How the Black Death Made the Air Better: There's a silver lining behind every cloud. Humans have been smelting lead for a long, long time. As a result, we all breath in a certain...

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

There's a silver lining behind every cloud. Humans have been smelting lead for a long, long time. As a result, we all breath in a certain amount of lead. However, during the time of the Black Death, so many people were dying that lead mining almost came to a halt.

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sb Loc: Florida's East Coast

We are watching one of "The Great Courses" on the plague. Pretty interesting. The plague epidemics actually created social changes - like fewer workers being forced into lead mines as Jerry points out - there were far fewer workers, and so there was competition to hire the people who were left to work the fields, etc., and they ended up getting higher wages. It shifted the power structure a little bit away from the feudalism that was established at that time.

Bob Smith Loc: Banjarmasin

Metals that we now know are harmful have been used for centuries for example mercury commonly used once in thermometers was also used in the manufacture of hat's with dire effects hence the saying mad as a hatter. Mercury was once used as a cure for venereal disease. So in the summer time a hatter with venereal disease would be a foot or so taller than he was in the winter 😁

pbearperry Loc: Massachusetts

Bob Smith wrote:

Metals that we now know are harmful have been used for centuries for example mercury commonly used once in thermometers was also used in the manufacture of hat's with dire effects hence the saying mad as a hatter. Mercury was once used as a cure for venereal disease. So in the summer time a hatter with venereal disease would be a foot or so taller than he was in the winter 😁

Charlie157 Loc: San Diego, CA

Remember the radium girls. They painted the dials of watches and clocks with radium to make them luminous. They ended up with radiation poisoning and later contracted cancer

salmander

And let's not forget the discovery of radium. Madame Curie and her husband discovered radium and did many experiments. She got the Nobel Prize. Her husband died from their efforts. Their notebooks cannot be touched by human hands, because of the intense radiation they still give off.

John_F Loc: Minneapolis, MN

In the early days of watch making the dials were painted on. Then with the glowing-in-the-dark properties of radium watch dial painters started using it. Because of the preciseness needed painters 'tipped' their brushes with their tongues. Of course, mouth cancer ensued.

thomseninc

The study's claim that they can measure lead levels at the resolution of a month is crap to the n'th degree.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Charlie157 wrote:

Remember the radium girls. They painted the dials of watches and clocks with radium to make them luminous. They ended up with radiation poisoning and later contracted cancer

Yes, and there are areas of the UK that are still contaminated as a result of that painting.

salmander

John_F wrote:

In the early days of watch making the dials were painted on. Then with the glowing-in-the-dark properties of radium watch dial painters started using it. Because of the preciseness needed painters 'tipped' their brushes with their tongues. Of course, mouth cancer ensued.

Not a good way to go - to be killed from what seemed like an ordinary job. And to think that we ourselves may be engaged in something we think is ordinary in the same way, only to die some unnecessary death sometime in the future. Creepy. We'd find out what killed us on our death bed, if ever. We're all going to go someday in some way, but we shouldn't die from something that is easily preventable. We deserve to live out our natural lives. That's what I think, and what I'm hoping and planning. Contact me in 30 years, and I'll let you know how it's going.

MLAnderson

[quote=jerryc41]Yes, and there are areas of the UK that are still contaminated as a result of that painting.[/

DougS Loc: Central Arkansas

Speaking of the radium. I worked at Timex in Little Rock, Arkansas for 10 years in the 70's. Upon occasion, I would visit the dial department, where I would see monthly, someone carrying out special balloons inflated by mouth from the workers in that department, to be tested for radiation exposure. The building is completely gone, now.

rps Loc: Muskoka Ontario Canada

There was a similar problem with press photographers during the era of flash bulbs. They often wet the base of the flashbulb socket with their tongue to make better electrical contact. Doing this many times a day, day after day, often caused cancer of the tongue. Not sure what the metal in question would have been.
And...
How come we never hear anything any more about people getting brain cancer from the radio waves emitted by their cell phones held against their ear. It was a trendy news story a couple of years ago. Not sure about the US, but here in Canada Bell Canada and Rogers, the main cell phone operators, also own a whopping share of our radio and TV stations. Probably not a good career move for a newsie to do stories on cell phones causing cancer...

GeorgeH Loc: Jonesboro, GA

From the looks of the center contact on flash bulbs I'd guess that it was solder. At that time solder was an alloy of lead and tin, in current solder especially that intended for drinking water pipes the lead is replaced by other elements. See this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solder#Lead-free_solder BTW I never licked the contacts, somewhere I'd heard that spit might well corrode the flash gun; I'd scrub the bulb contact on a leather shoe sole or my denim jacket.