7 ms·
Back in school I was often told the lead pipes in Roman aqueducts likely played a key role in the fall of Roman. We know lead is a poison with negative long ter
by bognition 1y ago
Back in school I was often told the lead pipes in Roman aqueducts likely played a key role in the fall of Roman. We know lead is a poison with negative long term effects on cognition.
The aqueducts were also responsible for Romes ability to proliferate and grow. Lead was both a blessing and a curse.
I wonder what future generations will say about our highly enriched and processed diets. Calories have never been cheaper and food is ubiquitous. However I believe our food is playing a huge role in our degraded health.
It’s not surprising that most studies looking at the consumption of unprocessed food, fresh fruit and vegetables show benefits to our health.
The challenge is how do we get this food in the hands of those who need it cheaply and without sacrificing the nutritional (and microbial) content.
- papercrane 1y agoThe lead pipes theory is mostly just pop-science. Romans were likely getting more lead exposure from using lead cooking vessels and utensils.
- edwardbernays 1y agoSo is the idea that widespread lead exposure led to the decline of the Roman empire largely pop science? Are you saying that's not accurate, or that the source of the lead exposure is miscounted?
- Quarrel 1y agoYes, that is the modern understanding. Widespread lead exposure had very little / nothing to do with the decline the Roman Empire.
- Isamu 1y agoPlus to prove the lead connection you have to discount the centuries of Roman dominance and growth during which lead exposure was common.
- wredcoll 1y agoThis is a much better point. It's not like there were more lead pipes during the decline than the rise.
- edwardbernays 1y agoWouldn't there necessarily be more lead pipes at the peak and post-peak? Assuming that pipe-building was some non-linear function of dominance, which seems a fair assumption, we would start with 0% pipes at 0% rome and asymptotically close to 100% pipes at the asymptotic 100% peak rome. Is this a bad assumption, or is it basically just pedantry?
- wredcoll 1y agoIt would be more about lead pipes per capita, possibly as rome itself grew wealthier from conquests they added more and more piping, but it would be hard to relate this to any specific moment in time. Presumably the wealthy elites had their pipes installed first anyways.
- throawaywpg 1y ago"Decadence" likely had nothing to do with the Roman Empire's fall. That theory is based essentially on propaganda, designed to absolve them of blame. The lead pipes had too much calcification, and not much lead would have leached out. But the Romans did use lead acetate as a sweetener, so they were adding lead directly to many (most?) of their meals.
- yawboakye 1y agothere are many ways to account for the fall of the roman empire, and everyone chooses their favorite (usually depending on where their interest bends). for example, it could be explained by the increased usage of mercenaries in the roman army. i like this theory because the fall was brought by losses to renegade forces. it could also be explained by bad leadership.
- didgeoridoo 1y agoPlus literally “flavoring” their wine on purpose with lead acetate.
- MengerSponge 1y agoAnd that was the first and last time that no-calorie sweeteners had deleterious population-level effects
- lotsofpulp 1y agoHigh calorie sweeteners have deleterious population-level effects. Is there any evidence that modern low calorie sweeteners have deleterious population-level effects, and what are they compared to high calorie sweeteners?
- cjbgkagh 1y agoAnecdotally I get gut dybiosis (microbiome imbalance) that notably only occurs when using artificial sweeteners and stops when I stop taking it, I’ve talked to many others who have noticed the same thing. Gut dysbiosis can cause chronic systemic inflammation which is rather bad for the body, not sure if it’s worse than the sugar it replaces, but it shouldn’t be assumed that the problem is solved by low calories. I think it’s important to limit both, preferably to near zero.
- hinkley 1y agoSugar alcohols are especially bad for this. I fried my GI one year and it was largely down to developing a gum chewing habit at a time when sugar alcohols were in almost all gum brands. You can’t process them, but bad gut bacteria can.
- MengerSponge 1y agoIt sucks so much, because xylitol appears to be very good for your teeth but bad for your heart: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/xylitol-may-affect-cardiovascular-health https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/xylitol...
- declan_roberts 1y agoNot to mention the fact that their pipes immediately become mineralized, and very little lead leeches in cold water. Headline science has a way of sticking around for a long time.
- hungmung 1y agoAlso...Roman plumbing was constant-flow. Lead in water is mostly an issue when it gets to rest in the pipes for a while, then when somebody turns the tap on they get water that's had time to absorb the lead. Since Roman plumbing had no taps though and was just running constantly, the amount of time the water was exposed to the lead was pretty minimal.
- throawaywpg 1y agospelling pedant: "leaches," not "leeches"
- darth_avocado 1y agoIt’s lychees
- buovjaga 1y agoJoseph R. McConnell et al. (January 6, 2025). Pan-European atmospheric lead pollution, enhanced blood lead levels, and cognitive decline from Roman-era mining and smelting. https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2419630121 https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2419630121
- dathinab 1y agoalso lead flavoring lead tastes sweet, sugar wasn't cheaply & widely available, honey is expensive etc. and knowledge about lead poisoning was not really a think AFIK at the same time lead pipes tend to gain a crust of chalk over time (depending on chalk content of the water) which mostly defuses their danger. Like you will find some very old houses with lead tape water pipes in the EU today but if you test their tape water you won't find (much of) an issue due to 1) the chalk 2) the water not staying long in the pipe if it's e.g. a 4 apartment house.
