Lead Poisoning and Empire

aka Pb in D.C.

"The bellows are burned, the lead is consumed of the fire; the founder melteth in vain: for the wicked are not plucked away. Reprobate silver shall men call them, because the Lord hath rejected them." Jeremiah, 6:29-30

The contention that "a large number of Roman aristocrats ingested more than enough lead with their foods and drinks each day to put them at risk for lead poisoning" may be correct.

A by-product of silver mining, lead (Pb) was extracted from galena ore (PbS, lead sulfide), which was crushed and smelted (Pliny, XXXIII.95, 159). The lead alloy then was further refined in a furnace made hotter still by blasts of air forced from a bellows. The oxidized lead (PbO, litharge), which was contained in a porous crucible of crushed bone ash, was absorbed, leaving behind a trace amount of silver in a process called "cupellation" (from the cupel used to collect the metal). The lead was recovered by smelting the bone ash again with galena, the lead oxide combining with lead sulfide to form metallic lead and sulfur dioxide (2PbO + PbS = 3Pb + SO2).

Readily abundant, easily malleable, and with a low melting point (low enough, in fact, to melt in a camp fire), lead (plumbum) was ideal for the production of water pipes, which were fabricated by plumbarii (plumbers) from fitted rolled sheets in a variety of diameters (Vitruvius, VIII.6.1ff; Frontinus, XXXVIIff). Such pipes were extensively used but also known by the Romans to be a potential source of soluble lead. How then to reconcile the two realities?

In his treatise on the aqueducts of Rome, Frontinus complains that "the accumulation of deposit, which sometimes hardens into a crust, contracts the channel of the water" (CXXII.1). (Indeed, the aqueduct at Nîmes had an accretion of calcium carbonate that constricted its channel by forty-six centimeters, more than a third of its width.) Rome is situated on calcareous rocks, and the frequent cleaning of such limestone encrustation (which accumulated approximately one millimeter per year) suggests that deposits of calcium carbonate (CaCO3) in the pipes protected against corrosion and insulated against the introduction of lead into the water. Too, the water usually flowed continuously and so would not have been in prolonged contact with lead. And, as well as lead pipes, it would have run through pipes of terracotta. In De Architectura, for instance, Vitruvius, who wrote during the time of Augustus, indicates that the Romans knew of the danger of lead and, consequently, that terracotta was preferred.

"Water conducted through earthen pipes is more wholesome than that through lead; indeed that conveyed in lead must be injurious, because from it white lead [cerussa, cerussite or lead carbonate, PbCO3] is obtained, and this is said to be injurious to the human system. Hence, if what is generated from it is pernicious, there can be no doubt that itself cannot be a wholesome body. This may be verified by observing the workers in lead, who are of a pallid color; for in casting lead, the fumes from it fixing on the different members, and daily burning them, destroy the vigor of the blood; water should therefore on no account be conducted in leaden pipes if we are desirous that it should be wholesome [emphasis added]. That the flavor of that conveyed in earthen pipes is better, is shown at our daily meals, for all those whose tables are furnished with silver vessels, nevertheless use those made of earth, from the purity of the flavor being preserved in them" (VIII.6.10-11).

It is logical, therefore, to assume, because Romans used lead and reported symptoms concomitant with lead poisoning, that they were caused by lead--or, to phrase it another way, that if lead poisoning can have almost any symptom, then any symptom can be attributed to it. While Hippocrates may have known about lead poisoning, we are cautioned that he did not describe it in any of the books which have come down to us.

Water in D.C. Exceeds EPA Lead Limit
Random Tests Last Summer Found High Levels in 4,000 Homes Throughout City
By David Nakamura, Washington Post

Experts Seek Answers On Tainted D.C. Water
Panel to Study Abrupt Rise of Lead Levels in City

By David Nakamura and D'Vera Cohn
Washington Post

A team of chemists, water-quality experts and engineers will gather in Washington this week in an attempt to answer a baffling question on a tight deadline: Why did lead levels in the tap water at thousands of city homes spike above federal safety limits?

Scientists plan to conduct tests to determine whether new chemicals used to treat water for bacteria at the city's two treatment plants have a highly corrosive effect on service lines, allowing lead to dissolve from the pipes. They are especially interested in studying a compound called chloramine, a combination of chlorine and ammonia that the city's water treatment plants began using four years ago. Chlorine produces cancer-causing byproducts, so chloramine has become an increasingly popular alternative at water treatment plants across the country.

