![A mother holding a baby gasses up her car at the gas station](/sites/default/files/styles/ucd_panoramic_image/public/media/images/leaded-gasoline-discovery.jpg?h=8e58fdb5&itok=lBkldZBb)
and colleagues at the Crocker Nuclear Lab used the lab’s , a type of particle accelerator that makes a beam of protons, to study air quality, among other things. In the 1970s, Cahill’s team provided evidence showing how lead pollution spread from freeways over neighborhoods, leading then-Gov. Jerry Brown to introduce the first controls on lead as a gasoline additive.