Yandell Henderson, 1935
Courtesy Smithsonian Institution Archive. Image # SIA2008-2804
Cardiovascular physiologist Yandell Henderson was a director of the Yale Laboratory of Applied Physiology and a leading expert on poison gases and automotive exhaust. Yandell Henderson recognized the dangers of and opposed the use of tetraethyl lead in gasoline in the 1920s. He asserted leaded gas was “worse than tuberculosis,” one of the leading causes of death at the time. Throughout the 1920s, newspapers reported on serious, and sometimes fatal, cases of lead poisoning in oil refinery workers.
