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by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 977 days ago
5500mg/kg means 385 grams of lead in a 70kg human. Sure you didn't mean micrograms/kg?
1 comments

I did not… it seemed wildly high to me too.

But I checked and got second sources that matched close. So I rounded down from 5670mg/kg to a more easily to do mental math with 5500mg/kg.

It turns out the amount of lead required to kill you directly from lead poisoning is… quite a lot! But that’s kill you… your probably going to have some other lead poisoning related health problems well before that.

Edit: Re googling one of my references.

“LD50 for lead 4665 mg/kg of bodyweight in males and 5610 mg/kg of body weight in females.” from https://www.aatbio.com/resources/faq-frequently-asked-questi...

That's probably why Romans did not connect the dots wrt lead poisoning.
Yeah, since lead accumulates in the body, I can imagine that a lifetime of exposure from significant sources like water pipes and all the other ways Roman’s were using lead, will just slowly add up until it reaches these sorts of levels, one microgram at a time until you’ve got like two tenths of a kilo of lead in you and a few organs are starting to struggle.