|
| lead |
Date:
Fri, 23 Sep 94
From:
Robin Mitchell
Subject:
Lead again
AP,
summarizing an article published today in _Science_, reports new
support for the theory that smelting operations in Greece and Rome
polluted not just their own areas, but the entire Northern
Hemisphere, in the greatest pre-industrial pollution. French scholar
Claude Boutron "found that lead suddenly increased hundreds of
times above normal levels 2500 years ago, and stayed that high for
the next 800 years." The levels were recorded in the Greenland
ice cap.
Date:
Fri, 23 Sep 1994
From:
William Harris
Subject:
lead
The
cited AP note on lead in antiquity is most interesting. First, one
thinks of the extensive state-owned silver mine at Laurion which
provided Athens with a great deal of its economic clout. The
ugliness of slave-labor is perhaps matched by the pollution to air
and persons resujlting from the separation of silver from the 99% of
lead in which it was involved. Second, the lead "byproduct"
from the silver operation can go back into any metal as an
adulterant, turning up in the coinage, it is carried by hand to
mouth incessantly. Third. cheap lead makes it a great material for
waterpipes, unless you are aware of its poisonous properties when
leached into drinking water. (This country has only specified
lead-free solder in house water systems in this last twenty
years...!) The rich in the ancient world who can afford indoor
plumbing bear the greatest risk, while the poor who drink from wells
are safe. It hs been suggested that lead-poisoning deteriorated the
population of the later Roman Empire, others have maintained that
the carbonate deposits found inside Roman water pipes protected the
water from lead-pickup. In a course on Ancient Science I had two
chemistry students deposit calcium cabonate from our limey water on
lead tubes, and check with sophisticated equipment the
leach-through; from our initial (short term) study, the porous
carbonate deposits did nothing to retard leaching. ---- A study of
population curves in the later Empire, and examination of any bones
for lead might give us a far better understanding of what was
happening before and after the fourth C. A.D.
Date:
Fri, 23 Sep 1994
From:
"McMahon, John M"
Subject:
RE: Lead again
Chapter
Seven of J. D. Hughes, *Pan's Travail* is concerned with pollution
from industrial sources in the Greek and Roman World. Pp.125-128
especially, on lead.
Date:
Fri, 23 Sep 1994
From:
Joseph Day
Subject:
lead
I
haven't looked at the source cited for lead in the atmosphere, but I
hope it isn't too Eurocentric. A colleague in world history (Stephen
Morillo) to whom I mentioned this listing mentioned that, in the
very period of the study, enormous amounts of smelting were going on
in China.
Date:
Fri, 23 Sep 1994
From:
BMACBAIN
Subject:
Re: lead
There
have been assays of lead content in Roman bones and, indeed, the
Romans had more lead in their systems than was good for them
(another source, in addition to water pipes was the cosmetic use of
white lead by women as a face whitener). Nevertheless, there is a
long leap from this to the "fall of the roman empire". The
English aristocracy of the 18th century imbibed too much lead too as
a result of the way in which sherry was made. Note that this was
precisely at the time that their empire was growing by leaps and
bounds.
From:
David J. White
Date:
Fri, 23 Sep 1994
Subject: Re: lead
I
too have long been bothered by the reductionist arguments that lead
poisoning (or "X" or "Y") "caused" the
fall of the Roman empire--as if it would have lasted indefinitely
otherwise. (One problem with the lead-from-water-pipes argument, as
I understand it, is that the pipes themselves quickly became
encrusted with scale anyway, so in pretty short order the water
wasn't coming into contact with the lead pipes as much as we might
think. It's been awhile since I have read up on this, though, and so
I might be missing something.) Of course, the main problem with
theories of this sort is that they tend to attribute too much of a
society's power and success--or lack thereof--to the activities and,
ahem, intelligence of the upper classes.
