going. He kept searching for and uncovering the truth. And what would we be now if he hadn't? What would it have taken? He helped launch a new era of environmental consciousness and set new standards for clean lab practices and for trace metal analysis.

Speaker 1:

By the time I came along in you know the oh, what years was I doing my research in Northern Idaho? It was like 2008 to 2012,. Looking at mine tailings, and so that was trace metal analysis for heavy metals. By then, there were. It was just the standard of clean lab practice, and that's what I experienced. That's what I learned on.

Speaker 1:

Now, despite immense opposition, clara Patterson changed both scientific and public health policy and y'all? He saved millions of lives, millions. So look at your family and even when they annoy you, I want you to think about. You know, if Claire Patterson hadn't been around, you know I wouldn't have this sibling of mine to sit here and annoy me. I wouldn't have this sibling of mine to sit here and annoy me and be thankful You're welcome.

Speaker 1:

Now, remember that being a smart consumer or a smart scientist doesn't mean doubting everything, but it does mean learning how to ask the right questions. You need to ask about people's motives, you need to understand where the money's coming from, where the funding is coming from, and you need to think critically. Always, always question, because what if you're the next Claire Patterson? What if you uncover something that could change the course of humanity? And what if you didn't speak up? What if you did? That's all for today. In our next installment, we are talking about american eugenics. Yeah, um, that is us really really messing with people. It's people experimentation and it is ugly. It's coming next week, so make sure you tune in, subscribe like, share with your AP family members, share with your AP friends, share with your AP parents, and I will be right back here with you next week to share another story where critical thinking made all the difference and changed the course of humanity. Again, I'm Nicole, host of Bulletproof, and until next time, stay curious, keep questioning and keep building that bulletproof brain.

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Nicole Smith, M.Ed

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