- fernmyth 1y agoHere's Vitruvius in "De Architectura" claiming it's common, easily verified knowledge: https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Vitruvius/8*.html#6.10 https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Vitruvius... Of course, him mentioning "Don't do this" suggests that lead water pipes into the home were common enough to need a warning against.
- dathinab 1y agointeresting > "Don't do this" suggests that lead water pipes into the home were common enough to need a warning against. sadly, they still are today sometimes, in areas with a lot of 125+year old infrastructure :/
- bayindirh 1y agoInterestingly, in 2017, a research found that crime rates in US dropped as lead pipes are replaced with better alternatives [0]. [0]: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/new-evidence-that-lead-exposure-increases-crime/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/new-evidence-that-lead-ex...
- adastra22 1y agoWhich continued pretty much into the modern age. Nothing specifically Roman about it.
- giantg2 1y ago"Back in school I was often told the lead pipes in Roman aqueducts likely played a key role in the fall of Roman. We know lead is a poison with negative long term effects on cognition." I highly doubt there was much effect from the pipes. They would quickly be sealed in mineral scale. Cups or utensils - maybe, but would be more about specific important people using them rather than being widespread.
- MengerSponge 1y agoWine (and grape juice) was cooked in lead vessels, which generates Lead(II) Acetate aka Sugar of Lead. They lead poisoned themselves coming and going. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead(II)_acetate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead(II)_acetate
- hinkley 1y agoPre enlightenment Europe also saw cheap wine being sweetened with a lump of lead suspended in wine barrels. Around the World in Six Glasses will tell you that tea replacing wine lead to Progress in Europe because they weren’t drunk all day but I wonder how much was inebriation and how much was lead exposure.
- MengerSponge 1y agoSmells like a little of column A, a little of column B. Beer was also widely prevalent, right? Even if it's just small beer (<3%ABV), it's not exactly making you smarter. It's hard to hit the Ballmer peak, after all
- hinkley 1y agoBeer was their water treatment plan. You drank watered down alcohol as a way to avoid waterborne illnesses. Tea is boiling water which we still use to this day to deal with the water supply being contaminated.
- underlipton 1y agoIt should be noted that juice is a highly-processed food. It concentrates the sugar, vitamin, mineral, and water content of a plant while removing the fiber. As to your last question, part of it may be rethinking the profit motive in food production. Food waste to keep prices high is a huge issue.
- Etheryte 1y agoThe lead pipe thing is one of the best known urban legends that's both completely false and also constantly making rounds on the internet.
- SapporoChris 1y agoNot sure where you get completely false. Like most urban legends it's a little truth and a lot of falsehoods. Lead pipes are a known health hazard. Lead pipes didn't lead to the fall of the Roman Empire.
- Etheryte 1y agoIt's completely false as in lead pipes didn't have anything to do with the fall of the Roman Empire as originally mentioned in the top comment.
- kmeisthax 1y agoThe Roman Empire did not fall because of lead pipe. It fell because the empire's elites ran out of territory to conquer and turned against one another. Also, the Roman Empire didn't fall, either. It split in two. The Western half continued splitting into a bunch of competing kingdoms while the Eastern half slowly shrank over about a thousand years. It eventually wound up being rolled into the Ottoman Empire, which lasted until WWI.
- bigmattystyles 1y agoDon’t lead pipes or any pipes for water actually get a patina of calcium carbonate or something so while not great it’s not as bad as told. Only if the ph of the water changes because you change the water source, kinda like in flint?
- bongodongobob 1y agoYes. There's nothing wrong with lead pipes.
- bigmattystyles 1y agoNot sure if sarcasm if I don't know enough beyond my own comment that I remembered from a PBS documentary.....
- throawaywpg 1y agoApparently it wasn't the pipes, which wouldn't have leached enough to make a difference. It was the fact that the Romans used lead acetate as a sweetener in their food and drinks!
- boston_clone 1y agoCould you provide some evidence to support your assertion that highly enriched foods are degrading health? Public health experts contend that enriched foods have improved baseline quality of life. Wheat breads with iron, folate, and B vitamins in the US is an easy example.
- cpursley 1y agoTrace those public health experts funding sources... Hint: it's the farm-bill dependent carb farmers who apparently need our money via farm subsidies and want poor people hooked as they get it from the other end in the form of SNAP.
- boston_clone 1y agoNo; this is a deliberately misleading non-sequitur with decades of evidence to refute. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10609867 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10609867
- cpursley 1y agoThe American waistline disagrees. The idea that highly processed sugar added white bread with all fiber and nutrients stripped with token vitamins added are added is a good thing is ludicrous. Why not just promote eating real food, including real bread?
- boston_clone 1y agoIt sounds like you're hypothesizing / gish galloping / strawmanning until you find something that "sticks". Instead try researching things that support your claim, like the notion that sugary beverages are the main culprit to the obesity epidemic, even though most health experts don't have the evidence to isolate that as the core factor. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9611578/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9611578/
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
- tim333 1y agoThe Victorians used lead pipes and then the British Empire declined. Coincidence?