Date:
Fri, 23 Sep 1994
From: William Harris
Subject:
RE: Lead again
It
would seem there must be human bones from roughly datable finds,
which could be analyzed for lead content, despite the Roman
preference for cremation. There are the skeletal remains from the
mudslide at Herculaneum, and there must be some traces at important
battle sites. Perhaps England would be a good place to look, since
the termini ante and post quem are fairly clearly defined. ----- For
comparison, we could check with remains from the British pottery
industry, which was already taking lead poisoning seriously by the
time of Enc Brit 11 (s.v.lead). Certainly medical collections would
have analyzed materials from that period. ---- Third, in the US we
have been polluting areas near highways for over 70 years with
tetra-ethyl lead, to the extent that vegetable gardeners were
advised not to plant within 2500' of a major highway. The amounts of
deposited lead certainly can be calculated for this timespan, and
we can refer these figures to the French study group for comparison.
---- If we find the lead concentration much higher for the Empire
than for our Industrial Revolution, we can begin to hypothesize
about what happens when certain high levels are reached. This may be
as important for us now, as for our knowledge of ancient history.
Date:
Fri, 23 Sep 1994
From:
William Harris
Subject:
Re: lead
As
David White says, the functioning of the "upper classes"
of Roman society may not be a key to success/failure of Rome. But
any dysfunction of one social niche opens the way for occupancy by
other groups, and this may indeed change the course of history. The
poor liberti, the Trimalchios and Juvenal's "Tigris flowing up
the Tiber", not least the impecunious Christians drinking from
the Fountains of Rome---- these may have invaded the
socio-ecological niche of the Optimates, with the aid of lead.
Outside pressure (Toynbee's Germanic barbarians) coupled with an
inside infirmity would make a natural force for re-aligning the
directing elements of a society. Of course, social forces can hardly
be "proved" , whereas chemical traces, whether really
effective changers or not, are at least incontrovertible evidence.
Date:
Fri, 23 Sep 1994
From:
"Daniel P. Tompkins"
Subject: Re: lead
Last
year the FDA advertised a pamphlet listing lead content in various
alcoholic beverages, and I sent off for it. Interesting reading.
Some of the highest candidates were cheap red wines from Eastern
Europe (the area Rush Limbaugh evidently included in his sample when
he said the poor in America were better off than the middle class in
Europe): Trakia etc. But the very highest were the brandies etc.
that come in fancy crystal containers, evidently lead-laden. Watch
out when you or your favorite sommelier pops that cork: get all the
lead wiped off the bottle's mouth before you pour.
Date:
Fri, 23 Sep 1994
From:
"Robert C. Knapp"
Subject: Re: lead
The
direction the discussion has taken is interesting. I am preparing to
teach a seminar on "poor and poverty in the ancient
Mediterranean world". They drank the water, too! So far the
bibliography seems rather limited on this topic. If anyone has any
favorite items to recommend, I would be most grateful. You may
respond off-line if you wish.
Date:
Fri, 23 Sep 1994
From:
David Meadows
Subject:
Re: Lead again
The Globe an Mail also summarized the article; at least they had the
sense to track down another scientist to point out that even what
the Romans and Greeks are supposed to have done amounts to only 15%
of what has occured in the last 25 years from autos. I'd appreciate
if someone actually checks the original article for this since I've
never been able to find it on a newsstand: why is it the Greeks and
Romans who are picked out? The Kusana empire was flourishing in
India and seems likely to have been doing quite a bit of smelting.
Ditto the Toltecs in Teotihuacan. Ditto the Persians. Ditto the
Guptas in India. And ditto ditto ditto for numerous other
civilizations. And has the effect of volcanic eruptions been
factored into this? It's either bad science or (typical) bad
reporting by a media which often seems to report things it doesn't
understand, leaving us to straighten it out for a precious few
students.
Date:
Fri, 23 Sep 1994
Subject:
*Re: lead pipes (fwd)
From:
Jim Holoka,
I too had read that scaling (with calcium carbonate) would have
sealed the lead from contact with the water passing through the
pipes. An earlier contributor to this thread, however, cited
evidence that lead will leach through such scaling. But would the
water have been in the pipes long enough for such leaching to occur?
