Ohio's Lead Legacy

Timeline of Lead Pollution and Lead Advocacy in the US

1844 -- Cincinnati: US Patent 3,475, Machinery for the manufacture of lead pipes, March 9, 1844, Charles Sellers and George Escol Sellers

1910 -- Cleveland: Sherwin Williams offers Lead Paint for sale despite knowing the dangers.

1916 Alice Hamilton had become America's foremost authority on lead poisoning.[31] For the next decade she investigated a range of issues for a variety of state and federal health committees. Hamilton focused her explorations on occupational toxic disorders, examining the effects of substances such as aniline dyes, carbon monoxide, mercury, tetraethyl lead, radium, benzene, carbon disulfide and hydrogen sulfide gases. In 1925, at a Public Health Service conference on the use of lead in gasoline, she testified against the use of lead and warned of the danger it posed to people and the environment

1921 -- Dayton: Charles F. Kettering and Thomas Midgley added Tetraethyl Lead to gasoline. Clevelander John D. Rockefeller company Standard Oil manufactured Ethyl Gasoline.

1945 -- "In the spring of 1945, Alfred P. Sloan, the former CEO of General Motors, made what seemed like a magnanimous gesture. He donated $4 million to a modest research center on the east side of Manhattan and, in doing so, planted the seeds of what would eventually become one of the world’s premier cancer research institutions. By his side was Charles Kettering, a celebrated inventor and longtime friend, whom Sloan had convinced not only to donate additional money but also to help lead the new facility. [.....] As pervasive as Sloan, Kettering, and Midgley’s tetraethyl leaded gasoline once was, their more lasting legacy may be the blueprint they created — one now deeply embedded in American capitalism: that breakthrough innovations can generate immense private fortunes while their hidden costs accumulate silently in human bodies and ecosystems, often invisible and stretching over centuries."

1970 -- Cleveland: United States Patent O 3,671,224 METHODS OF PRODUCING LEADED STEEL Donald F. North, Jr., Bay Village, and Jerry D. Thomas, Bedford Heights, Ohio, and Gerald W. Worth, St. Louis, Mo., assignors to Republic Steel Corporation. Leaded Steel is used in making machine parts. Canton Ohio’s Republic Steel plant was closed after EPA findings of widespread lead pollution of surrounding neighborhoods. The research and remediation continues.

In 1979, Herbert Needleman began the first large-scale study of intelligence and behavior in children with no outward signs of lead poisoning. His research showed that lead exposure is associated with an increased risk for failure to graduate from high school and for reading disabilities. His research involved testing the concentration of lead in bones of 194 juveniles, between the ages of twelve and eighteen, who had been convicted in the Allegheny County Juvenile Court, and 146 students in regular high schools in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania who did not have behavioral problems. In 1996, findings from the research, reporting on the physical and behavioral problems caused by leaded gasoline and lead paint while linking lead exposure to anti-social behavior, were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study found that delinquent children were four times more likely to have elevated concentrations of lead in their bones. According to Needleman, "Lead is a brain poison that interferes with the ability to restrain impulses. It's a life experience which gets into biology and increases a child's risk for doing bad things."

1978 Leaded paint was banned in the US for residential usage. In the 1980s leaded gasoline was phased out in the US. In 2021, water systems were given 10 years to replace lead water lines. 

2019 Cleveland Lead Advocates for Safe Housing was formed to enact legislation to require owners of pre-1978 rental properties to be certified lead safe. 

2026 Sherwin Williams continues to sell leaded paint in Mexico. 

2026 Sherwin Williams inaugurates new HQ in downtown Cleveland. Plain Dealer not impressed. 

2026 The City of Kettering Ohio receives HUD grant for lead remediation.

Sherwin Williams in Cleveland Markets Lead Based Paint 

The dangers of lead paint were considered well-established by the beginning of the 20th century. In the July 1904 edition of its monthly publication, Sherwin-Williams reported the dangers of paint containing lead, noting that a French expert had deemed lead paint "poisonous in a large degree, both for the workmen and for the inhabitants of a house painted with lead colors".  As early as 1886, German health laws prohibited women and children from working in factories processing lead paint and lead sugar.

The Rise and Fall of Lead Paint Litigation in Ohio David J. Owsiany  Mar 2, 2009  

The State of Ohio Sues Paint Manufacturers “On February 6, 2009, Cordray dismissed the state’s case, stating that while he agreed that “exposure to lead paint is a very real problem,” he also knows that “not every problem can be solved by a lawsuit.” He decided to dismiss the case after “assessing the law, facts, and adverse legal rulings in these types of cases nationally.” The state’s decision to dismiss its case effectively ends the lead paint public nuisance litigation saga in Ohio.

SWP continues to sell Lead Based Paint…outside the US

21-Apr-2026 News Release  US companies selling lead paint and pigments abroad "A new study finds that lead chromate pigments are used in more than 90% of the lead paints that are being sold in Mexico. Lead Chromate is a well-known human carcinogen and a lead poisoning hazard. The world’s largest paint company, Sherwin Williams continues to sell paints in Mexico with lead concentrations up to 8% lead.  The company was one of 46 paint companies marketing lead paint in Mexico through retail outlets."

Midgley invents Leaded Gas in Dayton

In 1921 Charles Kettering of Dayton Ohio hired a chemist Thomas Midgeley to find a way to help internal combustion engines to run smoothly. His invention was tetraethyl lead. Everyone knew that lead was poisonous so Kettering decided to call the new product Ethel Gasoline and created a cartoon babe to sell it to guys.

Cleveland’s John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil manufactured Ethyl Gas in his plant in New Jersey where 24 employees were poisoned until they worked learned how to prevent lead poisoning.

Even so, in an anonymous editorial in the American Academy of Public Health, an epidemiologist working for the Ohio Department of Health proclaimed that tetraethyl lead was a “gift from the gods.” The editorial was anonymous because money changed hands before it was published

Kettering got a city named after him: Kettering Ohio

Midgley got lead poisoning and retired to Florida. Later he invented “Freon” which was used as a cooling fluid in air conditioners and punched a hole in the Ozone layer.