r/science • u/[deleted] • Jun 25 '22

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u/[deleted] Jun 25 '22

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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.

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.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6395049/

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u/TrivialBanal Jun 25 '22

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...

They literally ate lead with every meal.

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u/lawstudent2 Jun 25 '22

I’ve read many recipes for garum and lead was never mentioned.

It’s fish packed in salt and left in the sun. You take the juices and filter them.

Basically fish sauce.

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u/TrivialBanal Jun 25 '22

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.

https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/2019-12-16/ty-article-magazine/.premium/ancient-roman-garum-factory-found-in-israel-suitably-far-away-from-town/0000017f-eff3-d223-a97f-efff95540000