Did not water flow through the Roman distribution system
continuously? The aqueducts could not be shut off, nor did homes or
public fountains have taps/faucets which were routinely shut off,
thus holding the water within the pipes. I had the impression that
there may have been stopcocks, but that these were used only to shut
off flow to conduct repairs, etc. Thus, water would not, as a usual
thing, have stood in the (relatively short lengths of) pipes long
enough for leaching to have occurred in any significant degree for a
given volume of water. See detailed discussion in H. Trevor Hodge, "Vitruvius,
Lead Pipes and Lead Poisoning," _AJA_ 85 (1981) 486-491.
Date: Sat, 24 Sep 1994
From:
William Harris
Subject:
RE: *Re: lead pipes (fwd)
True,
leaching progresses more rapidly in standing water, but the
lead-lined aqueduct system stretched for dozens of miles, during the
long flow path minute amounts of leached lead would accumulate. This
is a matter for a metallurgical chemist with an interest in our
problem to investigate, I suggest we cast around at our universities
for such a professional person and suspend discussion (other than
citing bibliography) until we have some factual information.
Date:
Sat, 24 Sep 1994
From:
Don Fowler
Subject: RE: *Re: lead pipes (fwd)
The
piping in most Oxford colleges is still lead (mine certainly is),
but we are told that we are protected by the hardness of the local
water. Surely no one can detect any effect on our brains, can they?
Date:
Sat, 24 Sep 1994
From:
Bruce Macbain
Subject:
Re: lead
Lead is blamed for the failure of the Roman upper class to reproduce
itself--in my opinion incorrectly. I am not a scientist, but I
believe that the effect of lead on fertility is hard to pin down.
From the evidence of Roman history it is difficult to make a
clear-cut case against lead. Germanicus and Agrippina, for instance,
had quite a large brood but they drank the same water as everyone
else. The small size of many aristocrat ic families is better
explained by sociological factors such as the desire to have only
one heir and not have to break up the estate (there was no
primogeniture in Roman Law). Given the vicissitudes of life, if you
plan on having only one son, you may easily wind up with none. There
is also the point that lead poisoning produces mental and physical
debilitation, which is true, I think, but here we have to keep in
mind that Roman and Greek men of the governing classes did not enjoy
the prolonged adolescence that we do. They started their careers in
their teens, married girls who were barely pubescent, and so
achieved what they were going to do in life, including fathering
children, at a relatively young age, before the cumulative effects
of lead poisoning could do its worst.
Date:
Sat, 24 Sep 1994
From:
William Harris
Subject:
Re: lead
Lead
poisoning does it worst damage before age of ten!
Date:
Sat, 24 Sep 1994
From:
Aaron M Roberts
Subject:
Re: *Re: lead pipes (fwd)
As
a former apprentice plumber turned Classics student, I assure you
that any type of scaling in the lead pipes would have been worn
through in a few years. If the water continuously ran through the
pipe, the scaling would wear down much sooner. I was curious if
anyone knows how many metres of lead pipe the water travels through
before consumption? The questions of pipe length and continuous flow
are more important than the scaling in determining lead poisoning.
Date:
Sat, 24 Sep 1994
From:
Kurt Bray
Subject:
Roman Dogs and Lead Pipes
Speaking as scientist who lurks among the classicists, I personally
find the lead-poisoning-caused-the-fall-of-Rome theory to be
far-fetched. I am dismayed how widely accepted this simplistic
theory has become. Based on the data I have seen, I think that the
most that can be said is that SOME Romans probably suffered SOME ill
health due to relatively high levels of lead. But the ancients in
general were riddled with health problems of both dietary and
microbial origin. The Romans were probably no more or less healthy
than the barbarians who overran them. It's hard to know a lot about
the health of Romans because of their common practice of cremation:
there aren't that many Roman skeletons around to study.
