Metal Mines

BBC Inside Science

BBC

Technology, Science

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 30 November 2023

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Long abandoned metal mines are having a huge impact on rivers across the UK. BBC Inside Science reporter Patrick Hughes visits Cwmystwyth in Wales, where he finds lead, zinc and cadmium seeping into waterways. It’s the costly legacy left after hundreds of years of mining.

Roma Agrawal breaks down our modern world into seven essential basic inventions in her book Nuts and Bolts which has been shortlisted for the Royal Society Science Book Prize. She talks to Marnie about the surprising history behind some of these inventions. 

And, as a cryogenic tank of bull semen is stolen from a farm in County Tyrone in Northern Ireland, it got us thinking: how can selective breeding help reduce carbon and methane emissions from cattle? Professor Eileen Wall from Scotland’s Rural College tells us more.

Presenter:  Marnie Chesterton Producers: Harrison Lewis, Hannah Robins and Patrick Hughes Editor: Richard Collings Production Co-ordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth

BBC Inside Science is produced in Cardiff by BBC Wales and West in collaboration with the Open University.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Doleepa, and I'm at your service.
0:04.7	Join me as I serve up personal conversations with my sensational guests.
0:08.8	Do a leap interviews, Tim Cook.
0:11.2	Technology doesn't want to be good or bad.
0:15.0	It's in the hands of the creator.
0:16.7	It's not every day that I have the CEO of the world's biggest company in my living room.
0:20.7	If you're looking at your phone more than you're looking in someone's eyes,
0:24.6	you're doing the wrong thing.
0:26.0	Julie, at your service, listen to all episodes on BBC Sales. This is B.C. Sounds, Music Radio Podcasts.
0:35.0	This is BBC Inside Science with me, Marnie Chesterton,
0:40.0	and this episode was first broadcast on the 2nd of November 2023.
0:45.0	Hello I'm Marnie Chasterton this week.
0:48.0	If somebody came to us with an industrial process and said I'd like to discharge some cadmium
0:52.0	we wouldn't be allowed to
0:53.3	issue them a permit to do so but this mine is discharging kilograms of the
0:57.7	stuff every year into the river with no controls. The inside science team
1:01.9	has gone deep underground to a mine in mid Wales to see firsthand the environmental hangover it's left downstream.
1:10.0	Also, we look at the nuts and bolts of our civilizations.
1:13.6	Literally, the humble nail was once the most precious part of a home.
1:18.1	So what Americans used to do was burn their houses down, collect up all the nails, and then take bags of nails with them to their next
1:25.8	site and then use those precious nails to build up their homes.
1:29.8	So yeah, the state of Virginia actually had to pass a law in the end banning people from
	...

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