Lead effect on the Roman Empire

[guy]

Here’s an interesting article about the potential effects of lead. The research suggests that the lead levels had a potential 3-IQ point decrease during the height of lead exposure.

 

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The results show blood lead levels during the Pax Romana were much higher than in periods that came before or after it. This excess lead would cause “cognitive declines averaging 2.5 to three IQ points across the empire,” McConnell explains. The deficits would be greater nearer to the mines, which included places such as modern-day France, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the eastern Adriatic.

 

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Previous work by McConnell and others showed ice cores drilled in the Arctic preserve a record of atmospheric lead over time. The cores firm up the link to smelting and lead pollution, showing that lead levels dropped with significant events such as the loss of silver in common Roman denarius coins and the Antonine Plague of 165 C.E., which killed about 10% of the Roman population.

 

 

https://search.app/fsLmsBzxEYmhKBkR9

Edited February 23 by guy

[guy]

A recent Wall Street Journal article claims that when the Clean Air Act was passed in the United States in 1970 to regulate lead and other air-borne pollutants, children were exposed to even higher levels of lead toxicity, with up to a seven-point IQ decrease. 

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In comparison, at the time the Clean Air Act of 1970 was passed to regulate lead and other airborne pollutants in the U.S., American children had about 15 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood and an associated 7-point drop in IQ, according to Bruce Lanphear, a professor of health sciences at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia who wasn’t involved in the study.

 

 

Ice core samples from places like Greenland were used to study the deposits of lead from the Roman era.

 

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McConnell’s Ice Core Laboratory at DRI has spent decades examining ice cores from places like Greenland and Antarctica, where sheets of ice have built up over millennia. Using enormous drills, they painstakingly extract columns of ice as much as 11,000 feet (3,400 meters) long, reaching more distant depths of Earth’s history with each inch. McConnell’s team creates precise timelines using records of well-dated volcanic eruptions, which stamp the ice record like postcards from the past. Gas bubbles trapped in the ice offer insight into the atmosphere of past eras, while pollutants like lead can be used to interpret mining and industrial activity.

 

https://www.dri.edu/lead-pollution-likely-caused-widespread-iq-declinesin-ancient-rome/

 

https://today.duke.edu/2022/03/lead-exposure-last-century-shrunk-iq-scores-half-americans

Edited February 24 by guy

[guidoLaMoto]

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-06-iq-scores-1970s.html. Actually, IQ scores have been falling by 7 pts per generation since 1970. During that time, thanks to the elimination of Pb from gasoline & paint, airborne levels of Pb have fallen to virtually undetectable levels. ....Not to change the subject, but since the Draconian regulations concerning auto exhaust emissions went into effect, despite measurably "cleaner" air in our cities, rates of asthma & COPD have also skyrocketed....Have they done us a favor with their over-reaching regs?

Our regulations concerning acceptable Pb levels/exposures are purely arbitrary, there being no systematicallly acquired body of data upon which to make an educated estimate. The only large-scale experience is based on one episode of chemical warfare committed in Iraq about 30 y/a. Pts with very high Pb levels remained asymptomatic. Symptoms only developed in those with levels several hundred (IIRC) times over levels considered "safe."

In the famous case of Flint, MI several y/a, they never told us the levels of Pb found in the water. Doing an orders of magnitude estimation, if the levels were 1000x higher than the regulatory acceptable levels, a 30 kg kid (who never got any bigger nor excreted any of the ingested Pb) would have had to drink 5 gal of water a day for 100 yrs to attain blood levels above the levels considered safe....Always do the arithmetic before panicking.

Environmental Pb levels probably vary with geographic location. Before becoming known as Cheeseheads, Wisconsinites were known as Badgers because lead miners in the SW corner of the state used to provide shelter for themselves by burrowing caves, like badgers, into the banks of the Miss. R. where Pb veins are very close to the surface.

How does this apply to ancient Romans??? Pb pipes do not cause contamination of the water because a biofilm quickly forms inside the pipes so the flowing water does not actually contact the pipes ...Pb cooking utensils? Doubtful, because most Romans were poor, so they didn't have metal vessels, and besides, most plebs in insulae and ate at the many tabernae & popinae, doing little cooking at home.

Edited February 24 by guidoLaMoto

[caesar novus]

Here is a really clear and thorough article downplaying lead risks of ancient time https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2019/08/30/why-lead-poisoning-probably-did-not-cause-the-downfall-of-the-roman-empire/

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The most common source of lead poisoning in ancient Rome was probably not from lead pipes, but rather from various kinds of grape juices known as defrutum or sapa that had been boiled down in lead pots to half or a third of the juice’s usual volume in order to concentrate its natural sugars and make it taste sweeter.

 

[guidoLaMoto]

Good article . Thanks......I had to laugh reading that first known description of lead poisoning and declaring that it must be from the pipes. Apparently it has been a long established tradition in nutrition pseudoscience that correlation is equivalent to cause and effect.

https://penelope.uchicago.edu/encyclopaedia_romana/wine/wine.html Romans generally drank wine diluted with water, and looked down upon provincials & foreigners who drank undiluted wine (merum). The boiled down wine (sapa) was a more expensive drink.