Werner
You are quite right. The problem with wine in the Roman era is that they
had neither bottles nor corks for bottles. Wine was stored in
earthenware amphorae with a wooden bung, neither of which was proof
against the infiltration of microorganisms. As a result, wine was drunk
within the year, as "Beaujolais nouveau" is today, after a single
fermentation (most wine today undergoes two stages of fermentation, the
second one being the malolactic, which reduces the raw flavour of the
malic acid). The acetobacter bacteria already had a good hold on the
contents of the amphorae, especially towards the end of the summer
following the grape harvest. The wine therefore contained a percentage
of vinegar whose taste was partially masked by the malic acid. Now, you
know and I know, the reaction of these bacteria is to oxidise the
ethanol CH3CH2OH to acetic acid CH3COOH.
Now, let's look at the Roman tableware. The rich used pewter
(Sn90-95Pb10-5, typically). I don't think there was much glassware but
analyses of Roman glass has shown it usually had up to 20% lead oxide in
it. Most tableware, especially amongst the plebians and lower classes,
was in glazed earthenware. And guess what was in the glaze? Right in
one, lead! So, we can safely say that all drinking vessels and wine
jugs, of all types, had some lead in contact with the wine.
Almost all lead salts are practically insoluble in water, with two
notable exceptions, the acetate and the nitrate. Yes, you read right,
the acetate. So, souring wine, in contact with lead oxide, will dissolve
a small quantity of lead into the brew with foreseeable long term
results, which they thought was the effect of the god Saturn (in fact,
alchemists even called the metal saturn in the Middle Ages) and, even
today, in French, lead poisoning is called saturnisme.
Now, let's look at lead water pipes. In the first place, the lead is
oxidised and it is true that there may be minute quantities of lead
dissolved in the water, especially if it comes from an acid region
(e.g., peat bogs). This would probably be at safe ppb levels, after the
first flush. However, the roughish oxidised lead forms a wonderful key
for lime deposits. Very quickly, the water is in contact only with lime
and not with lead. So the lead content of the water drops by orders of
magnitude.
Anecdote: when we were married in 1959, my wife and I moved into a 1930s
semi-detached in Gosforth, just north of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The water
supply came mainly from reservoirs in the S. Cheviots, largely a peat
bog area with acid water, but with some limestone exposure. The pH was
about 6.5-7. We were concerned about a) the slow water flow (45 minutes
to fill a bath) and b) the backboiler hardly heated the water. Being
impoverished newly-weds, we could not afford professional help, so this
electronics engineer moonlighted as plumber. And plumber was the
operative word as I found all the pipework in the house was in lead. I
decided to replace it all in half-inch copper, from the stopcock. I was
astounded, when I cut away the lead. From memory, I would say the ID of
the pipes was about 15 mm but the passage for the water was about 4 or 5
mm, the rest being a hard crust of lime which had accumulated in about
25 years in an ostensibly soft water area. I would say that the risk of
lead poisoning in that house was zero. Incidentally, the house I lived
in Edinburgh as a kid (18 years) also had lead pipework in a very soft
water area (yes, I can hear you saying that this explains my bad
character! :-) ). We didn't think twice about it.
Brian
Werner Engelmaier wrote:
> Hi Dale,
> Unfortunately you are citing another example of junk science pobular
> knowledge.
> "...they only know that drinking water from lead pipes (or with leaded
> solders) is bad for you."
> The first part refers to the Roman aqueducts that contained lead linings and
> pipes—a study I read not too long ago actually attributes the Pb-poisioning of
> the roman nobility to the fact that they drank their wine [acitic] from
> Pb-leaching vessels [Brian, please correct me if I am wrong on this]. the second
> one with the Pb-bearing solder used to solder copper water pipes is definitely a
> red herring.
> In New Jersey, the copper pipes were initially replaced with PCP pipes—these
> leach indefinitely, but what was worse, they sand blasted the Pb-containing
> paint off of highway bridges [how many kids have you seen chewing paint off of a
> highway bridge?] which of course made it air-borne and thus contaminated the
> backyards of people's houses close by.
>
> Werner
>
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