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.

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).

Right... Maybe in that 20% of the world that has mostly calcium rocks.

Water tends to slowly eat away calcium, not the other way around.

In the UK lead pipes were legal to install until 1970s.

Same in Switzerland. I work in a building built in the 70s, after the ban of lead, but the plumbers used up their old stock of lead piping before buying new stuff, so the tap water in the building still contains lead. (just under the legal treshold to take action, yay)

Lead flashing is still in use for roofing elsewhere in the EU. Most of the builders yards near me have rolls of it.

Apparently they had no idea it was bad in medieval times.

The wealthy were particularly afflicted, as lead was used in glazes; which common folk couldn't afford.

The common folk weren't spared though, as they were caught up in production.

I imagine it could have greatly affected the development of societal norms.

> Apparently they had no idea it was bad in medieval times.

Tell me more, how do we know this to be true?

> The wealthy were particularly afflicted, as lead was used in glazes

Sure .. but you're saying that "the wealthy" purchased poorly fired earthenware and had high acid diets?

  Traditional pottery and other forms of ceramicware are made with earthenware, a porous form of clay which must be glazed in order for the pottery to hold food or liquid. Glazing applies and fuses a thin, glass-like coating onto the surface of the clay to seal its pores. The glaze – which may contain lead to facilitate the melting of glaze particles – fuses to the pottery when it is fired in a kiln, a special oven used to bake clay. When the pottery is fired at the proper temperature for the proper amount of time, essentially all the lead is bound into the glaze.

~ https://www.fda.gov/food/environmental-contaminants-food/que...

To the best of my knowledge it takes continuous leaching by > ~ 4% acetic acid (from acidic food and drink) of poorly fired lead glaze earthenware for lead glaze to become "potentially hazardous"

> The common folk weren't spared though, as they were caught up in production.

I would have though production would be where the worst actual exposure occurred, breathing in fumes from liquid mercury.

That would be the more extreme acute exposure, that was known about as problematic in medieval times (at least to those people who read and copied earlier manuscripts regarding minerals, processing, health, etc).

> I would have though production would be where the worst actual exposure occurred, breathing in fumes from liquid mercury.

I thought we were talking about lead?

--

https://www.nature.com/articles/s40494-022-00703-8

https://www.sdu.dk/en/om-sdu/fakulteterne/naturvidenskab/nyh...

It probably created the stereotypes of inane aristocrats, and happy stupid people.

Romans boiled wine in lead vessels, and added sugar of lead (the acetate salt) as a sweetener.

in vino veritas, but apparently not sanitas.

And as my German godmother used to add: im Cola weiss nicht was.