Roman-era pollution in Iceland

[Viggen]

An isolated salt marsh on the coast of contemporary Iceland is the last place most people would think of looking for Roman-era air pollution. But traces of atmospheric lead pollution found in the sedimentary cores of an Iceland salt marsh, most likely originated from first- and second-century C.E. Roman mining and metal-working operations, a new study reports...

 

...full article at Miller Mccune

[Klingan]

Roman lead pollution can hardly be considered news, even as they find traces of it at Iceland. Something caught my eye in the article as well;

 

At the height of their empire, the Romans were shipping large lead ingots from Britannia

[caldrail]

There is one spot in Britain at least _ I don't remember where it is - that the soil is forbidden from being disturbed too deeply either by archaeology or development, because the Romans were smelting metals on the site and levels of arsenic and other poisonous materials are too high.

[Kosmo]

There is hot link on the name of the mine and on the linked page I found a paragraph about the mine.

 

"To gain full economic advantage from their conquest, the Romans were quick to exploit the lead mines of the Mendip Hills. They already knew about the richness of this lead which contained a high proportion of silver, and by AD. 49 were stamping lead ingots or 'pigs' with the Emperor Claudius's name, for the right to mine precious metals was vested in the Emperor and the mines were worked as a state concern, probably with forced labour under military control. A branch road was constructed to link with the Fosse Way, and the lead was exported through Clausentum, near Southampton, or Noviomagus, the Roman name for Chichester."

 

There is also a map showing "lead mines" near Charterhouse. I have no idea if that mines on the map are the Mendip ones.

 

Air polution from roman mining in Spain have been found in the icecap of Groenlanda.

[Bryaxis Hecatee]

Another place producing lead and where traces of pollution have been detected in Germany, notably in the area around K

[Melvadius]

<Snip>

 

There is also a map showing "lead mines" near Charterhouse. I have no idea if that mines on the map are the Mendip ones.

 

 

The Charterhouse site (which is in the Mendips) is probably the best known Lead mining area in Britain dating from the Roman Period. However there were others as the Roman Britain site notes including; Machen in Mid-Glamorgan, South Wales, Pentre in Flintshire, North Wales, and at Lutudarum (Crich, Derbyshire) in the Southern Pennines.

 

c/f http://www.roman-britain.org/places/charterhouse.htm

 

The problem at Charterhouse is the level of arsenic in the soil which appears to be the result of the cupulation process being used there for a period to try and extract silver from the ore. Unfortunately for the Romans the silver content in the Mendips was probably not as high as at other major lead/silver production sites like Rio-Tinto in Spain which did supply much of the silver used by the Romans in their coinage.

 

Melvadius