9 ms·

Ancient Romans knew that lead water pipes were unhealthy and so they preferred terracotta pipes. It's hard to imagine why the U.S. ever had a single lead water

by staunch 11y ago

Ancient Romans knew that lead water pipes were unhealthy and so they preferred terracotta pipes. It's hard to imagine why the U.S. ever had a single lead water pipe, let alone huge numbers of them. Updated with a reference for the downvoters: Sheets of lead were used to line Roman aqueducts (as was cement) and lead pipes to convey water. But lead also was known to be unwholesome and, for that reason, pipes made of clay were preferred—as Vitruvius, who wrote during the time of Augustus, explains. "Water conducted through earthen pipes is more wholesome than that through lead; indeed that conveyed in lead must be injurious, because from it white lead [ceruse or lead carbonate, PbCO3] is obtained, and this is said to be injurious to the human system. Hence, if what is generated from it is pernicious, there can be no doubt that itself cannot be a wholesome body. This may be verified by observing the workers in lead, who are of a pallid colour; for in casting lead, the fumes from it fixing on the different members, and daily burning them, destroy the vigour of the blood; water should therefore on no account be conducted in leaden pipes if we are desirous that it should be wholesome. That the flavour of that conveyed in earthen pipes is better, is shewn at our daily meals, for all those whose tables are furnished with silver vessels, nevertheless use those made of earth, from the purity of the flavour being preserved in them" (VIII.6.10-11). http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/wine/leadpoisoning.html http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/win...

