Lead Mills
From time to time ancient bones have been discovered with higher than normal concentrations of lead, sometimes high enough to have seriously compromised the affected individual's health and longevity. There have been various suggestions as to where this lead may have come from, all of them plausible, as the dangers of lead as a poison were not appreciated by the ancients.
Two very common sources of lead were water pipes and pewter tableware. The danger of lead water pipes is one that still lurks in the older parts of our plumbing and water-supply system, not only from the lead pipes and U-bends — lead was the most economical way of producing these complicated shapes — but also from the plumber's solder that joined the pipes together.
Pewter dishes may be often seen in museums, for such tableware was in common use in the 1600s and 1700s. Sometimes these dishes are plain, but more often the ones that have survived are highly decorated and quite clearly were intended for the tables of the rich. In these days when parents — quite rightly — worry about the lead in the paint on the pencils their offspring chew when thinking, it gives me the horrors to think of people enthusiastically scraping two vege and gravy off these lead dishes and transferring the deadly cargo to their mouths!
Now, however, an outbreak of lead poisoning among the Arabs of Hebron has directed attention to another possible source of lead: the flour mills.
Most Middle Eastern mills use the old-fashioned horizontal stone mills where two large stones are joined together and one, usually the upper one, rotates while grains of wheat are dribbled down into the centre. These stones rotate around an iron shaft, which is held in place in the lower stone by lead, melted and poured in around it. Flour collects on this lead filling and when it is scraped off, the lead comes with it.
This method of fastening things in stone is very ancient. Even the stones in the Parthenon in Athens were joined with lead clamps. Unfortunately age has endowed the practice with venerability, not safety. Fifteen years ago Dr Chaim Hershko of the Sha'arei Zedek Hospital in Jerusalem noticed clusters of patients with typical lead poisoning symptoms in 140 villages in the West Bank and in Israel. His search for a common denominator in all these cases showed that they were all eating bread baked with flour from old-fashioned flour mills and it wasn't long before the source of the lead had been identified.
The Israeli authorities moved promptly and closed down all the offending mills, an action that the locals interpreted as yet another example of high-handed Israeli oppression. Foremost among those complaining of this violation of human rights were, of course, the former mill-owners.
Over the last few years the intifada, followed by a measure of autonomy for the West Bank, has meant that Israeli control has slackened and, amid general rejoicing, the mills have resumed business. No doubt many of those queueing up to buy the bread or flour felt that they were performing a patriotic duty. The thirteen who came down with anaemia and stomach pains are now being studied by Dr Elihu Richter of the Hadassah School of Public Health and Community Medicine.
Dr Richter has passed on his concerns to the new Palestinian health authorities, but he might also like to mention his findings to the Department of Antiquities, where it could possibly help to solve a few ancient problems. After all, even those too poor to afford lead bowls or piped water would have had to buy bread — and who knows? Perhaps their miller held his stones together with lead filling.
