# Attempts to make safe alternatives to dangerous products that have backfired. **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 9, 2013, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attempts-to-make-safe-alternatives-to-dangerous-products-that-have-backfired/660580 "2013-06-09T20:02:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![bibliophage](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bibliophage/32/7615_2.png) [@bibliophage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bibliophage)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2013, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attempts-to-make-safe-alternatives-to-dangerous-products-that-have-backfired/660580/41 "2013-06-11T17:32:55Z")
Back to cigarettes, there is some evidence that low-nicotine cigarettes are more dangerous. Although not explicitly marketed as being safer, consumers seem to assume they are. Nicotine is not very dangerous, except that it’s what gets you hooked. It’s the tar and carbon monoxide that does the real damage. Smokers usually compensate for the lower nicotine content by inhaling more, increasing their exposure to tar and carbon monoxide. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2013, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attempts-to-make-safe-alternatives-to-dangerous-products-that-have-backfired/660580/42 "2013-06-11T22:20:52Z")
> [@MandaJo](#): > > I want to point out that the toilet latch is to protect the Kindle, not the baby. But I do agree that a false sense of security is dangerous. Ha! Point taken. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![dracoi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90db22/32.png) [@dracoi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dracoi)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2013, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attempts-to-make-safe-alternatives-to-dangerous-products-that-have-backfired/660580/43 "2013-06-11T22:48:14Z")
I think touch screen automobile consoles deserve mention here. I’m not sure whether it’s fair to call the old consoles “dangerous” but there is always the risk of getting into an accident while adjusting the radio. But… at least the old-style consoles had dedicated knobs and you could change A/C or radio volume or station by feel, without taking your eyes off the road. The new touch-screen models require you to navigate through several menus, with no tactile feedback whatsoever. There’s an accident waiting to happen… ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2013, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attempts-to-make-safe-alternatives-to-dangerous-products-that-have-backfired/660580/44 "2013-06-11T23:15:59Z")
> [@AaronX](#): > > Trans fats. When I was a kid, as far back as I remember, we always had margarine, never that evil fatty thing called butter. Yes, we were very health-conscious. And then there’s the poster child of “miracle drugs” . . . penicillin. A true miracle drug for most people, as long as you weren’t allergic to it. And of course you don’t know you’re allergic to it until you take it. That can have horrible consequences that may be fatal. ---
**Author:** ![johnpost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f17d59/32.png) [@johnpost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/johnpost)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2013, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attempts-to-make-safe-alternatives-to-dangerous-products-that-have-backfired/660580/45 "2013-06-11T23:38:15Z")
> [@dracoi](#): > > I think touch screen automobile consoles deserve mention here. I’m not sure whether it’s fair to call the old consoles “dangerous” but there is always the risk of getting into an accident while adjusting the radio. > > But… at least the old-style consoles had dedicated knobs and you could change A/C or radio volume or station by feel, without taking your eyes off the road. The new touch-screen models require you to navigate through several menus, with no tactile feedback whatsoever. There’s an accident waiting to happen… death machines indeed. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2013, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attempts-to-make-safe-alternatives-to-dangerous-products-that-have-backfired/660580/46 "2013-06-12T03:36:28Z")
This thread would not be complete if the tragic history of Thomas Midgley was not mentioned. Via QI: [http://old.qi.com/talk/viewtopic.php?start=0&t=3413](http://old.qi.com/talk/viewtopic.php?start=0&t=3413) > [@](#): > > Born in 1889, Midgely did an engineering Ph.D. at Cornell. In 1916 he joined Charles Kettering’s Lab in Dayton, Ohio. > > Kettering was marketing a small kerosene engine to drive home-lighting systems on farms. It knocked horribly. Midgely guessed that dyeing the fuel red might cause it to absorb more heat and knock less. That was terrible physics. But when he doped the kerosene with iodine, there was less knock. > Midgely set out to find a better antiknock additive. > > First he wasted time with a hit-and-miss search. Then he began working systematically through the periodic table. After six years he found that tetraethyl lead worked beautifully. > > So Ethyl gasoline swept America. Questions about its toxicity came up right away and lingered for sixty years. There are even papers now reporting that it is likely that lead was a big factor on the crime waves of the recent past, and the continuous reduction of violent crime nowadays is due to the removal of lead from fuels. But Midgely was not done: > [@](#): > > Midgely took only three days to make his second great contribution. Early refrigeration units used nasty chemicals like sulfur dioxide and ammonia. We needed something better. Midgely went back to the periodic table and invented dichloroflouromethane – the first of the Freons. > > The Freons aren’t toxic at all. So they served us long and well. Then we found they were eating up our protective ozone layer. Now the survival of Earth depends on giving up Freons. We’re replacing them with new chlorine-free chemicals. > > So, Midgley changed American life twice. Both times his inventive heritage was life-threatening. And his final invention was really death-dealing, as it turns out. :smack: If he had known I think he would had killed himself.. > [@](#): > > He contracted polio when he was 51. As he lost the use of his legs, he invented a harness to get himself out of bed. On Nov. 2, 1944, he tangled in the gadget. It strangled him. Oh, darn it.. ---