detaro 11y ago
>Ancient Romans knew that lead water pipes were unhealthy and so they preferred terracotta pipes. Do you have a source for this? At the same time, they used lead acetate to sweeten wine and food, which is way more dangerous. If they made the weaker connection between health and water pipes, they should have been able to connect health and this as well.
- USAnum1 11y ago
  Not only that, up to the late 20th century many products other than pipes contained lead. Lead paint, leaded gasoline, etc. The jury was out on lead in everyday use until quite recently. I doubt the poisonous nature of lead was well known when these cities were built.
  - maxerickson 11y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_paint#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_paint#History
    - USAnum1 11y ago
      Most homes built before 1960 contain heavily leaded paint[0]. My assertion isn't that lead wasn't believed to be dangerous, rather that no one saw it as "seriously" dangerous. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead-based_paint_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead-based_paint_in_the_Unit...
      - roywiggins 11y ago
        From the above wikipedia entry: > In the July 1904 edition of its monthly publication, Sherwin-Williams reported the dangers of paint containing lead, noting that a French expert had deemed lead paint "poisonous in a large degree, both for the workmen and for the inhabitants of a house painted with lead colors." "Poisonous in a large degree" seems pretty serious to me. People were regularly dropping dead due to lead poisoning in factories by the turn of the century, and it looks like lead was recognized as being capable of doing significant, though hard-to-recognize, harm: "Although plumbism is usually easy to diagnose, lead occasionally induces obscure affections of the nervous system, the cause and true nature of which are not always easily recognized. As a cause of poverty, too, its influence is not sufficiently known nor the role it may be playing in the physical degeneracy of the race." https://books.google.com/books?id=gQY9AAAAYAAJ&lpg=PA29&ots=OxI1XdfNZq https://books.google.com/books?id=gQY9AAAAYAAJ&lpg=PA29&ots=... Lead paint looks to have been largely banned in Europe in favor of zinc-based paint by 1911; it was clearly viewed as a public health threat, not least by housepainters themselves, who were dying of lead poisoning (see the table on page 25).
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- Gibbon1 11y ago
  Yeah and they knew that was bad too. Probably if they had a good way of testing for lead acetate, they'd probably have thrown the occasional wine merchant to the lions. I have a copy of De re Metallica[1] it has a whole chapter on stuff like this and that's 1500's Europe. Lead is kinda tricky since it tends to get passivized most of the time by sulfate and phosphate. Except when it doesn't and then it's insidiously bad. [1] Translated Herbert Hoover (yes that one).
  - officemonkey 11y ago
    Hoover was a pretty amazing man and a pretty miserable president. A mining engineer who made his pile working in China. He claimed he was literally first Stanford University student (he showed up days early when the college first opened and he stayed in the dorms by himself.) He and his wife (who was also a geologist) were fluent in Chinese and would speak in it if they wanted privacy. He became known for international humanitarian missions during and after the first world war. He became a national figure by directing flood relief operations during the 1927 Mississippi Flood, which catapulted him into the White House a year later. He was a much better humanitarian than he was a president. And pretty good geologist and linguist too.
    - Rayearth 11y ago
      He was also chosen to tour and report on post-Second World War Germany due to his experience from similar humanitarian missions he undertook in Europe in the aftermath of the First World War. Does anyone think that it's possible that there will be another career engineer as POTUS? I've heard that there remains a sort of stigma to such a thing, perhaps in part due to the Hoover administration.
      - gozur88 11y ago
        I don't know why there would be a stigma on engineers and not not college professors. Wilson was a far worse president than Hoover.
        11y ago
- jcranmer 11y ago
  Read Vitrivius's De Architectura, specifically the part on building aqueducts. It's basically a manual for "So the Emperor told you to build a city from scratch…" As a random aside, he also includes a proof that the water level mechanism he prefers works even though the Earth is a (roughly) spherical object and not a flat plane.
  - bjelkeman-again 11y ago
    Couldn't find it in the book itself, but it is referenced here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_architectura#Materials https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_architectura#Materials
    - wasjosh 11y ago
      Seems health and taste both dissuaded use. For when lead is smelted in casting the fumes from it settle upon their members and day after day burn out and take away all the virtues of the blood from their limbs Hence water ought by no means to be conducted in lead pipes if we want to have it wholesome That the taste is better when it comes from clay pipes may be proved by everyday life for though our tables are loaded with silver vessels yet everybody uses earthenware for the sake of purity of taste. Google books, pg 246 https://goo.gl/g19bhQ https://goo.gl/g19bhQ
  - detaro 11y ago
    Interesting, have to check if the library has a translation of this available.
DamnYuppie 11y ago
It is also most likely that terracotta pipes were easier and cheaper to manufacture then lead pipes.
