The current debate about lead poisoning's potential role in the downfall of the Roman Empire dates back to a 1983 paper in the New England Journal of Medicine by Jerome Nriagu, who was studying ...

Some historians have argued that Roman elites and emperors who purportedly displayed odd, often violent behavior like Caligula and Nero were actually suffering from lead poisoning, and thus that ...

Scholars have debated lead poisoning’s impact on Roman history for decades. Some have even argued that lead poisoning played a role in the downfall of the Roman empire. Most of those arguments have ...

Atmospheric lead pollution likely caused cognitive decline among citizens of the Roman Empire, according to research published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Some scholars have hypothesized that lead poisoning played an important role in the decline of the Roman Empire. But that idea has been called into question, at least when it comes to water ...

Given the gluttonous habits of Roman aristocrats, it would be no surprise if they showed the impact of lead in their diets, Nriagu believed. Here's how he described "the dull-witted and absent ...

Roman Empire’s lead pollution ... The study also could add fuel to a fraught and long-standing debate about whether mass lead poisoning could have ... Silver fueled the rise of the Roman Empire.

L: Lead pipe from Roman-era Bath, England. R: Bones of the thigh, leg, and foot. Whether the ancient Romans’ copious use of the metal in their civilization resulted in lead poisoning has been ...

Lead was extensively used in Roman water pipes, even though the Romans were aware of the dangers of lead poisoning. (Photo by SSPL/Getty Images) Granted, that doesn’t mean lead water pipes are ...

Researchers have gleaned more information from three ancient lead ingots discovered in Cordoba, Spain, that sheds light on ...