Date:
Sun, 25 Sep 1994
From: James Arieti
Subject: lead pipes and Yankee ingenuity
I
have occasionally wondered, on the lead pipe analogy, whether we can
account for American greatness by the fact that early colonists used
cast iron pipes, thus causing, through the iron which leached off
the pots into their food, their high level of energy and their
absence of tired blood. Perhaps the expression, "The Great
Melting Pot," which we often use to refer to America, provides,
through the various transformations to which language is subject,
linguistic evidence for the theory.
Date:
Sun, 25 Sep 1994
From:
William Harris
Subject:
Re: Lead Pipes & Yankee Ingenuity
Many towns in New England which were founded in the mid l9 th c.
used logs bored with a long auger and taper-fitted at the ends to
drive into each other as conduits for their water supply. . This
avoided both lead contamination and the scientifically attested
over-ironization which James Arieti mentions, at the same time
explaining why New Englanders have been unjustly accused of being "log-heads".
Date:
Mon, 26 Sep 94
From: Olga Ladopoulou-Palaggia
Subject:
RE: *Re: lead pipes (fwd)
Oxford
water is undrinkable. Colleges only serve bottled water at high
table, no ?
From:
DR D GILL
Date:
Mon, 26 Sep
Subject:
Re: lead
For
the appearance of lead in human skeletons see the Roman examples
from the cemetery at Poundbury, Dorset, UK. Ref: T.I. Molleson et
al., Oxford Journal of Archaeology 5 (1986) 249-53. The lead in one
skeleton, a child's, matched lead from Laurion.
Date:
Mon, 26 Sep 1994
From:
William Harris
Subject: Re: lead
Those
lead analyses are what the list has not been finding. Did you notice
what the lead numbers were (child), and Laurion (skeletal?). I would
like to compare these with modern figures.
From:
"Dr J.H. Van Dalen"
Subject:
Re: lead
Date:
Mon, 26 Sep 1994
I don't think it has been mentioned already in the discussion but
the Romans (or at least some of them) were well aware that lead was
a rather unhealthy substance. Vitruvius writes about it in De
Architectura (Book VIII, ch.vi, 10 & 11)(late first century BC).
Mentioning the pale appearance of people that work with lead he
advises not to use lead pipes for drinking water, but rather
earthenware pipes which not only are more healthy but improve the
taste of the water, in the same way, as he says, people drink water
out of earthenware cups despite having the table covered with
silverware. Another thing worth mentioning is the fact that lead
pipes were only used where they were necessary, that is in tracts
where the water-pressure didn't allow the use of other, cheaper
materials. The channels in the aquaducts were mainly covered with
opus signinum, a special water-proof mortar/plaster. This means that
lead pipes were mostly used within the cities, where the water had
to be transported underground and raised at the spot where it was
needed. In this way city-dwellers that depended on public fountains
for their water-supply probably did get an unhealthy amount of lead
in their body-systems. Richer people on the other hand, living in
atrium-houses, did have cisterns that were fed with rain-water that
fell on their roofs (with the compluvium and impluvium
construction). Contrarily to those who lived in the huge apartment
houses they at least had access to healthier (and better tasting)
kinds of water Therefore in my opinion, any alleged lead poisoning
(in which I don't believe) must have had much more influence on the
city-mob than on those governing it.
Date:
Mon, 26 Sep 94
From:
Doug Moroso
Subject: Lead in Rs
Individuals
exhibit great differences of Pb absorption when exposed to the same
risk. Children are of course highly susceptible, but the rate at
which mature adults absorb Pb varies greatly. There are probably a
no. of factors at work here, but even simple differences in diet
show highly varied results, those who have deficiencies in calcium,
phosphorus, vitamin D (probably C too) and iron being in higher risk
categories in either absorbing or retaining Pb. In iron deficient
blood, for example, free Pb more readily attaches itself to red
blood cells. One could predict on this basis that poorly nourished
slaves working at lead smelting wd probably have had the highest
risk of lead poisoning in the R world; but females after menarche
would likely have been in a higher risk category than the population
at large as well. Due to the wide ranging differences possible, to
draw any conclusions about effects of Pb on (or presence in) the
population during the R period would require data on a large no. of
skeletal smaples, representing different age groups, gender, social
status & geographic dispersal, in order to eliminate the danger
of extrapolating highly idiosyncratic results to the population at
large.
