Lead Poisoning and Measurement of Body Burdens of Lead: A Perspective

Abstract

The measurement of lead in archaeological bone forms the basis for providing insight into ancient societies, including disease, lifestyle and eating habits. It is sometimes asserted that in the 5th century AD lead toxicity played a key role in the eventual fall of the western Roman Empire. Others view the effect of lead exposure at that time to be less significant. The debate concerns the idea that clinical lead poisoning mainly affected the aristocratic population and caused a strong reduction in fertility and reproduction. Choosing bone over soft tissues or blood for lead measurement is due to the fact that the bone represents a long-term store of a range of elements, including lead, and can survive over many thousands of years. Different elemental analysis techniques both in-vivo and in-vitro have been developed over the years, including X-ray fluorescence (XRF), the latter being the main technique described in this review. The main advantages of in-vitro techniques are that they have excellent detection limits and data processing times but on the downside, they are very expensive. On the other hand, while in-vivo techniques are non-invasive they suffer from relatively poor detection limits, pointing to the need for validation using in-vitro analysis.