Subject: Re: why you can eat tomatoes
I thought they had concluded that lead pipes contributed to health (and mental) problems in the Roman Empire. No?

I'm far from being an expert on this one. I know that no amount of lead is good for you and that the tetra-ethyl lead that was put in the atmosphere with "leaded" gasoline from the 40's to the 70's was overwhelmingly worse than lead in water pipes and solder joints. Similarly bad was lead paint, because lead oxide is sweet-tasting so toddlers would seek it out. Did the Romans go mad from lead poisoning? Dunno.

As for Roman engineering I must agree. The Roman aquaduct in Segovia, Spain is truly amazing. They didn't have surveyor's transits, yet they figured out how to have laminar flow in the channel (not too steep, not too shallow). There is a ~90 degree turn in the aquaduct about a mile upstream from the multi-arched part so they couldn't just sight along the aquaduct the whole way back to the source. My suspicion is that there were many wooden versions that were tweaked before they "set it in stone" so to speak. Truly impressive.

Rgds,
HH/Sean