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Comment by defrost

2 hours ago

The "ancients" (Roman era writers and workers, post Roman UK Peak District lead workers, the Chinese, etc) understood the hazards of acute lead poisoning first hand and often referenced mad hatters, crazy painters, and the symptoms of extreme exposure in literature.

What they seemingly failed to grasp until more recent times was the slow creep of incremental mild exposure:

  However, they were so fond of its diverse uses that they minimized the hazards it posed. Romans of yesteryear, like Americans of today, equated limited exposure to lead with limited risk. What they did not realize was that their everyday low-level exposure to the metal rendered them vulnerable to chronic lead poisoning, even while it spared them the full horrors of acute lead poisoning.

~ Lead Poisoning: A Historical Perspective (1985) https://www.epa.gov/archive/epa/aboutepa/lead-poisoning-hist...

6 comments

defrost

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lwhi  23 minutes ago

Apparently they had no idea it was bad in medieval times.

The wealthy were particularly afflicted, as lead was used in glazes; which common folk couldn't afford.

The common folk weren't spared though, as they were caught up in production.

I imagine it could have greatly affected the development of societal norms.

  • defrost  6 minutes ago

    > Apparently they had no idea it was bad in medieval times.

    Tell me more, how do we know this to be true?

    > The wealthy were particularly afflicted, as lead was used in glazes

    Sure .. but you're saying that "the wealthy" purchased poorly fired earthenware and had high acid diets?

      Traditional pottery and other forms of ceramicware are made with earthenware, a porous form of clay which must be glazed in order for the pottery to hold food or liquid. Glazing applies and fuses a thin, glass-like coating onto the surface of the clay to seal its pores. The glaze – which may contain lead to facilitate the melting of glaze particles – fuses to the pottery when it is fired in a kiln, a special oven used to bake clay. When the pottery is fired at the proper temperature for the proper amount of time, essentially all the lead is bound into the glaze.

    ~ https://www.fda.gov/food/environmental-contaminants-food/que...

    To the best of my knowledge it takes continuous leaching by > ~ 4% acetic acid (from acidic food and drink) of poorly fired lead glaze earthenware for lead glaze to become "potentially hazardous"

    > The common folk weren't spared though, as they were caught up in production.

    I would have though production would be where the worst actual exposure occurred, breathing in fumes from liquid mercury.

    That would be the more extreme acute exposure, that was known about as problematic in medieval times (at least to those people who read and copied earlier manuscripts regarding minerals, processing, health, etc).

hobo123  2 hours ago

Lead is very flexible and was used even in the last century in Germany for I think roof transitions, fresh water pipes etc. I inherited a nice town house from 1900 which still has lead pipes, but I let them install new ones so the old ones are now dead in the walls as a piece of history.

  • platinum95  13 minutes ago

    Lead flashing is still in use for roofing elsewhere in the EU. Most of the builders yards near me have rolls of it.

  • hobo123  2 hours ago

    I think the idea was that water pipes will build up a later of calcium anyway, so they aren't harmful.

    In Germany there are probably tons of lead pipes still in existence and and only from 2026 is there a law that they all _have_ to replaced (previously they could stay as long as the water lead content was in the permitted range, but I don't think anybody ever checked).