- uptown 11y ago
  Terra cotta pipes are way more susceptible to breakage and penetration from things like tree roots.
- the_mitsuhiko 11y ago
  And broken easier and required to be replaced. So I doubt that they would have preferred it without reason.
  - DamnYuppie 11y ago
    And your are implying that decreased cost and ease of manufacturing aren't viable reasons??
voltagex_ 11y ago
Doubtful: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/23o92d/on_cosmos_neil_degrassetyson_said_some_historians/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/23o92d/on_co...
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- the_mitsuhiko 11y ago
  That one specifically mentions that the Romans knew about problems with lead?
  - voltagex_ 11y ago
    Oops! Thanks. Can't edit my original comment. Oh well.
manachar 11y ago
Most houses in the U.S. built prior to a few decades ago have lead paint and many have asbestos. Then there's the whole leaded gasoline fiasco. The world has known of the danger of lead and many other dangerous substances, but often still chooses to use the dangerous substance. Sometimes it's because there weren't alternative substances that could do what needed to be done. Sometimes it was just a matter of expense. Sometimes it's because the dangerous substance was supposed to be used in a safe fashion, however reality proved the safe fashion to be overly optimistic. Course, then there are cases like the leaded gasoline that should be considered one of the greatest crimes of all time.
- colin_mccabe 11y ago
  Course, then there are cases like the leaded gasoline that should be considered one of the greatest crimes of all time. Yep, and it's still going on. Some small planes still use leaded fuels. http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/121-a54/ http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/121-a54/
  - paulmd 11y ago
    Yep, most of the small piston-engine aircraft are designed to run on 100-octane fuel. The only practical way to get the octane that high is leaded gasoline. However, the lead levels are lower than they used to be (avgas is typically 100LL for "low-lead"). Also, general aviation only consumes about 0.1% of the transportation fuel supply, so we're talking about a minuscule fraction of the fuel consumed. More modern aircraft can often get by with 94-octane premium unleaded. However, they cannot tolerate ethanol in their fuel, and due to congressional mandates for ethanol blends it's become increasingly difficult and expensive to source ethanol-free premium gasoline. Paradoxically, this pushes general aviation back to 100LL, which can easily be sourced without ethanol. Modern aircraft also have a trend towards diesel engines (often adapted from automotive diesels) that can be run on Jet A-1 fuel. These are actually very promising because they have good performance-to-fuel economy. See the Diamond DA62 for an example. http://www.gami.com/g100ul/avgas0211.pdf http://www.gami.com/g100ul/avgas0211.pdf http://www.aci-na.org/static/entransit/smallairports2011conf/WDerosier.pdf http://www.aci-na.org/static/entransit/smallairports2011conf... The root problem is that the general aviation fleet turns over incredibly slowly due to intensive maintenance requirements imposed by the FAA (eg annual total overhauls). It's pretty normal for your average single-engine aircraft to reach a lifespan of 40-50 years, and there's still plenty of aircraft that are pushing 70 or 80 years old. As such it's very difficult to achieve a phase-out of a fuel type within timeframes that people consider reasonable. Like I said, the shift towards 94-octane premium unleaded and diesels is already happening, but it will probably take another 20-30 years for the fleet to naturally rotate to engines that support alternative fuels. FAA oversight requirements (parts sourcing and mechanic labor) make everything airplane-related insanely expensive. You could mandate engine replacements, but this would be so expensive it would basically total 50% of the general-aviation fleet in an instant. At the end of the day we're talking about <0.1% of the transportation fuel supply so it's just not that big a deal.
sdk77 11y ago
>It's hard to imagine why the U.S. ever had a single lead water pipe, let alone huge numbers of them. I always supposed that that's where the word 'plumber' came from, or 'loodgieter' (lead caster, Dutch). Both words strongly refer to lead. Growing up in Holland in the early 80's our house had lead pipes. When I bought my first house in 2003 it too still had a lead water main. I drank a lot of that water, tap water over here has the same purity (basically actually is the same) as mineral water, with no side effects.
- tarsinge 11y ago
  Just noticed that in french lead is "plomb" and plumber is "plombier"
  - rangibaby 11y ago
    That's from Latin, which is why the periodic table symbol for lead is Pb.
- crottypeter 11y ago
  Whether or not the lead gets dissolved in the water depends on the water itself. If you have hard water lead pipes are low risk.
  - gozur88 11y ago
    Yes. Lead pipes in Flint weren't a problem until the city switched from Detroit municipal water to the corrosive Flint river water.
mirimir 11y ago
> It's hard to imagine why the U.S. ever had a single lead water pipe, let alone huge numbers of them. Lead has some advantages. Its melting point is low, so it's easy to weld. It doesn't corrode quickly, so pipes last a long time. And it's malleable, so pipes don't break when soil and foundation shift. But yes, it's very poisonous, so the advantages are moot for drinking water. For corrosive waste plumbing, on the other hand, it can be a good choice. It even tolerates HF, which glass doesn't. Glass is sexier, however.

