Power Failure: The Battered Legacy of Leaded Batteries.

T history of automobiles is inextricable from the story of one of the most pervasive toxic chemical exposures in modern human history. Globally, billions of people were poisoned by lead (Pb) between 1921, when General Motors Corporation introduced tetraethyl lead as an antiknock agent in gasoline-powered cars, until 2015, when leaded gasoline was scheduled to be phased out in Algeria, the last country still using leaded gasoline. The elimination of lead from gasoline is one of the greatest milestones in public health. Regulatory policies were instrumental in achieving the phase-out of leaded gasoline, and these were informed by incontrovertible scientific evidence that there are no safe levels of exposure to lead and that children are particularly susceptible to its adverse health effects. Unfortunately, lead remains a tenacious toxicant because of ubiquitous lead-acid batteries that power more than a billion cars on the road today.