Actual paper is titled “Next-generation ice core technology reveals true minimum natural levels of lead (Pb) in the atmosphere: Insights from the Black Death”.

Actual paper is titled “Next-generation ice core technology reveals true minimum natural levels of lead (Pb) in the atmosphere: Insights from the Black Death”. The gist is that we’ve been operating under wrong assumptions about what normal background levels of lead in the atmosphere are like. What we used to consider normal turns out to be affected by pre-industrial human activities way more than we thought. Natural lead levels, as the paper shows, are much lower. Assuming we’ve found the true baseline levels, we see that we and our ancestors were/are being exposed to higher, relative to baseline, lead levels than we thought. The main kicker of this research to me is that it puts into question some previous research pertaining to human health and lead (which, as we do already know, don’t go well together at all—the friendly paper[0] provides a summary), as well as current public health measures. [0] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2017GH000064/full http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2017GH000064/full