Perhaps it is historically appropriate that the word “ironic” contains “iron.” Mining and smelting minerals such as iron represented the technological level of the Roman Empire at its peak. But these activities are also said to have created enough lead pollution to damage citizens’ IQs. in new research to PNAS.
“Detailed ice core records of lead contamination in the Arctic, together with sophisticated atmospheric modeling and modern dynamics, indicate that human industrial activity took a significant toll on human health more than 2,000 years ago,” said scientist Joe McConnell. Joe McConnell says: desert lab is the study’s lead author.
Learn about ancient lead poisoning
Ice samples from the melter during ongoing ice core chemical analysis at the Desert Research Institute (Credit: Sylvain Masclin)
Scholars have debated the impact of lead poisoning on Roman history for decades. Some even claim that lead poisoning contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire. Most of these claims have focused on ancient writings and archeology that provide hints (circumstantial evidence) about the effects of lead.
Now, a team of researchers has provided definitive evidence linking pollution to ancient intelligence. They identified levels of contaminants in three ice cores dating from 500 BC to 600 AD (the era from the birth of the Roman Republic to the fall of the Roman Empire). They then compared the levels to how lead pollution affected the general public at its peak in the 1970s, before gasoline was banned.
Studies have shown that lead in the air during Roman times was about one-third as much as it was in the late 1970s when the U.S. Clean Air Act went into effect, and about twice as much as it was in the early 2010s. .
“Both elites and non-elites in urban and rural areas have been affected by air pollution,” McConnell said. “No one could avoid the health effects.”
But there were almost certainly differences in impact depending on how close people lived to mines and smelters. Blood lead levels and other health effects associated with modern smelting are much greater nearby and decline almost exponentially the further you live from such places. McConnell says the same was true in Roman times.
Read more: The hierarchy of the Roman Empire lasted 1,200 years
Tracing the impact of pollution into the past
Ice in a core barrel while drilling in the Greenland ice sheet (Credit: Joseph McConnell)
To reach this conclusion, researchers used sophisticated computer modeling to move forward and backward in time. They determined lead levels in the ice cores consistent with the era of the Roman Empire, then ran a model that McConnell calls a “reverse mode” to determine how lead contamination was likely to spread from known Roman mining and smelting sites to locations across Europe. . They then ran the model in “forward mode” to see how emissions from the region yielded atmospheric concentrations in the ice core.
Finally, they compared the association between modern-day lead pollution and health outcomes, such as blood levels and cognitive decline in childhood, to determine the impact lead pollution may have had during the heyday of the Roman Empire.
There are other examples that show how widespread lead contamination was during that period. For example, scientists have measured it in European peat bogs, lake sediments, and, more rarely, in human remains such as tooth enamel.
But these results are partial at best, McConnell says. “No previous attempt has been made to understand and specifically quantify the widespread impact of environmental pollution on human health and history,” he says.
Read more: If Rome wasn’t built in one day, how long would it have taken?
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Before joining Discover Magazine, Paul Smaglik was a science journalist for more than 20 years, specializing in U.S. life sciences policy and global science career issues. He started his career in newspapers but switched to science magazines. His research has been published in publications such as Science News, Science, Nature, and Scientific American.