Date:
Mon, 26 Sep 1994
From:
William Harris
Subject: RE: Lead in Rs
Before
we run out of fuel on the lead matter, which has been occupying
attention for some days now, I would like to cast in two remarks: 1)
There is room for serious research, as Doug Morosco points out,
which has to be done by (funded ) professionals and correlated with
Pb research done in the last 20 years. 2) The amount of discussion
about lead shows, I believe, our own trepidations, coming from the "discovery"
of much lead in our world, and the discovery that it is VERY
poisonous. Perhaps after registering the imminent danger to US, we
find it better to sublimate our fears and poke into the ancient
world. Having lead on one's conscience is a heavy burden indeed.
Date:
Mon, 26 Sep 1994
From:
Bruce Macbain
Subject:
Re: lead Sender:
Did Romans *drink* the water in the impluvium? I had always thought
it was merely ornamental.
Date:
Mon, 26 Sep 1994
From:
Birgitta Hoffmann
Subject:
Re: lead
A
lot has been made of the lead pipes. What I would like to know is
how much water was actually transported through these lead pipes.
Ceramic pipes have been mentioned and also the mortared 'open'
channels of the aqueducts. In a lot of the Northern provinces the
Romans actually seems to have been using the augered logs clamped
together with iron, that were mentioned for 19th century towns.
Perhaps our perceptions of antique watersystems is biased against
lead, because photographs of Pompeian leadpipes (or leadpipes with
Agricolas name on, cf. Chester) make so much nicer slides than the
boring iron clamps every 6-9m in an open excavation trench or
remains of some broken clay pipe?
From:
"Dr J.H. Van Dalen"
Subject:
Re:lead
Date:
Mon, 26 Sep 1994
As
a rule impluvia were connected to a subterranean cistern below the
impluvium by way of a small channel in the rear (seen from the front
of the house). At a sleightly higher level a small channel in the
front got rid of a possible overflow, being connected straight with
the street or with a sewer (these positions may differ). The cistern
could be reached by a covered hole next or behind the impluvium; in
several cases these holes were covered with a cilinder so it
resembled a well. So both compluvia (daylight) and impluvia (water)
had a functional reason. With the availability of marble and other
such material of course the decorative aspect became more and more
important, culminating (in Pompei at least) in houses with a double
atrium, such as the house of the Faun, with one atrium with a
monumental entrance and marble impluvium (probably to receive guests
and business-partners) and another one that was more homely with a
less pretentious impluvium, in most cases built in tufa (probably
for the family and close friends).
From:
Andrew Gollan
Subject: Lead oxide face powder
Date: 26 Sep 94
To further complicate the lead debate, I remember being told that
matronae used white lead oxide as a face powder. Would this have had
deleterious effects on aristcratic women?
Date:
Fri, 30 Sep 94
From:
"Martin F. Kilmer"
Subject:
Re: CLASSICS digest 102 roman lead
The
Herculaneum skeletons (brief report National Geographic magazine
abt. 8 yrs . ago, and tidbits in other places; I haven't seen a full
publication) will giv e (if they haven't already) by far thelargest
body of *evidence* to date abt. Roman interostial lead. Preliminary
date I have seen suggest that the majority of the victims were
slaves or otherwise manual labourers; and if this holds in the
larger sample, this will give us little help for the upper classes.
