This page is a guide to resources available for historians working in the area of fuels and octane / HUCR research.
Original Documents: Ethyl leaded gasoline and alternatives is a Google Doc that provides full original documents of hundreds of studies, reports, hearings, and articles about leaded gasoline and ethyl alcohol. Curated. by Bill Kovarik.
Timeline of leaded gasoline and alternatives is another useful historical tool for keeping the record straight.
Historical overviews of the leaded gasoline and alternatives include:
- Saturnine gout among Roman aristocrats. Did lead poisoning contribute to the fall of the Empire? Jerome Nriagu, N. Engl. J. Med. 308 (11): 660663. doi:10.1056/NEJM198303173081123. PMID 6338384.
- A ‘gift of God’?: The public health controversy over leaded gasoline during the 1920. David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz, American Journal of Public Health, April 1985
- AJPH editorial April 1985
- Industry criticism and response, Dec. 1985
- The rise and fall of leaded gasoline, Jerome Nriagu, Sci. Total Environ. 92, 13–28, 1990.
- Charles F. Kettering and the 1921 discovery of tetraethyl lead Bill Kovarik, Society of Automotive Engineers, 1994
- Henry Ford, Charles Kettering and the Fuel of the Future, Bill Kovarik, Society of Automotive Historians, fall 1998.
- Ethyl Leaded gasoline: How a classic occupational disease became an international public health disaster, Bill Kovarik, International Journal of Occupational and Public Heath, 2004
- Ethanol’s first century Bill Kovarik, International symposium on alcohol fuels, 2006.
- Special motives for alternative fuels, Bill Kovarik, Society for the History of Technology, 2007.
- Lead’s Urban Legacy, Howard Mielkie, Tulane University
- Daniel Stone, American Poison – Dutton 2025 – Publishers Weekly review
- Unleaded, Carie Nielsen, Templeton 2021
- How the car and gas industry knew about the health risks of leaded fuel, Bill Kovarik, The Conversation, 2021
Videos about leaded gasoline and ethanol:
100 years after the PHS Conference on leaded gasoline. This video is a discussion among a dozen historians and scientific experts on the history of leaded gasoline, post May 20, 2025.
Science communicator Derek Muller of Veritasium posted this video (below) on the history of Ethyl leaded gasoline on Earth Day, April 22, 2022.
100 years of leaded gasoline — 2021
Late Lessons – Early Warnings 2004 – Denmark, EEC
Popular history videos
History of Simple Things
Engineering explained