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Lead poisoning and it's effetcs.

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I've long had the wonder of how the Romans had not realized that lead was a toxic substance. It seemed to me that with the Romans, having people like Galen that did such advanced things, would've been able to figure that lead=poisen.

 

As we all know, in fact, the Romans made their water pipes out of lead. Curiously enough, there is little, if not no reports of people dieing from this. Why did this happen? I've yet to find out, ideas, thoughts, feel free to do so.

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Many of the effects of lead are cognitive. Without wide-scale norms, standardized testing, and a means for obtaining behavioral reaction times, how could they trace cognitive effects back to their source?

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According to what I was reading some where, swallowing lead was supposably a cure for a stomach ache....

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at last!

 

ok -1. if your water is from carbiniferous limestone ,internal calcification of the pipework will put a layer of sealent around the inside of the pipe. This doesnt apply in hard water areas but..

2. the main problem with lead is b12 deficiency leading to Iron deficiency -you can counteract this by drinking mineralised water -Aqua Sullis (Bath) so in hard water areas of Brittania-off you went to Bath-but for the reasonably wealthy Roman Bath was an Empire wide tourist/health spa destination

3 .one of the main detoxers of lead (and Cadmium-the much less obvious but deadlier metal associated with lead ) is cabbage . L'Methionine the active principle in cabbage is very effective in cleaning up the bloodstream-I use it on a daily basis for Homocysteine( amino precursor to a cardio incident) build up.The Romans ate cabbage till it came out of their ears and used it as a medicine.

4. The Romans were well aware of lead as a poisinous influence (Pliny).

 

Ok imbecility and infertility are the result of chronic poisoning but item 1 is most pertinent.Against this we have use of lead for wine storage and preparation and other culinary vessels.

 

 

 

Will that do for a start?

 

Favonius where are you!

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ah that makes sense, well, the words I can understand at least, you're very good at explaining.

 

personaly I had always thought that eventually algy, or something of that sort had grown onto the lead eventually that didn't allow much, if any lead to be exposed to the water. This eventually kept it from being toxic. Of course the flaw in my theory is that some people say that the water would be moving too quickly for algy to grow. Is this in any way correct?

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Will that do for a start?

 

Favonius where are you!

 

 

Hahahah when I first saw the title I jumped into the thread but I see a far more wise man on the subject has already led the charge.

 

*stands aside*

 

:)

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ah that makes sense, well, the words I can understand at least, you're very good at explaining.

 

personaly I had always thought that eventually algy, or something of that sort had grown onto the lead eventually that didn't allow much, if any lead to be exposed to the water. This eventually kept it from being toxic. Of course the flaw in my theory is that some people say that the water would be moving too quickly for algy to grow. Is this in any way correct?

 

There is massive "scale" build up in pipework in S E England from the water drawn from the chalk strata -the build up is inoxerable despite heavy stream flow-I wasnt suggesting you were in error, I have pondered this question from all sorts of angles-I hope someone will wade in with additional arguments.The infertility implication doesnt make sense if you look at demographics in relation to disease .

 

Will that do for a start?

 

Favonius where are you!

 

 

Hahahah when I first saw the title I jumped into the thread but I see a far more wise man on the subject has already led the charge.

 

*stands aside*

 

:)

 

no ! no! wade in! I called your name to rally the Legion.

Edited by Pertinax

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I grew up in UK, there was a lot of lead piping around when I was growing up. Could this be why I'm a driveling idiot?

PS. I love cabbage!

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I grew up in UK, there was a lot of lead piping around when I was growing up. Could this be why I'm a driveling idiot?

PS. I love cabbage!

 

The water tastes better from lead-its softer and more palatable-ive drunk plenty as well! :) So perhaps you should ignore my posts! If you love cabbage you are redemed. The sequence (appears ) to be something like:

eat fish or get sunlight for vit D , that fixes vit B12 from offal (pigs liver-no lack of that in Roman times) , drink water with magnesium in ( from limestone) and lots of cabbage to follow (b2 6 and 12 are responsible for "clean" cell replication in the gut wall ,hence absorption of nutrients and ejection of junk. Voila ! clean blood.Also any "antioxidants" vits A , C and E help- the Romans must have been stuffed with all three, the educated sought quality foods as a sign of status.

Edited by Pertinax

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ah, I still think my answer makes some sense, though I combined of our two would catch up alot of stuff. However, wouldn't people die inevidably while laying the piping, wouldn't the poisening get them, I'm sure the water they were drinking would be lead filled in addition to the amount on their hands etc..

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However, wouldn't people die inevidably while laying the piping, wouldn't the poisening get them

They wore gloves made from cabbage! :o

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However, wouldn't people die inevidably while laying the piping, wouldn't the poisening get them

They wore gloves made from cabbage! :o

and underpants .

Seriously now:-in lead production slaves were used for the vile work of mining, and it was their various afflictions that were noted . Im looking for a piece I placed in another thread about writings on the subject, There is a contemporary quote showing that apart from the awful colour people went from constant exposure to it (Vitruvius), its role as a low level poison was known if only incompleteley understood . However as the restorative/chelation "therapy" ws intuitivley understood I suggest that perhaps the enslaved and the poor got a higher dosage-but given general life expectancy this may have been irrelevant to fertility given first age at conception.

One thing I would like to add is this-if the theory is that Rome became "sterile" and imbecelic due to ingesting lead, the problem is that most other contemporary racial/ethnic competitors were open to exactly the same sources of poisoning as lead was widely used in food/drink preparation. The relatively low birth rate of the Empire may have contemporary parallels in Europe ( mentioned in Hora Postilliae) one overlooked reason might be the relative cost of child rearing in an "advanced" society, and the opportunity costs incurred by a cosmopolitan population,( I have no firm view on this , I merely conjecture).

The most dangerous thing the Romans did with lead was to make sapa-sour wine boiled down in lead pans to make a sweetening agent (lead acetate syrup in effect), it is this product that is the key to the lead debate rather than the plumbing.

Edited by Pertinax

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I have heavily re-edited my previous post here , and would welcome comment from Mr Dalby on the sapa production . I have two questions to those knowledgable about Byzantium-what was the plumbing like? was lead used in food/drink production? If we have continuity of usage then the pro-plumbum party are in a tricky tactical position.

Edited by Pertinax

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Altogether a very educational post Pertinax et al. Certainly an unusual subject too. Well researched and presented. Thank you.

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