> Scarborough wrote that Nriagu's basic premise couldn't be trusted because of sloppy work. He also concluded that the Romans were aware of the harm lead could

> Scarborough wrote that Nriagu's basic premise couldn't be trusted because of sloppy work. He also concluded that the Romans were aware of the harm lead could cause, that lead poisoning wasn't endemic in their society and that Rome did not fall because of it. > Yet French researcher Hugo Delile and his team, reporting in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2014, concluded that such concentrations were "unlikely to have been truly harmful." The group also claimed that enough criticism of Nriagu's theory had been amassed over three decades to largely debunk it. > "Lead is no longer seen as the prime culprit of Rome’s demise," Delile wrote.