The District is among about three dozen water systems nationwide whose lead tests have exceeded the federal safety standard since 2000, according to data supplied by the EPA. Most were in small communities. See my note on Facebook titled Pb in DC.

When Jared Diamond wrote his book on why societies collapse he came to the conclusion that it occurred when elites weren’t experiencing the same things as the majority of the society–when they were isolated from the problems and challenges the society was facing.

For 30 years ordinary Americans haven’t had a raise. And despite all the lies, Americans are beginning to get that.

But for the people in charge the last thirty years have been absolutely wonderful. Seriously, things haven’t been this good since the 1890’s and the 1920’s. Everyone they know–their families, their mistresses and toyboys, their friends–is doing well.

Right from the outset of Collapse, Diamond makes clear that this is not a mere environmentalist's diatribe. He begins by setting the book's main question in the small communities of present-day Montana as they face a decline in living standards and a depletion of natural resources. Once-vital mines now leak toxins into the soil, while prion diseases infect some deer and elk and older hydroelectric dams have become decrepit. On all these issues, and particularly with the hot-button topic of logging and wildfires, Diamond writes with equanimity.

This is the second insanity of the US–that the decision making apparatus in the US is disconnected from the results of their decisions. They make sure they get paid, that they’re wealthy, and let the rest of society go to hell. In the end, of course, most of them will find that the money isn’t theirs, and that what they’ve stolen is worth very little if the US has a real financial crisis.

The third insanity is simpler: it’s the wealth effect. At the end of World War II the US had about half the world’s economy. Admittedly that’s because Europe had been bombed into oblivion, but even when Europe rebuilt the US was still far, far ahead. The US was insanely rich and powerful. See, when you’re rich you can do stupid and unproductive things for a long time. There are plenty of examples of this but the two most obvious ones are the US military and the War on Drugs.

The War on Drugs hasn’t reduced the number of junkies or drugs on the street in any noticeable way. It has increased the US’s prison population to the highest per capita level in the world, however. It has cost hundreds of billions of dollars. It has gutted civil liberties (the war on terror is just the war on drugs on crack, after all). And after 30 years does anyone seriously say “wait, this doesn’t work, it costs billions of dollars and it makes us a society of prisons?” Of course not, if anything people compete to be “tough on crime.” What’s the definition of insanity, again? Doing the same thing, over and over again, and expecting different results?

Then there’s the US military. It costs, oh, about as much as everyone else in the world’s military combined. It seems to be at best in a stalemate and probably losing two wars against a bunch of rabble whose total budgets probably wouldn’t equal a tenth of one percent of a US appropriations bill. And it is justified as “defending” America even though there is no nation in the entire world which could invade the US if the US had one tenth the military.

But the US could (not can, they are now unaffordable, but could) afford to have a big shiny military and lots of prisons, so it does. Lots of people get rich off of both of them, lots of rural whites get to lock up uban blacks and lots of communities that wouldn’t exist otherwise get to survive courtesy of the unneeded military bases and prisons which should never have been built.

Insane–believing things that aren’t true.

Insane–decision makers are cut off from the consequences of their decisions and in fact are getting reverse feedback, as things get worse for most Americans and as America gets weaker and poorer, they are the richest they’ve ever been.

Insane–so rich that no one will stop doing things that clearly don’t work and are harmful, because people are making money off the insanity.

All of this is what makes predicting the US so surreal. It’s not just about knowing what the facts are and then thinking “ok, how would people respond to that?” You have to know what the facts are, what the population thinks the facts are, what the elites think the facts are, who’s making money off of it, and then ask yourself if these facts are having any real effect on the elites and if that effect is enough to outweigh the money they’re making off of failure (how many of them have children serving in Iraq? Right, not urgent to fix.)

And then you have to go back to the facts and ask yourself “what effect will these have even if they’re being ignored.” Facts are ugly things, they tend not to go away.

All of which makes the US damn near impenetrable, often enough even to most Americans.

But here’s what I do know–you can get away with being nuts as long as enough people are benefiting from you being insane. When the credit cards are all maxed out, when the relatives have stolen even the furniture, suddenly all the enablers go away and the knee-breakers or the men in white coats pay you a visit. At that point you can live in the real world, or you can go to the asylum.

Which way is the US going? It sure is one hell of a wild ride…