• MNByChoice@midwest.social
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    3 days ago

    They had a lot of names for it.

    “salt of Saturn”

    And a lot if uses.

    How much would cause brain damage, and how much brain damage did the average Roman have?

    • bizarroland@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      One thing that’s overlooked about the Romans and lead exposure is that they did have organic forms of oral chelation available, which helped mitigate the effects. The most commonly quoted version of which is eating garlic, but many foods and nutrients can either decrease the amount of lead you absorb from the other foods that you eat, or increase the amount of lead that you excrete, which decreases their effects on your body and brain.

      Of course, these foods by themselves are not going to completely remove all of the lead in your blood, but it would have reduced the amount, so it’s not like they were completely raw-dogging lead in their wine.

      https://lead.org.au/fs/Foods_for_Lead_Detox_A-Z_20150214.pdf