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2013, 11:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attempts-to-make-safe-alternatives-to-dangerous-products-that-have-backfired/660580/47 "2013-06-12T11:58:07Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > This thread would not be complete if the tragic history of Thomas Midgley was not mentioned. Tetraethyl lead wasn’t intended as a “safe alternative to [a] dangerous product” - it WAS the dangerous product. ---
**Author:** ![Diceman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2013, 12:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attempts-to-make-safe-alternatives-to-dangerous-products-that-have-backfired/660580/48 "2013-06-12T12:13:17Z")
Hands-free cellphones for cars. Studies have consistently shown that they’re not any safer than driving while talking on a regular cellphone. Worse, according to a new AAA study, some of the new aps that let you dictate text messages are actually less safe than talking on a cellphone. ---
**Author:** ![Si\_Amigo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/si_amigo/32/2877_2.png) [@Si\_Amigo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Si_Amigo)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2013, 12:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attempts-to-make-safe-alternatives-to-dangerous-products-that-have-backfired/660580/49 "2013-06-12T12:34:28Z")
I had to do without red m&m’s due to the [red dye no. 2](http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1896348_1896354_1895874,00.html) scare; that is until they developed substitute dyes. Kids these days don’t realize how rough my generation had it. Hell I even had to suffer through Tab as being the only diet soft drink until Diet Coke came along. But it toughened us up and made us the men we are today; weak little self indulged crybaby men. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2013, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attempts-to-make-safe-alternatives-to-dangerous-products-that-have-backfired/660580/50 "2013-06-12T12:51:29Z")
> [@Machine\_Elf](#): > > Tetraethyl lead wasn’t intended as a “safe alternative to [a] dangerous product” - it WAS the dangerous product. Correct. Before they even marketed it, they renamed it to mask the lead content, and began hiding their data because they knew damned well it was dangerous. [It killed people at more than one of the plants producing it.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley,_Jr.) Midgley himself participated in a press conference stunt to deceive the public…that affected his own health. [QUOTE=Wikipedia] On October 30, 1924, Midgley participated in a press conference to demonstrate the apparent safety of TEL. In this demonstration, he poured TEL over his hands, then placed a bottle of the chemical under his nose and inhaled its vapor for sixty seconds, declaring that he could do this every day without succumbing to any problems whatsoever.[3][6] However, the State of New Jersey ordered the Bayway plant to be closed a few days later, and Jersey Standard was forbidden to manufacture TEL there again without state permission. Midgley himself was careful to avoid mentioning to the press that he required nearly a year to recover from the lead poisoning brought on by his demonstration at the press conference.[citation needed] According to Deborah Blum in _The Poisoner’s Handbook_ (p. 123), Midgley sought treatment for lead poisoning in Europe a few months after his demonstration at the press conference. [/QUOTE] Why? Money. [QUOTE=Wikipedia] General Motors which owned the patent jointly filed by Kettering and Midgley, promoted the TEL additive as a superior alternative to ethanol or ethanol-blended fuels, on which they could make very little profit.[3] [/QUOTE] The tetraethyl lead story is all about _a corporate willingness to kill other human beings for profit._ ---
**Author:** ![Turek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/turek/32/18782_2.png) [@Turek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Turek)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2013, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attempts-to-make-safe-alternatives-to-dangerous-products-that-have-backfired/660580/51 "2013-06-12T14:39:11Z")
> [@Sailboat](#): > > The tetraethyl lead story is all about _a corporate willingness to kill other human beings for profit._ Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose\*. Sorry, it just sounded better in french. \*The more things change, the more they stay the same. ---
**Author:** ![Kevbo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e47774/32.png) [@Kevbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kevbo)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2013, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attempts-to-make-safe-alternatives-to-dangerous-products-that-have-backfired/660580/52 "2013-06-12T15:23:35Z")
One of the lawyer types may be able to find a cite for this, until then you might consider it an urban legend: Ladders used to have no safety warning labels. There were lawsuits, so they got warning labels. This lead to : 1-People found ways to screw up not covered by the warning lables. Lawsuits continued. Not a backfire yet, but this lead to: 2-The warning labels provided evidence that ladder manufacturers were knowingly selling a dangerous product. Lawsuits continued. 3-As more inventive fools found new ways to hurt themselves with ladders more and more labels were applied to the ladders. There were probably a couple square feet of them(mom told me a million times not to exaggerate) on the last ladder a bought. 4-A litigant then argued that the number of labels was now so extreme that nobody could be expected to read and remember them all, thus he had done something that a label warned against, thus the tort claim. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2013, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attempts-to-make-safe-alternatives-to-dangerous-products-that-have-backfired/660580/53 "2013-06-12T15:26:37Z")
