DERBYSHIRE, ENGLAND—According to a statement released by the University of Nottingham, chemical analysis of the tooth enamel of people who lived in central England’s Peak District suggests that lead mining and smelting in Britain’s post-Roman period was well underway by the mid-seventh century A.D. These activities produced contaminated dust, fumes, and materials toxic to human nervous, renal, and reproductive systems. Tooth enamel, which is laid down during childhood, contains a permanent record of the lead adsorbed by the body. Christopher Loveluck of the University of Nottingham and his colleagues compared the lead levels in the teeth of people buried in three Peak District cemeteries with those of people who were buried in other regions of Britain from the Neolithic period to the Industrial Revolution. The study determined that by the seventh century, children living in mining communities in the East Midlands had lead levels comparable to those of children who lived in industrialized cities some 1,000 years later. “Our results indicate that in these mining communities, girls and boys alike were raised in dangerously polluted home environments,” said Anna Bloxam of the University of Nottingham. “This exposure will likely have caused negative health effects in life, and perhaps contributed to higher rates of premature death among women of childbearing age,” she added. The highest levels of lead were found in remains dating to the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, when lead production in the Peak District reached its maximum. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Antiquity. To read about excavations of a nineteenth-century London workhouse, go to “Workhouse Woes.”
