The fools gave the choice to gasoline refiners: pick ethanol or MTBE. Apparently the MTBE was cheaper EXCEPT - - it is water soluble <<<
Think... hundreds of really leaky storage tanks; thousands of sorta leaky: Would any chemist have missed the significance of putting a $@#&% water-soluble substance (with its own still to be evaluated health consequences) in something as ubiquitous as cars / gas stations? Any non brain-damaged chemist, that is.
In CA it's gotten into wells, forced expensive new testing, etc. May not be phased out til '04 now, though Philips says it'll try by '03. Could the PCBs re a major cause of the creeping dumbth like this?
(And leading to Bore / Gush choices)
Mutate indeed - Planet of the Apods.
Ashton