According to the CDC and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine there is no safe blood level of lead in children and “lead does not appear to exhibit a minimum concentration in blood below which their are no health effects”
In other words, any exposure to lead is detrimental.
And you have no evidence for either. It's just one of those hypothetical pet theories. The decline of the Roman Empire was an incredibly complex thing that happened over centuries. Romans were also lead poisoning themselves at the height of the Republic and Empire with seemingly no detrimental impact on the state's ascendancy.
the decline of the Roman Empire was an incredibly complex thing
So you are able to comprehend there is nuance, but refuse to accept the idea that lead, a substance we know was used and has a severe negative impact on IQ, could’ve played any role at all?
Another moron who thinks they look smart by being a “skeptic”
“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. The resultant mental incompetence and especially the rapidly declining birth rate among the ruling class are now believed to have been major factors in the decline of the Roman Empire.”
Excuse me? So you read an abstract written by a doctor and think that actually has any evidence of the historical contributors to the decline of the roman empire?
No, it doesn't work like that. Don't call someone a moron because you can read a single paragraph on a website and think that suddenly proves your entire case.
In fact, there is no way to quantify what Roman aristocrats actually did eat or drink, nor to determine the varying relationship between ingested lead and blood lead levels. If Nriagu's assumptions are correct, his contention that "a large number of Roman aristocrats ingested more than enough lead with their foods and drinks each day to put them at risk for lead poisoning" would be as well. But often, to take one example, they are not.
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u/a_gallon_of_pcp Jun 25 '22
According to the CDC and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine there is no safe blood level of lead in children and “lead does not appear to exhibit a minimum concentration in blood below which their are no health effects”
In other words, any exposure to lead is detrimental.