
Sign up to save your podcasts
Or


Chlorine is more than just a chemical used in swimming pools. This poisonous green gas is the great enabling element of the chemicals industry, used in creating your clothes, computer chips, medicines and flooring. Justin Rowlatt travels to Thurrock to tour the chlor-alkali plant of Industrial Chemicals Ltd with chief chemist David Compton, as he discovers the brutal process of extracting chlorine from the most mundane of raw materials - table salt. We hear from regular contributor Professor Andrea Sella of University College London who explains the many uses of chlorine. Finally Laurence Knight speaks to Mike Smith, an expert in the chlorine market from consultants IHS, about why the bursting of Spain's property bubble might put up the price of soap there.
By BBC World Service4.7
134134 ratings
Chlorine is more than just a chemical used in swimming pools. This poisonous green gas is the great enabling element of the chemicals industry, used in creating your clothes, computer chips, medicines and flooring. Justin Rowlatt travels to Thurrock to tour the chlor-alkali plant of Industrial Chemicals Ltd with chief chemist David Compton, as he discovers the brutal process of extracting chlorine from the most mundane of raw materials - table salt. We hear from regular contributor Professor Andrea Sella of University College London who explains the many uses of chlorine. Finally Laurence Knight speaks to Mike Smith, an expert in the chlorine market from consultants IHS, about why the bursting of Spain's property bubble might put up the price of soap there.

7,710 Listeners

883 Listeners

1,046 Listeners

5,428 Listeners

1,806 Listeners

3,192 Listeners

949 Listeners

1,807 Listeners

1,073 Listeners

1,932 Listeners

4,859 Listeners

520 Listeners

4,808 Listeners

427 Listeners

417 Listeners

828 Listeners

246 Listeners

352 Listeners

3,185 Listeners

740 Listeners

3,230 Listeners

14,610 Listeners

3,070 Listeners