If you want to get lead out of your waterpipes, you have to have a
precipitation rate faster than your erosion rate - but the erosion
can be both physical and chemical. Highly acid water will clear the
lime deposits esp. if the water is also fast-moving - but
highly-acid water by definition does not contain lime (which rapidly
neutralizes the acid, *q.e.d.*). Most parts of the Empire were on
limestone substrate, and will *not* have had acid water. On the
other hand, if you boil your sherry-and-maple-syrup in lead
cauldrons, you could get yourself a dandy case of acute lead
poisoning in a very short time indeed. The comment that lead
poisoning does its worst before age ten is very much to the point in
20th-c. N. America, where pealing paint in sub-standard housing is a
major source of *ingested* lead in 'slum children' - who also get
more than their share from air polluted by fossil-fuel burners. How
much hot honeye d wine did Roman children commonly drink? The Romans
had not discovered the jo ys of distilled alcohol (they avoided the
colder climates where Nature Herself might have taught them the
trick), nor did they have lead-crystal; and their pottery, even
late, was slipped not glazed, so no lead there either. So let's find
out how much lead a whole lot of Romans had in their bones - and
especially the concntration in the bones of the skull, which have
the fast est exchange-rate and most closely demonstrate the actual
level in the body at the time of death. And *then*, with some solid
evidence, let us go back and se e whether it's worth while to bring
out the drawing board for this one.
Date:
Fri, 30 Sep 94
Subject: Roman lead
From:
Doug Moroso
On
Martin Kilmer's well-taken point re precipitation vs erosion rates
the important factor wd be the quality of the water at source before
it entered the system. I understand the Rs preferred to tap sources
with a rather high mineral content (though given the limestone
substrates perhaps they didn't have much choice anyway); at any rate
they didn't have the mod. problem of acid rain entering the system.
Water that is stagnant while in contact with lead usually absorbs
higher concentrations. The water was (most) always free flowing--I
understand that examples of water faucets have been found, but these
must have been comparatively rare--when moving thru that part of the
system made of lead pipes; settling basins & storage cisterns,
where the water wd have been relatively more stagnant, were not
lined with lead. However speculating about sources of contamination
first needs to await clear indications that excessive amounts of
lead were present in Rs
Date:
Sat, 01 Oct 1994
From:
Bruce Macbain
Subject:
Re: CLASSICS digest 102 roman lead
One
question that has occurred to me is how much water did the Romans
drink anyway? Perhaps not much if we consider comparative evidence
from other periods. In a book on daily life in Victorian England I
learned that poor Londoners drank gin, beer, and rot-gut wine in
preference to untreated Thames water--and they were definitely wise
to do so! It might well be that Roman of all classes and ages drank,
in fact, very little water. Naturally, they would still get lead
from foods boiled in water but maybe, overall, not as much as we
think. Just an idle thought.
Date:
Sat, 1 Oct 1994
From:
John Younger
Subject: lead
In view of the continuing discussion over lead and lead poisoning in
the classical world, I offer the following which a friend sent: >From
*Science* 265 (16 Sept 1994) 1655 Ath. Diamandopoulos excavated a
3,000 year-old Mycenaean tomb, presumably then LH IIIC and
presumably in Achaia, since he's of the XIth Ephoria in Patras,
which contained, among other things presumably, 50 grams of "toxic
face powder" (80% calcium carbonate & 20% lead sulfate
hydrate, "similar to that of preparations used as cosmetics
throughout history". "Until this finding, it was believed
that Europeans didn't resort to lead-based cosmetics until the 6th
century B.C., when Greek women used lead-based face creams to
lighten their skin. And during the Roman Empire, says
Diamandopoulos, triumphant generals beautified themselves with lead
face powders before victory parades. Vanity has proved resistant to
the health warnings about lead cosmetics that have been issued since
at least the Hellenistic period, according to Diamandopoulos. And,
he says, lead hair dyes are still in use." So, this is really
why women in Minoan frescoes are painted white.
Date:
Sun, 2 Oct 94
Subject:
R (upwardly mobile) lead
From:
Doug Moroso
Did
anyone (as unfortunate as I) crawl over the Gilfillan article in
Mankind Quarterly 5 (1964/65)? I recall someone on the net
mentioning that he *seems* to have been an early expert in plumbism.
