Is this really $20 000 worth of lead?

So, a maximum of one tonne of lead (very roughly) is spread over Sydney each day.

Now a glance at the commodoties prices in the same newpaper tells us that lead is selling today for $850 / tonne. On any particular day, it may be slightly different from this value, but it is not unreasonable to assume that the price will always be around about this number.

Obviously, since 1 tonne of lead is spread over the city every day, the value of the lead spread over the city will be $850 / day. Rounding this off to one significant figure (as we mentioned we would do - see the earlier note), we conclude that the value of the lead spread over Sydney each day is approximately

This is certainly nowhere near the $20 000 per day that was quoted by the eminent Dr Bismuth in the original article!

However, this is still quite a bit of lead in the environment, isn't it? Maybe the original claim that it is an entire container load is still correct. We will now work out how big a container one tonne of lead will actually fill.