The Persistance of Lead Contamination

My interest in lead contamination started with the "National Emergency" of Flint, Mich. some year ago. The more I learn about the issue, it appears more and more dramatic. Lead persists in the environment forever, and it not only reduces IQ but also fertility. Surprisingly, it is a Catholic religious blog has an excellent article on the subject, while the professional water media almost never deals with it. I always considered Catholicism as the most intellectually satisfying religion, more than Judaism (I am a Jew but not because the intellectual worth of the Talmud but because my ancestors were all Jews and so shall I die too) and incomparably more rational than the Islam.  Why are Catholic padres worried about lead instead of counting the angels dancing on a pin?

Lead pollution provides an entire suite of family planning services—everything from puberty delay to male and female fertility reduction to chemical abortion. Indeed, colonial-era commentators recommended lead as an abortifacient. In Flint, Michigan, lead pollution has increased fetal death by perhaps as much as 50 percent and reduced overall fertility by more than 10 percent. A study of a temporary lead spike in Washington, D.C. showed similar results: huge increases in fetal death rates and substantial declines in birth rates. But most people probably assume that, despite a few crises in a few places, their childbearing plans are safe from lead-related problems.

Most people are wrong. Recently, a working paper titled “Toxic Truth: Lead and Fertility,” published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, used air-pollution data from the 1970s and 1980s to demonstrate that the presence of lead molecules in the air altered local fertility rates in those decades. Later, the reductions in lead emissions brought about by environmental regulations raised the national birth rate by about 6 percent. 

The comments section is worth reading too. 

Did the Romans' exposure to lead, not only in the water supply, but in pewter drinking vessels, cosmetics and even from wine sweetened with lead acetate affect fertility levels?

There are probably too many variables to say, but it is certainly true that the birth-rate was a matter of concern to Augustus and the other Julian Emperors, as witness the Lex Julia de maritandis ordinibus and the Lex Papia Poppaeia, which restricted or extinguished the inheritance rights of unmarried (coelebs) or childless (orbi) people and transferring them to the heirs or legatees with children. Again, it is remarkable how, of the 311 Patrician houses mentioned by Livy, only nine survived into the Augustan age.

That there was a fall in population is certain.

Pic.: Spices and herbs and ceremonial powders and alternative medicine remedies imported from South East Asia have very high - dangerous levels of lead. You have been warned.