"Nay, surely not *seems*"--at least by this article. He
mentions 3 *esp. able, exhaustive and thorough* authorities--Hoffman
& Kobert (1883-1909) & Stevenson (1949: unpub. ph.d. diss.).
Apparently pub. research in lead toxicology after 1909 was
irrelevant--or at best tangential. "Is this a rubbish I see
before me?" Surely a pseudo-science is too *rich* a word for
the beast. Sorry for the diatribe first thing on a Sunday morning,
but I (stupidly) ignored She Who Should Be Obeyed's advice to take
in a Woody Allen movie on Saturday night--to catch up on my *moral*
reading instead--and was (deservedly) cast into the pit of
non-believers--in *eugenics*--for my sins. However, one cannot
entirely discount the salutory possibilities inherent in
*aristothanasia*--esp. when living in a *cool, rainy climate*. But
I'm not sure I can hang on for 6 centuries--I positively shudder
when I contemplate the chronological span of the Byzantine Empire.
Alas! Anyone for cadmium poisoning? "Now, Harmonia, shall we
slither away!"
Date:
Sun, 2 Oct 1994
From:
Alexander Ingle
Subject:
lead
Before
the lead poisoning string is forgotten, I thought I'd send along
these remarks of an environmental cleanup friend of mine.
----------
Forwarded message ----------
Date:
Wed, 28 Sep 1994
From:
Gennine M. Zinner
To:
Alexander Ingle
Subject:
Plomb THIS!
Al
- I really enjoyed the string of messages you sent me over the last
few days. It's wonderful watching a bunch of classicists argue about
something which allows very little room for unchallenged opinion.
Actually I don't know any more than some of the contributors. I do
agree with a couple of the statements made, however. 1) One must
find out a great deal more about how the pipe system was used (was
it shut-off regularly?) and how long it was. These two question have
a great deal to with how much was leached from the pipes, scaling or
no (scaling is the build-up of natural deposits over time. In this
case, CaCO3 - calcium carbonate - most likely). 2) The amount of
lead taken in by a person through drinking water might be
insignificant when compared to lead in wine pitchers. Wine, being
fairly acidic, would tend to leach out metals quite a bit more
effectively than water. 3) It is true that children are the most
susceptible to LOW lead levels and it probably effects learning on
some level. The type of dementia I think most folks were suggesting
is the result of acute toxic exposure, probably not from low levels.
4) People tend to underestimate the uncounted ravages the Greeks and
Romans and everyone else probably experienced on a regular basis.
There was no treatment for bacterial or viral infections and you can
imagine the horrible things that might have been floating around.
The only thing I have to add on this is that there was an article in
the heavy-hitting magazine Science published this past Friday (9/23)
and synopsized in the Science Times (New York Times) on Tuesday,
9/27 about the appearance of very high lead levels in the atmosphere
from about 2500 years B.C. until around 1700 B.C. These levels were
measured in ice-pack cores from Greenland and indicated lead levels
"hundreds of times above natural levels". There was a
chemist at Cal Tech about 20 years ago who theorized that "vast
areas of Europe were contaminated by lead as a by-product of silver
refining by the Greeks and Romans. Swedish researchers confirmed his
calculations this March, using lead in lake sediments to pin-point
the pollution period at between 500 B.C. and 300 A.D." NYT
9/27. That's all I have to say about this one. Keep those chemistry
and toxicology questions coming. If there's a really cool one, maybe
we can pursue it together. By the way. I told my Aquatic Toxicology
teacher about this Lead Poisoning string and he asked me to forward
it to him. I'll be interested to see what he has to say about it.
Later,
Date:
Mon, 3 Oct 94
Subject:
Lead in cosmetics (query)
From:
Doug Moroso
The
Science vol. 265 (1994) 1655 ref to Diamandopoulos' discovery of
lead- based cosmetics in Crete is only a note about a report which
was published in the *current issue* of The Lancet. |
| Culled
from
classics.log9410
and
classics.log9409. |
|