Lead pollution in ancient Rome may have dropped the average IQ by up to three points, a new study has found.
In the paper, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, it was concluded that the levels of background lead pollution would have been so severe at the time that they would have affected the health of much of Europe.
It was said to have caused “widespread cognitive decline including a 2.5-to-3 point reduction in intelligence quotient (IQ) throughout the Roman Empire”.
“An IQ reduction of 2 to 3 points doesn’t sound like much, but when you apply that to essentially the entire European population, it’s kind of a big deal,” said Nathan Chellman, the study’s co-author and assistant research professor of snow and ice hydrology at the Desert Research Institute (DRI).
Researchers have linked lead found in ice samples in Greenland to ancient Roman silver mining and smelting.
For every ounce of silver obtained from the ancient industrial process, thousands of ounces of lead were produced, much of which was released into the atmosphere, the DRI said.
Researchers used modern studies of lead exposure to determine how much of the chemical element would have likely ended up in the bloodstreams of Roman people and the impacts this would have had on their cognitive functions.
It is known today that lead exposure can have severe health impacts.
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However, back in antiquity lead was widely used in glazed table wares, paints, cosmetics, and was intentionally ingested as well as being present in air pollution from the mining and smelting of silver and lead ores, that the paper claimed “underpinned the Roman economy”.
It found that, during the peak years of the Roman empire, 27BC to 180AD, young children had 2.4 micrograms per decilitre (µg/dl) of lead in their blood, compared with estimated Neolithic levels of 1µg/dl – a period which ran from 10,000BC to 2,200BC.
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“Human or industrial activities 2,000 years ago were already having continental-scale impacts on human health,” said the paper’s co-author Joe McConnell, Sky’s US partner network NBC News reported.
The climate and environmental scientist at the DRI added: “Roman-era lead pollution is the earliest unambiguous example of human impacts on the environment.”
The outlet added the ice cores showed lead concentrations rose and fell in line with key events in Rome’s economic history from 500BC to 600AD.
