Our waterways are becoming more and more polluted due to PFAS, plastics, medicines, drugs, and new chemicals made by companies that just hand over the responsibility of cleaning to plants paid for by public moneys. Detecting the different chemicals and filtering them out if getting harder and harder. Could the simple solution of heating up past a point where even PFAS/forever chemicals decomposes (400C for PFAS, 500C to be more sure about other stuff) be alright?
Alchemy! Now this is the out-of-the-box thinking that I like!
In all seriousness, lead is lead because it’s made of lead atoms. It can’t not be lead. (The reference to alchemy was because before we knew about atoms, many alchemists tried their hand at turning low-value metals like lead into high-value metals like gold).
To answer your question in a silly but scientifically accurate way, there is a temperature to which lead can be heated to become something else, but these are nuclear fusion temperatures, like you get in the Sun.
Much higher than the sun, unless you’re also adding the pressure of a star.
My mother is busy sitting on something else that afternoon
Magnetic fields should be able to extract lead.
How would that work? You gonna ionise the lead? 🤔
Why would that be necessary? Does led not react to magnetic fields?
Very few metals do!
Lead does not.
Edit. Here’s a list of things you can pickup with a magnet.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Ferromagnetic_materials