Robin Russell-Jones

This audio clip is from a series of 100 life history interviews with environmental campaigners in the UK, 1970-2020. A quotation from this recording features in the book Voices for Change, published by UCL Press in November 2026 (available in print as well as a free PDF download). The full interview, along with the summaries, transcripts and recordings for this and the rest of the interview collection, is available at the British Library (Sound and Moving Image Collection, under the shelf-mark C2037). For more information, including educational materials and other resources, visit the Oral History of the Environmental Movement project website at www.royalholloway.ac.uk/ohemQuotation:That’s right, then the Department of Health commissioned, got a Working Party to look at lead and whether they should remove lead from petrol. And this was the Lawther Committee and they produced a report in 1980 called Lead And Health in which they recommended that the lead content of petrol should be reduced from 0.4 to 0.15 grammes per litre, but it doesn’t need to be phased out. And I didn’t think this made any sense. I thought well if it’s a toxin and it’s affecting children then you should get rid of it, there’s no point in reducing the level. You know if you’re getting a side effect from a drug you don’t halve the dose; you give them something else. So I thought this was nonsense. So I started then writing letters to The Times and I actually had two articles published in The Times as well, really critical of the Lawther Committee saying they’re using children, you know, they’re not- They’re not, you know, the present evidence doesn’t amount to proof so they are using the next generation of children as guinea pigs is what I basically said.British Library catalogue number: C2037/39 Project clip number: 51