> Earlier this century we were throwing lead around like it was candy,
> making water pipes out of it, spewing it into the air, making paint out
> of it, lining tin food cans with it, and so on.  When we started seeing
> lead poisoning in young children people started to wake up and smell the
> tetraethyl lead.

This has been going on a lot longer than that.  The Romans sweetened sour
wine by adding litharge (an oxide of lead) to it, or made it in lead
vessels in the first place.  This practise became more prevelant until
1000 to 1500 years later (?) larger numbers of people would get seriously
sick from too much wine.  The resulting intestinal pains were treated,
believe it or not, with more litharge.

I wonder how many stupid things like that we are doing today that they
will laugh about 500 years from now.


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