by staunch 11y ago

detaro 11y ago

>Ancient Romans knew that lead water pipes were unhealthy and so they preferred terracotta pipes. Do you have a source for this? At the same time, they used lead acetate to sweeten wine and food, which is way more dangerous. If they made the weaker connection between health and water pipes, they should have been able to connect health and this as well.

USAnum1 11y ago
Not only that, up to the late 20th century many products other than pipes contained lead. Lead paint, leaded gasoline, etc. The jury was out on lead in everyday use until quite recently. I doubt the poisonous nature of lead was well known when these cities were built.
- maxerickson 11y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_paint#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_paint#History
  - USAnum1 11y ago
    Most homes built before 1960 contain heavily leaded paint[0]. My assertion isn't that lead wasn't believed to be dangerous, rather that no one saw it as "seriously" dangerous. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead-based_paint_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead-based_paint_in_the_Unit...
    - roywiggins 11y ago
      From the above wikipedia entry: > In the July 1904 edition of its monthly publication, Sherwin-Williams reported the dangers of paint containing lead, noting that a French expert had deemed lead paint "poisonous in a large degree, both for the workmen and for the inhabitants of a house painted with lead colors." "Poisonous in a large degree" seems pretty serious to me. People were regularly dropping dead due to lead poisoning in factories by the turn of the century, and it looks like lead was recognized as being capable of doing significant, though hard-to-recognize, harm: "Although plumbism is usually easy to diagnose, lead occasionally induces obscure affections of the nervous system, the cause and true nature of which are not always easily recognized. As a cause of poverty, too, its influence is not sufficiently known nor the role it may be playing in the physical degeneracy of the race." https://books.google.com/books?id=gQY9AAAAYAAJ&lpg=PA29&ots=OxI1XdfNZq https://books.google.com/books?id=gQY9AAAAYAAJ&lpg=PA29&ots=... Lead paint looks to have been largely banned in Europe in favor of zinc-based paint by 1911; it was clearly viewed as a public health threat, not least by housepainters themselves, who were dying of lead poisoning (see the table on page 25).
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
Gibbon1 11y ago
Yeah and they knew that was bad too. Probably if they had a good way of testing for lead acetate, they'd probably have thrown the occasional wine merchant to the lions. I have a copy of De re Metallica[1] it has a whole chapter on stuff like this and that's 1500's Europe. Lead is kinda tricky since it tends to get passivized most of the time by sulfate and phosphate. Except when it doesn't and then it's insidiously bad. [1] Translated Herbert Hoover (yes that one).
- officemonkey 11y ago
  Hoover was a pretty amazing man and a pretty miserable president. A mining engineer who made his pile working in China. He claimed he was literally first Stanford University student (he showed up days early when the college first opened and he stayed in the dorms by himself.) He and his wife (who was also a geologist) were fluent in Chinese and would speak in it if they wanted privacy. He became known for international humanitarian missions during and after the first world war. He became a national figure by directing flood relief operations during the 1927 Mississippi Flood, which catapulted him into the White House a year later. He was a much better humanitarian than he was a president. And pretty good geologist and linguist too.
  - Rayearth 11y ago
    He was also chosen to tour and report on post-Second World War Germany due to his experience from similar humanitarian missions he undertook in Europe in the aftermath of the First World War. Does anyone think that it's possible that there will be another career engineer as POTUS? I've heard that there remains a sort of stigma to such a thing, perhaps in part due to the Hoover administration.
    - gozur88 11y ago
      I don't know why there would be a stigma on engineers and not not college professors. Wilson was a far worse president than Hoover.
      - 11y ago
jcranmer 11y ago
Read Vitrivius's De Architectura, specifically the part on building aqueducts. It's basically a manual for "So the Emperor told you to build a city from scratch…" As a random aside, he also includes a proof that the water level mechanism he prefers works even though the Earth is a (roughly) spherical object and not a flat plane.
- bjelkeman-again 11y ago
  Couldn't find it in the book itself, but it is referenced here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_architectura#Materials https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_architectura#Materials
  - wasjosh 11y ago
    Seems health and taste both dissuaded use. For when lead is smelted in casting the fumes from it settle upon their members and day after day burn out and take away all the virtues of the blood from their limbs Hence water ought by no means to be conducted in lead pipes if we want to have it wholesome That the taste is better when it comes from clay pipes may be proved by everyday life for though our tables are loaded with silver vessels yet everybody uses earthenware for the sake of purity of taste. Google books, pg 246 https://goo.gl/g19bhQ https://goo.gl/g19bhQ
- detaro 11y ago
  Interesting, have to check if the library has a translation of this available.

DamnYuppie 11y ago

It is also most likely that terracotta pipes were easier and cheaper to manufacture then lead pipes.

uptown 11y ago
Terra cotta pipes are way more susceptible to breakage and penetration from things like tree roots.
the_mitsuhiko 11y ago
And broken easier and required to be replaced. So I doubt that they would have preferred it without reason.
- DamnYuppie 11y ago
  And your are implying that decreased cost and ease of manufacturing aren't viable reasons??

voltagex_ 11y ago

Doubtful: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/23o92d/on_cosmos_neil_degrassetyson_said_some_historians/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/23o92d/on_co...

