"Franc Zabkar" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 16 Jun 2006 23:41:32 GMT, "Arfa Daily"
put finger to keyboard and composed:

Anyway, just how soluble is lead in water ? I'm not too sure,
but I expect some clever chemistry graduate will tell us. In the past,
water
was delivered to all households in the UK via lead pipes. In a lot of
older
properties, it still is. Certainly, the house that I grew up in had lead
pipework. I am not aware of people of my generation all dying of lead
poisoning, or having suffered intelligence lowering due to lead-induced
brain damage.

Here's an interesting case of lead poisoning:

http://www.lead.org.au/lanv4n3/lanv4n3-19.html

"According to the Medical Journal of Australia, in 1995 an Australian
man and his wife were lead poisoned by drinking non-alcoholic
carbonated beverages from a pewter mug purchased 10 years previously
in Malaysia. [Ref: Scarlett et al, MJA Vol 163 4/18 December 1995 p
589-590]"

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

Interesting reading. Do you set much store by what they say, or is it a case
of another bunch of fanatics who make everything sound right for their cause
?

I'm not sure. Some of the cases cited do seem to have an element of the
fantastic ( as in fantasy ) about them. I must admit that I am always a
little sceptical about organisations that have to make up long involved
names that can then have their initial letters made into an acronym that
reflects their function like in this case " LEAD " and " GLASS " and " PAN
".

The cited case of the six farm workers that became " paralytic after
drinking cider taken to them at harvest work etc " actually tells us nothing
about the effects of glaze in the earthenwear pot, that can be taken as any
kind of proof of lead poisoning. Indeed, lead poisoning is generally taken
to be a long term cumulative affair, and I would be very surprised if that
sort of illness could be brought on by one session of drinking from a
flaggon with lead bearing glaze. Rather, I would suggest, becoming paralytic
was more likely to be an effect of drinking the cider itself. Anyone who
knows this local rough-fermented brew, which is normally known as "scrumpy",
will tell you that it's looney-juice. One pint of the stuff is enough to put
a big guy on his back, if he's not used to it. It's like drinking apple
brandy ...

On the other hand, the case of the pair poisoned by the pewter mug over ten
years, sounds reasonably possible, given that they were drinking some kind
of ( unspecified ) fizzy reactive beverage from it, which if fruit based,
may well have been quite acidic. Although we are told that they are poisoned
over this 10 year period, there is no specific information on what exactly
the symptoms of this poisoning were. Likewise, the guy who was awarded the
large sum for getting lead poisoned in an English pub. I'd like to actually
read that article, as this seems a very large sum for something that would
be as difficult to prove as that would be.

None of this actually makes me any less sceptical about the danger claims of
lead in solder, and CRTs, but it's all interesting stuff. Again, if anyone's
getting fed up with it all as off-topic rambling, please say so, and I'll
knock it on the head.

Arfa