Fuel Additive MMT

The American government does not want it.

The Canadian government does not want it.

The auto industry does not want it.

The oil industry wants it, so the rest of you can go 'you know where'.

MMT is the short identification used for the product methylcyclopentadienyl manganese tricaronyl. It is an octane enhancing additive that is mixed into the formula for unleaded gas by the oil companies. It has been with us since 1977 when the decision was made to get rid of lead additives.

Prior to 1977 we had lead additives in the fuel. This old polluter and health hazard, coincidentally, was sold for 50 years by the same company that sells the new one. The manufacturer lobbied hard to convince us that lead was not the villain it was being portrayed to be. Currently they are saying MMT is not a problem either, and is in fact benign.

The auto industry insists that it increases smog causing hydrocarbons, causes spark plugs to misfire, and interferes with the sophisticated on-board diagnostic emission-control systems.

The vice-president of corporate affairs for General Motors of Canada, says "it is not benign. We have problems with the test studies that have been provided to us."

The Canadian government was lobbied by the auto industry to ban MMT. The government cooperated. If MMT 'created problems with pollution and health, then it would be banned.' The decision was made and a bill was prepared.

A bill was introduced into Parliament and subsequently passed. The transportation and importation of the additive would cease. The law of the land would be upheld.

The oil companies prepared themselves by manufacturing large quantities of MMT and storing it in every province prior to the  passage of the bill into law. There was no importation and transportation between provinces while the lawyers planned their collective SLAPP against the government. (SLAPP is the name coined to identify Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation. It is a common practice used generally against those individuals who have the nerve to question the actions of corporations. They quietly suggest that they will take all you own if you don't back off-- then they do -- then they write off the legal fees as a business expense).

The provinces acted first and launched a challenge to the Feds stating that they were violating the Canadian Agreement on Internal Trade (AIT) with the bill. The Feds lost this round to the provinces.

The manufacturer wanted $250,000,000 US Dollars as compensation for potential lost revenues. The North American Free Trade Agreement was brought out and used as the defense against this dastardly bill that our government had enacted.

Ottawa caved in. Parliament ate crow and rescinded the bill 13 months after its passage. For this little fiasco we Canadians paid the litigant $13,000,000 to cover their legal fees. They kicked our butt -- maybe we deserved it.

I suspect that the bill was premature and not well conceived. At the time there was little concrete proof or evidence of environmental and health concerns. The auto industry lobbyists had thrown the ball to Canada. Politicians ran with it and ended up eating a lot of dirt for the trouble. This whole thing may have been a Mission Impossible plot to discredit the government of a sovereign country for all I know. I expect that other governments will be very cautious with future attacks on a corporation that has more money than Canada has. (Hollywood would do well to investigate the value of producing this story.)

If someone had done their homework and investigated the health aspect of this product a little more fully, then perhaps the outcome would have been different.

Dr. Donna Mergler, a professor of physiology at the Université du Quebec du Montréal has been doing just that -- well, almost. She and her team have been investigating the long term effects of manganese on the former employees, and residents in the vicinity of a processing plant in Quebec. She apparently has found evidence that indicates things are not as benign a s we are told. I will make no effort to interpret her findings as they relate to manganese processing and not MMT directly. (No one should be convicted by a hypothesis, however persuasive.)

Manganism is the name of the disorder that is associated with excess exposure to manganese. MMT contains manganese and is automatically guilty by deductive reasoning.

The symptoms of manganism are much like those for Parkinson's disease -- tremors, memory loss, learning disabilities, irritability, insomnia, speech problems and in extreme cases a psychosis called "manganic madness." (So much for my problems &-- how are you feeling?)

The Ethyl Corporation makes their own claims and they may very well be right for all I know. They claim that the additive reduces nitrogen oxide and carbon monoxide by 20 percent.

It may all come down to "what devil do we collectively want to live with?"

Most of the data in this paper comes from my review of an article by Water Stewart in the May/June 1999 edition of Canadian Geographic magazine.

Have a nice day.