The comparison that I find most relatable is that lead was the plastic of their day. It was a very useful, plentiful and cheap material with mostly known health effects. Alternatives exist but they aren’t as useful, plentiful and cheap as lead/plastic
Comment on Lead by example
Broadfern@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
I miss PugJesus and their context/sources lol it’s hard to find anything off a Startpage search atm outside of the basic lead-made-the-Roman-empire-fall theory.
Speculating here - it’s possible that the ancient Romans who knew were about as equally numbered as today, but also like today, stubbornly willful ignorance and/or economic interests outweighed the voices calling for its cessation?
It could also be logistics - communications being fragmented and/or unable to source materials to replace the infrastructure rather than simply “not knowing”
phcorcoran@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
nagaram@piefed.social 13 hours ago
As with all things, its complicated.
The romans knew that those who worked in lead mines or were lead smiths suffered tons of problems and died early because of their occupation.
The dangers of lead were never a mystery.
But they also knew that it takes more than simply touching lead to get sick. So they knew their lead pipes were fine since it was a low pressure gravity system unlike our modern system that is pressurized. Lead pipes in a pressurized environment actually mixes with the lead and causes problems.
And water logistics are NECESSARY to keep a city like Rome alive. So lead smiths were needed because lead is CRAZY USEFUL for all things precise and plumbing related.
But, lead also famously has a sweet smell when formed into lead acetate. And romans love sweet wines. So they’d boil down grapes and berries in lead pots to make a lead acetate sweetener. This theyd mix with wines to enhanve them. Something they generally knew was bad but who knows. I like to think of it as the ancient roman equivalent of smoking. Yes objectively bad, but sometimes you need an extra sweet wine to take the edge off.
I’ll give you better sources later. I think I got this from Mary Beards “SPQR” which is a must read. Not chronological, but fuck chronology. Where my thematics gang at!
Confused_Emus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 hours ago
Love Mary Beard! She’s the host/presenter of a number of Roman documentaries that can be found on YouTube, if anyone else is interested.
Broadfern@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
You are awesome thank you for sharing all this context 😄
That all makes a lot of sense, there’s definitely similar concepts today where it’s understood that the dose makes the poison, so to speak.
I’ll have to check out that book it sounds fascinating, for sure
The_Picard_Maneuver@lemmy.world 13 hours ago The more things change, the more they stay the same huh?
(I also miss Pugjesus)
TastehWaffleZ@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
I’m out of the loop, what happened to PugJesus? Did they get burned out or did something happen?
- The_Picard_Maneuver@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
He made a post saying that he was stepping away. I don’t want to speak for him, but the main thing seemed to be frustration with some activity caps implemented on the server he had moved his communities to, and knowing that it would be a ton of work to move them all again.
4am@lemmy.zip 8 hours ago
njm1314@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
I thought he just got tired of mass banning people who disagreed with him.
Is PugJesus gone‽ :(
Sergio@piefed.social 2 hours ago
Yes, see:
https://feddit.uk/post/52137875
https://piefed.social/post/2208230