Clair Patterson Exposed Lead Poisoning

American geochemist Clair Patterson worked on the Manhattan Project before turning to one of science’s biggest measurements: the age of Earth. While trying to measure tiny traces of lead in meteorite samples, he found lead contamination everywhere, so he helped create one of the first ultra-clean laboratory rooms and calculated Earth’s age at about 4.55 billion years. That same lead problem led him to campaign against leaded gasoline, arguing that industrial lead was poisoning the air, soil, food, and human bodies.

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