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Discovery: In Their Element: Lead

Magazines & Reviews

Lead

26/02/2018 GMT

In Their Element

BBC World Service - Discovery, In Their Element, LeadSearch BBC

The impact of the use and abuse of lead on humanity.

Uta Frith, Emeritus Professor of Cognitive Development at University College London, assesses the impact of the use and abuse of lead on humanity.

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.

Photo: BBC Copyright

Discovery: In Their Element

Professor Andrea Sella tells the stories of different elements.

Andrea Sella, Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at University College London, celebrates the art and science of chemical elements. In this episode he admires two more elements that create visual treats.
 
At the time of Emperor Napoleon the Third aluminium was more valuable than gold and silver. The Emperor liked the metal so much he had his cutlery made out of it. But once a cheaper way was discovered to extract aluminium it began to be used for all kinds of objects, from aeroplanes to coffee pots. Andrea talks to Professor Mark Miodownik at the Institute of Making at UCL about why aluminium is such a useful material, from keeping crisps crisp to the tinsel on our Christmas trees. Andrea visits the Science Museum where he admires an aluminium plane of the class flown by Amelia Earhart. And he talks about the lightness of bicycles made from aluminium with Keith Noronha, of Reynolds Technology.
 
Strontium is the 15th most common element in the earth yet we really only come into contact with it in fireworks. It gives us the deep red colour we admire in a pyrotechnics display. Andrea Sella, Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at UCL, meets Mike Sansom of Brighton Fireworks who explains how a firework is constructed and reveals the chemical mix that creates the bright red flashes.
Professor Thomas Klap�tke of the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich talks about his search for a substitute for strontium in fireworks and about how the element can get into our bones.
And Janet Montgomery, Professor of Archaeology at Durham University, explains how strontium traces have revealed that our Neolithic ancestors moved around much more than was previously thought. Nearly half the people buried around Stonehenge in Southern England were born in places with different rocks from those under Salisbury Plain.

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