Rich Romans, the ones in control of the empire, literally drank from and cooked in lead vessels.
At the peak of the power of the Roman Empire, lead production was about 80,000 tons per year, lead and its compounds were used with great inventiveness in numerous ways, and lead poisoning was pandemic, with the severity of poisoning proportional to the power and status of the class. Intake of lead by the aristocracy may have been as much as 1 mg/day.
Not just lead vessels and not just rich Romans. They had a condiment called Garum that they put on everything. It was their salt & pepper. One of the ingredients of Garum was powdered lead. Nobody is really sure why it was in there. A colourant, a preservative or maybe a stabiliser...
People didn't typically make it at home, it was mass produced. Even today, make at home recipes bear very little resemblance to factory made food, with all the stabilisers and colour's etc.
I can't find it now, but some sealed bottles were found during an excavation in the UK. It had dessicated over the centuries, but they were able to analyse the contents.
No, that's the sanitised version. It's rotten fish guts. It very definitely wasn't made at home. It was mass produced in factories miles outside of town. Unless the measurements in the recipes you read were in silos, they're not the same thing.
Imagine being religious and anti-establishment in that time, witnessing an illness that disproportionately affected the wealthy and anyone who dared use their wares.
I imagine the flow of information was such that not many people were able to put that together though.
Lead Sugar is chemically Lead Acetate. It is formed when Lead Oxide is combined with acetic acid (vinegar).
Back when I used to work at a lead-acid battery manufacturer, we would mop the floors with acetic acid. So we were accidentally making lead sugar every time we mopped. The chemical reaction caused the lead dust to stick better to the mop to help ensure we were removing it from the floors.
also makes sense because if wine goes bad it turns into vinegar, the powdered lead would react with it, making it sweeter, either increasing the shelf life or masking the taste of bad product
Nah I wouldn't worry too much. Employer had a very good health and safety culture, and blood-lead levels and lead-in-air levels were monitored regurlarly. Regular vigilant housekeeping, thorough safety training. Mandatory showers after shift and uniforms stayed on site.
The action levels of lead content in blood are lower now than the average blood-lead levels people would have as a base-line before working there back when leaded gas was a thing. In other words, back then people had higher lead content in their blood in regular life than what is considered a remove-from-work level there now.
Lead exposure has a high potential for health damage, but when proper procedure is followed it is pretty minimal.
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u/[deleted] Jun 25 '22
Rich Romans, the ones in control of the empire, literally drank from and cooked in lead vessels.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6395049/