Astro Hacker News - Social dynamics of toxic metal industry in medieval Europe

BubbleRings |next [-]

So wild and sad, reading the article and discussing the subject with a “knowledgeable entity”. (It’s great having smart “friends” that don’t mind when you pester them with rabbit hole questions at 3am.)

The “Erin Brockovitch” (hexavalent chromium groundwater poisoning) story in Hinkley CA describes harm that went on for a couple decades. The underground plume spread about 8 miles, affecting a couple thousand people.

The Peak District case was a whole mining region exposed through dust and fumes for maybe _850 years_, with the airborne lead spreading so far it showed up in Alpine ice and Scandinavian lakes.

Dust brought in to homes by workers, and fumes over the whole town and countryside, bringing sickness, early death, craziness and lower intelligence to men, women and children. And nobody could figure it out.

aeastw |next |previous [-]

I grew up in Hope, near Castleton, and worked for several years as a tour guide at Speedwell Cavern which is a failed lead mine from the 1700's. This was a fascinating read as I knew lots of the later history, but as the article points out, the earlier history is much less well known.

lwhi |next |previous [-]

I wonder what the community vibe would have been like, in these places where lead smelting was so prevalent.

We all (now) know the effects of severe lead poisoning. Delirium and hallucinations, miscarriage and still births, anemia .. what would these forboding circumstances have been attributed to at the time?

Did people understand how hazardous the production of lead was?

defrost |root |parent |next [-]

The "ancients" (Roman era writers and workers, post Roman UK Peak District lead workers, the Chinese, etc) understood the hazards of acute lead poisoning first hand and often referenced mad hatters, crazy painters, and the symptoms of extreme exposure in literature.

What they seemingly failed to grasp until more recent times was the slow creep of incremental mild exposure:

  However, they were so fond of its diverse uses that they minimized the hazards it posed. Romans of yesteryear, like Americans of today, equated limited exposure to lead with limited risk. What they did not realize was that their everyday low-level exposure to the metal rendered them vulnerable to chronic lead poisoning, even while it spared them the full horrors of acute lead poisoning.

~ Lead Poisoning: A Historical Perspective (1985) https://www.epa.gov/archive/epa/aboutepa/lead-poisoning-hist...

hobo123 |root |parent [-]

Lead is very flexible and was used even in the last century in Germany for I think roof transitions, fresh water pipes etc. I inherited a nice town house from 1900 which still has lead pipes, but I let them install new ones so the old ones are now dead in the walls as a piece of history.

hobo123 |root |parent [-]

I think the idea was that water pipes will build up a later of calcium anyway, so they aren't harmful.

In Germany there are probably tons of lead pipes still in existence and and only from 2026 is there a law that they all _have_ to replaced (previously they could stay as long as the water lead content was in the permitted range, but I don't think anybody ever checked).

BubbleRings |root |parent |previous [-]

> what would these forboding circumstances have been attributed to at the time?

I’ll bet witchcraft got brought up, and praying to the wrong god or going to the wrong church.

defrost |root |parent [-]

Why bother with books when we can just vibe-feel "history", 'ey?

  Hence gout and stone afflict the human race;
  Hence lazy jaundice with her saffron face;
  Palsy, with shaking head and tott'ring knees.
  And bloated dropsy, the staunch sot's disease;
  Consumption, pale, with keen but hollow eye,
  And sharpened feature, shew'd that death was nigh.
  The feeble offspring curse their crazy sires,
  And, tainted from his birth, the youth expires.

~ Description of lead poisoning by an anonymous Roman hermit who failed to mention witchcraft, wrong gods, bad churches.

BubbleRings |root |parent [-]

The new version:

“I can’t go to sleep yet hun, somebody on the internet doesn’t learn the way I think they should!”

camkego |next |previous [-]

I have met and seen multiple individuals handling and strapping exposed lead to pickleball paddles in recent years. It is maddening.

Without education younger people reasonably have little understanding .

People born in the 60s and maybe 70s have the leaded gasoline termination and leaded paint public awareness efforts to inform them. I don’t think people born in the late 90s or early 2000s have been exposed to the news of the risks of lead so much.

MomsAVoxell |root |parent [-]

It’s the same with awareness of nuclear annihilation. Younger generations just don’t seem to understand the threat - whereas generations of the 60’s/70’s/80’s sure do ..

ThrowawayTestr |next |previous [-]

I like to fantasize about a TV show where I go to the past and tell famous people about their impact to film their reactions. Not sure if this would be on the list. "We dug up your teeth to measure the lead content and determined you were poor."

ckx |root |parent [-]

Yep, someone hand me a time machine!

BubbleRings |root |parent [-]

Bring a camera, it could make good (if wildly disturbing) reality TV. You wandering Medieval England, wearing a face mask, gloves and a Tyvek suit, with your completely unknown accent, trying to convince a whole society “you’re doing it all wrong!”