In the United States, the amount of lead in gasoline began to be progressively reduced, finally eliminating it completely in 1986. The amount of lead in Americans’ blood by 1995 was up to 80% lower than in the 1970s. In Europe, these measures were adopted with a delay of one or two decades. The measure had been called for by Clair Cameron Patterson in 1965 with the article “Contaminated and Natural Lead Environments of Man,” in which he denounced lead contamination in the modern environment, citing years of experiments he had conducted as evidence.
