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Comment by simion314 | Hacker News Reader

About Romans, they intentionally put lead in wine for the taste, I am not sure if they also used lead pipes or cups.

The word plumbing is derived from the Latin word for lead (plumbum). Latin dictionaries also list the word for lead as a synonym for pipe. I think they did use lead pipes.

Thanks, I never made the connection between the plumbum(lead is called plumb in my native language) and plumbing. Anyway to confirm this I done some searching and yes, romans)and others) had plumbing and running water and used lead pipes too(though the lead in wine gives you much more poisoning where pipes are toxic only in certain circumstances)

https://www.quora.com/Did-Roman-Byzantine-plumbing-extend-to...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_lead_pipe_inscription

Only for the record, lead pipes have been extensively used (for drinkable water) till well into the 20th century.

The inner surface of the pipes soon form a sort of lining that is normally not dangerous/poisoining.

The amount of lead now admissable in EU is 10 micrograms per liter, but - at least here (Italy) - until 2013 was 25 micrograms per liter.

Usually only in some particular cases (acidic waters and "stagnation" in the pipes) some relevant amounts of lead are transferred to the water.

Drinking or eating from polished lead tableware is another thing.

I also heard that Roman middle classes who couldn't afford silver used leaden plates to eat off of. As lead very quickly develops an airtight patina, this is much worse than plumbing (which after installation of basically never touched) because knives, forks and just general friction of handling the plates causes the Patina to be scraped off and the food to be exposed to lead.

An old name for lead acetate is "sugar of lead". Guess they needed to sweeten their wine.

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