I don't revel in politics and my latest go-to interest in Rome has been, to what extent did they actually experience lead poisoning and what would have been its

I don't revel in politics and my latest go-to interest in Rome has been, to what extent did they actually experience lead poisoning and what would have been its lasting mental effects? Jerome Okon Nriagu is an environmental chemist who has studied metal toxicity in the environment in modern times. But his foray into history was a book, "Lead and Lead Poisoning in Antiquity" which was lambasted as a bit hasty and heavy on secondary sources. There was also some criticism on a pure chemical basis, for example he cites the lead pipes and lead lined aqueducts as possible major direct sources, but the plumbing of Rome suffered from the hardness of its water and its calcium carbonate buildups were 'legion' (is that a pun?) and are mentioned in ancient times. It would eventually serve as an an insulating barrier against water contacting lead directly. In this reexamination of Nriagu's work ( https://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/wine/leadpoisoning.html https://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/wi... ) "aelius stilo" provides sources that build on Nriagu's premise without discounting it, and suggests that the practice of boiling down unfermented grape juice (must) to syrup (defrutum and sapa) to flavor wine was almost certainly done in lead vessels, or copper vessels that had been coated in lead to avoid the bitter taste copper corrosion imparted into the mix. Lead was generally known as toxic as early as 2500 BC but what may not have been known was the transformative property of heat on chemistry. "stilo" gives some really mean estimates of lead toxicity in syrup and wine, which indeed suggest that wine (not so much water) was the delivery mechanism.