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
the_mitsuhiko 11y ago
That one specifically mentions that the Romans knew about problems with lead?
- voltagex_ 11y ago
  Oops! Thanks. Can't edit my original comment. Oh well.

manachar 11y ago

Most houses in the U.S. built prior to a few decades ago have lead paint and many have asbestos. Then there's the whole leaded gasoline fiasco. The world has known of the danger of lead and many other dangerous substances, but often still chooses to use the dangerous substance. Sometimes it's because there weren't alternative substances that could do what needed to be done. Sometimes it was just a matter of expense. Sometimes it's because the dangerous substance was supposed to be used in a safe fashion, however reality proved the safe fashion to be overly optimistic. Course, then there are cases like the leaded gasoline that should be considered one of the greatest crimes of all time.

colin_mccabe 11y ago
Course, then there are cases like the leaded gasoline that should be considered one of the greatest crimes of all time. Yep, and it's still going on. Some small planes still use leaded fuels. http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/121-a54/ http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/121-a54/
- paulmd 11y ago
  Yep, most of the small piston-engine aircraft are designed to run on 100-octane fuel. The only practical way to get the octane that high is leaded gasoline. However, the lead levels are lower than they used to be (avgas is typically 100LL for "low-lead"). Also, general aviation only consumes about 0.1% of the transportation fuel supply, so we're talking about a minuscule fraction of the fuel consumed. More modern aircraft can often get by with 94-octane premium unleaded. However, they cannot tolerate ethanol in their fuel, and due to congressional mandates for ethanol blends it's become increasingly difficult and expensive to source ethanol-free premium gasoline. Paradoxically, this pushes general aviation back to 100LL, which can easily be sourced without ethanol. Modern aircraft also have a trend towards diesel engines (often adapted from automotive diesels) that can be run on Jet A-1 fuel. These are actually very promising because they have good performance-to-fuel economy. See the Diamond DA62 for an example. http://www.gami.com/g100ul/avgas0211.pdf http://www.gami.com/g100ul/avgas0211.pdf http://www.aci-na.org/static/entransit/smallairports2011conf/WDerosier.pdf http://www.aci-na.org/static/entransit/smallairports2011conf... The root problem is that the general aviation fleet turns over incredibly slowly due to intensive maintenance requirements imposed by the FAA (eg annual total overhauls). It's pretty normal for your average single-engine aircraft to reach a lifespan of 40-50 years, and there's still plenty of aircraft that are pushing 70 or 80 years old. As such it's very difficult to achieve a phase-out of a fuel type within timeframes that people consider reasonable. Like I said, the shift towards 94-octane premium unleaded and diesels is already happening, but it will probably take another 20-30 years for the fleet to naturally rotate to engines that support alternative fuels. FAA oversight requirements (parts sourcing and mechanic labor) make everything airplane-related insanely expensive. You could mandate engine replacements, but this would be so expensive it would basically total 50% of the general-aviation fleet in an instant. At the end of the day we're talking about <0.1% of the transportation fuel supply so it's just not that big a deal.

sdk77 11y ago

>It's hard to imagine why the U.S. ever had a single lead water pipe, let alone huge numbers of them. I always supposed that that's where the word 'plumber' came from, or 'loodgieter' (lead caster, Dutch). Both words strongly refer to lead. Growing up in Holland in the early 80's our house had lead pipes. When I bought my first house in 2003 it too still had a lead water main. I drank a lot of that water, tap water over here has the same purity (basically actually is the same) as mineral water, with no side effects.

tarsinge 11y ago
Just noticed that in french lead is "plomb" and plumber is "plombier"
- rangibaby 11y ago
  That's from Latin, which is why the periodic table symbol for lead is Pb.
crottypeter 11y ago
Whether or not the lead gets dissolved in the water depends on the water itself. If you have hard water lead pipes are low risk.
- gozur88 11y ago
  Yes. Lead pipes in Flint weren't a problem until the city switched from Detroit municipal water to the corrosive Flint river water.

mirimir 11y ago

> It's hard to imagine why the U.S. ever had a single lead water pipe, let alone huge numbers of them. Lead has some advantages. Its melting point is low, so it's easy to weld. It doesn't corrode quickly, so pipes last a long time. And it's malleable, so pipes don't break when soil and foundation shift. But yes, it's very poisonous, so the advantages are moot for drinking water. For corrosive waste plumbing, on the other hand, it can be a good choice. It even tolerates HF, which glass doesn't. Glass is sexier, however.