Getting “optomistic”s on this one so it appears I should state my source.
Here’s a thing on what was IN leaded gasoline
Why Lead Used to Be Added To Gasoline
Apparently they were mostly after carbon monoxide with catalytic converters but they also wanted to get rid of the lead. The CO2 amount didn’t actually go up much. Engines always produced CO2
Thinking about it more one thing I do remember, not sure from when, is that there was corporate money behind catalytic converters adoption and it came from Detroit.
Detroit was afraid of Japanese cars. They had newer much more flexible factory designs that made cars cheaper, faster, and better, but could also be retooled much much faster. Detroit was a decade behind. The idea was that such a fundamental change in US regulation would make foreign cars effectively illegal. It didn’t work. Honda’s cvcc engine was so good at what it did that it was able to just keep going. Detroit merely hobbled itself internationally. Water under the bridge now.
Corporate executives didn’t say it that way of course. They blamed unions even though the unions didn’t control factory design, corporate executives did. It was all BS. Rich people blaming poor people for the problems the rich created.
US manufacturing has long since caught up and they make some of the best cars in the world now.