> [@Machine\_Elf](#): > > Tetraethyl lead wasn’t intended as a “safe alternative to [a] dangerous product” - it WAS the dangerous product. > [@Sailboat](#): > > The tetraethyl lead story is all about _a corporate willingness to kill other human beings for profit._ > [@Turek](#): > > Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose I was just about to post how the change from lead to [methyl tertiary butyl ether](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methyl_tert-butyl_ether) is an example. But it isn’t that simple because lead was so bad, but MTBE certainly wasn’t better. It may turn out to be much worse, when the real dangers and cancer numbers are known. Haha like that will ever happen. But the reason the more expensive ethanol is used in gasoline now is 100% due the inability to deny the damage and health disaster from MTBE in the groundwater. Not that the cancers from breathing it were anything to laugh about. ---
**Author:** ![bouv](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bc8723/32.png) [@bouv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bouv)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2013, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attempts-to-make-safe-alternatives-to-dangerous-products-that-have-backfired/660580/54 "2013-06-12T16:01:52Z")
> [@Leo\_Bloom](#): > > I spoke to a Ford engineer who proposed (I think it’s an old idea) that the best safety addition to a car would be exposed razor blades affixed to the dashboard. Well that’ll save me some time in the morning! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2013, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attempts-to-make-safe-alternatives-to-dangerous-products-that-have-backfired/660580/55 "2013-06-12T17:13:55Z")
Boxing gloves have reduced the number of hand injuries in the sport, but have increased the amount of brain damage and death. Probably. Some studies disagree. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2013, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attempts-to-make-safe-alternatives-to-dangerous-products-that-have-backfired/660580/56 "2013-06-12T18:17:38Z")
Similarly, I think football helmets have had a similar effect. ---
**Author:** ![johnpost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f17d59/32.png) [@johnpost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/johnpost)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2013, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attempts-to-make-safe-alternatives-to-dangerous-products-that-have-backfired/660580/57 "2013-06-12T22:21:26Z")
> [@bouv](#): > > Well that’ll save me some time in the morning! 😃 is that for shaving or body mod? ---
**Author:** ![Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/son_of_a_rich/32/5439_2.png) [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Son_of_a_Rich)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2013, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attempts-to-make-safe-alternatives-to-dangerous-products-that-have-backfired/660580/58 "2013-06-13T02:52:18Z")
This may be a stretch, but when the [SS Eastland](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Eastland)capsized in 1915, it was speculated that a ship which was already top heavy, became dangerously so when extra lifeboats were mandated after the Titanic went down. ---
**Author:** ![phreesh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9fc29f/32.png) [@phreesh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phreesh)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2013, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attempts-to-make-safe-alternatives-to-dangerous-products-that-have-backfired/660580/59 "2013-06-13T17:52:28Z")
This brings up one of my favorite topics - [risk homeostasis](http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/4/2/89.full). This theory says that humans have an inborn ‘safety thermostat’ that causes us to use up any safety margins that we create. There’s some great examples. For instance, drivers who buy cars with ABS braking systems tend to brake later and harder than drivers without those systems. There’s a great quote that sums up the theory perfectly. Someone asked a tightrope walker why he worked without a net. Using a net would seem like a perfectly sane thing to do. His succinct reply was that (paraphrasing), “Walkers who use a net tend to need one.” Having a net allowed them to focus just that little bit less and they fell. A fascinating theory. One of the conclusions is that for safety systems to be most effective, they should be hidden or make things appear more dangerous than they are. [Optical speed bars](http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2006/1003-slowing_down_speeders.htm) on roads are another example. They make drivers think they’re driving faster, thus causing them to decrease their speed. More on topic, [marked pedestrian crossings make pedestrians less, rather than more](http://www.protectconsumerjustice.org/when-marked-crosswalks-can-be-more-dangerous-for-pedestrians.html), safe. Such crossings give pedestrians a sense of safety and they pay less attention to vehicles, thus endangering themselves. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2013, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attempts-to-make-safe-alternatives-to-dangerous-products-that-have-backfired/660580/60 "2013-06-13T17:56:15Z")
> [@phreesh](#): > > This brings up one of my favorite topics - [risk homeostasis](http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/4/2/89.full). This theory says that humans have an inborn ‘safety thermostat’ that causes us to use up any safety margins that we create. That is fascinating. A topic just on that would be interesting. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attempts-to-make-safe-alternatives-to-dangerous-products-that-have-backfired/660580.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attempts-to-make-safe-alternatives-to-dangerous-products-that-have-backfired/660580.md?page=4)