Summary
From the plumbing of ancient Rome, to lead acid batteries, paint, petrol and a dangerous legacy, the metal lead has seen a myriad of uses and abuses over thousands of years. In bullets, and poisons it has killed us both quickly and slowly, and yet its malleability, low melting point and resistance to corrosion make it a fantastic material for all kinds of containers and water proofing. And it is key to one of the most commonly used, and ignored, devices on the planet, the car battery.
However it's only recently that the serious impact of lead poisoning on the development of children's brains has come to light. Uta Frith, Emeritus Professor of Cognitive Development at University College London, who studied the impact of lead poisoning in the 1970s and 80s, journeys with lead from the iron age to the present day delving into the history and scandal associated with this often overlooked element.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless |
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| 0:21.0 | And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less |
| 0:24.9 | searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC sounds this is the BBC. |
| 0:38.9 | It's a what we call a high prevalence low morbidity neurotoxic. |
| 0:39.9 | The new Austin Metro. |
| 0:42.2 | A new metro is so aerodynamic that at a steady 50 miles per hour. |
| 0:46.0 | The Metro H.L. E. gets 62 miles per gallon. |
| 0:50.0 | I came up against it in Bosnia and finding kids who had been shot at and had bullets embedded |
| 0:59.6 | in their body. |
| 1:00.6 | They've been around for well over a hundred years. They have excellent temperature |
| 1:05.4 | range of utilization and they're relatively robust. Very difficult to get one to go on fire or |
| 1:09.7 | anything like that, though it's not impossible. It's all around us and yet if someone says metal |
| 1:15.8 | or metal compounds the one linking everything we just heard lead probably isn't |
| 1:21.6 | the first that springs to mind. |
| 1:24.0 | This is Discovery from the BBC World Service. |
| 1:28.6 | I'm Ucha Freth, a Maritus professor of cognitive development at University College London. |
| 1:35.0 | Lead is unique amongst the metals. |
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