"Before It Was Dangerous, Lead Was The Miracle Metal That We Loved"

"Residents of Flint, Mich., may tell you lead is a serious menace, but for most of the last 5,000 years, people saw lead as a miracle metal at the forefront of technology.

"You can think about lead as kind of the plastic of the ancient world," says Joseph Heppert, a professor of chemistry at the University of Kansas. He says it was because lead is easy to melt — a campfire alone can do it. Unlike iron, lead is malleable.

"Once you form it into sheets you can do things that people had really never been able to do before with a metal," he says. "You can roll it into tubes, for example."

It started with the Romans, who plumbed their famous baths with lead water pipes and lined aqueducts with lead. They called lead plumbum, which was where the word "plumbing" came from. Romans added lead into things ranging from makeup and contraception to cookware."

Frank Morris reports for NPR's All Things Considered April 6, 2016.