(NPR) – “It’s the crime of the century,” says Bruce Lanphear.

He’s not talking about a murder spree, a kidnapping or a bank heist.

Lanphear – an environmental epidemiologist at Simon Fraser University – is referring to the fact that an estimated 800 million children around the world are poisoned by lead – lead in their family’s pots and pan, lead in their food, lead in the air. That’s just about half of all children in low- and middle-income countries, according to UNICEF and the nonprofit Pure Earth.

For decades, very little has been done about this. But this is the story of how two women – a New York City detective and a California student – followed the data and helped crack a puzzling case that spanned the globe in the ongoing “crime” of lead poisoning. (Read More)