Lead is fairly stable as elements go, as long as I wasn’t scraping metal into the food when eating would using lead dishes and drinking cups really be all that dangerous?
“Plumbism” (lead poisoning) has occured with poorly fired ceramics and a sufficiently acidic food.
Personally I wouldn’t drink my morning orange juice out of lead mug.
Assuming you aren’t referring to radioactive decay, lead is one of the more unstable of the commonly used metals. It’s almost never found in metallic form and it oxidises nearly instantly on exposure to air or water.
The problem with using lead crockery is that it’s physically soft and develops a coating of oxide powder. Anyone who has spent much time handling lead such as bullets or sinkers will have noticed that you soon develop a noticable grey stain on the fingertips. Lead really is that soft. All that lead is is going to be constantly abraded by anything touching the surface. That means cutlery and the food itself will be adding lead to your diet. Lead also notoriously dissolves in organic acids, meaning that oils, vinegar etc in your food that come into contact with the plate will contain dissolved lead.
So no, lead crockery wouldn’t be a great idea. It wouldn’t kill you fast, since the intake in any meal would be miniscule. The problem is that lead accumulates. Once it’s in the tissues it tends not to leave. It would probably take decades for an adult to exhibit symptoms, though I imagine young children would be affected within a few years.
Lead was a problem for the Franklin expedition.
I’d also avoid pewter dishes, especially antique pewter.
~VOW
Just out of curiosity if lead is that reactive how did the Roman plumbing pipes last hundreds of years without corroding into uselessness?
Same way that aluminium does: by developing a coating of oxide on the surface. The oxide prevents air and water from ever reaching the metal. Aluminium is even more reactive than lead, to the extent that if you scratch aluminium the silver metal disappers under a layer of oxide almost too rapidly to even see. But because of the oxide coating, objects made from aluminium or lead are actually *more *corrosion resistant than iron.
Lead passivation, i.e. The oxide coating is stronger than aluminum. Early manufaturers of sulfuric axcid used lead containers to store dilute sulfuric acid. The oxide layer becomea a problem in lea acid batteries (car batteries)
And because the pipes were carrying plain water. Had they been transporting something acidic, like vinegar, wine, tomato juice*, orange juice, etc., there would have been much more corrosion.
- Actually, I don’t think Rome had any tomatoes – they are a new world plant, not seen in Europe until after 1492.
As you know, lead was used as a tooth filling.
And a perfect opportunity to post this cartoon by Nick Kim.
Si
I don’t have a cite, but I remember reading an article a while back that said storing liquor in lead crystal would cause the amount of lead in the liquor to go well above safe levels. It went on to say that you could safely pour liquor or wine into a lead crystal decanter to serve it for dinner, just don’t store it in there for long periods of time (weeks or months).
Another problem with getting lead in your diet is that your body mistakes it for something it needs- in this case, calcium, iron, or zinc. That means it doesn’t just pass through you, but it sticks around to keep poisoning you. Lead has an estimated half-life of 20 to 30 years in bone (not a radioactive half-life, but how long half of the lead that gets into your bones stays there), and it keeps getting into your blood from there.
Well, crap. What about all that beautiful lead crystal we bought in Germany?
LOL, we don’t really USE it. We let it sit on the glass shelf, catch the sunlight, and look gorgeous.
~VOW
Just drinking out of it is different from letting wine sit in it for weeks at a time. Although I think lead crystal glassware does have to have a Proposition 65 warning on it in California. But so does everything else, so you don’t really notice them after the first few months after you move there.
I’m pretty sure it’s safe for that purpose. I think that’s what most people do with it.
Reading the article it sounds like the problem wasn’t food stored in lead tins or solder or lead dinnerware but their drinking water being fouled with lead from an auxiliary engine on their ship.
If anyone is having a problem with open bottles of wine sitting around for weeks at a time, I’ll be happy to help, at least once my baby is born and I’m finished breastfeeding.
Here’s something on lead leaching out of lead crystal decanters. This Washington Post article by a professor emeritus of chemistry from Pitt (Yay Pitt!) says you shouldn’t store beverages in a lead crystal decanter for more than about an hour before serving.
Pouring a bottle of wine into a lead crystal decanter just to show off before serving the wine is really, really dumb.
Then you get questions from people about getting dried wine stains off the bottom of the inside of the decanter. eyeroll
Fine boxed wine and Solo cups, people! Then sit around and look at the pretty crystalware sitting on the glass shelf in the lighted cabinet!
~VOW