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If you choose to follow any links to the complete text of articles listed below, you will be leaving the Strategian Web site. If you wish to return to this page from the Web page you are sent to, please use the Back option of your browser. Maja-Lena Brännvall, Richard Bindler, Ingemar Renberg, Ove Emteryd, Jerzy Bartnicki, and Kjell Billström. The Medieval Metal Industry Was the Cradle of Modern Large-Scale Atmospheric Lead Pollution in Northern Europe. (... an interesting study that analyzed the lead concentrations of sediments taken from the bottoms of four remote lakes in northern Sweden. Based on this analysis, the authors conclude that the long-range south to north movement of lead pollution [and likely other pollutants as well] in the atmosphere dates back, not just to the start of the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s, but as far back as 3500-4000 years ago with most of the lead pollution a result of metallurgy in Europe that began some 2500-3000 years ago. Peaks of this pollution are recorded about 2000 years ago during the Greek and Roman civilizations, from 900 to 1200 A.D. with an increase and expansion of mining and metallurgy, and from 1400 to 1530 A.D. when metal production in Europe reached its peak. Lead pollutants transported from southern Europe peaked again in the 1700s. The authors state although atmospheric lead deposition in northern Sweden increased with the Industrial Revolution, it is not, when seen in a historical perspective, as much as usually assumed. Another significant increase in lead pollution in the area studied occurred in the 1900s especially after the Second World War in the mid 1940s with the increased use of leaded gasoline. Since lead pollution concentrations reached a high in 1970, environmental regulations in Sweden have led to considerable reductions to a level of about one-third of what it was in 1970. All in all, in the mid-1990s, lead concentrations in these lakes were about equivalent to what they were in 1200 A.D.--which is still some 100 times greater than what probably existed in the lakes prior to the beginning of the transported lead pollutants some 3500-4000 years ago -- from the text of the article on the Environmental Science & Technology Web site) Environmental Science & Technology Volume 33, Number 24 (December 15, 1999): 4391-4395. **The complete text of this article is currently available through the Web site of Environmental Science & Technology** How to find the above journals, magazines, and other publications? See Step 3: Locate of the Information Strategy for details. Questions about any or all of the above? Please let me know. |
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