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Note this isn't mainly about lead pipes:
"most significant... may have been through background air pollution from mining and smelting of silver and lead ores "
The smelting of silver and lead is detectable via ice cores, I remember seeing a graph showing the height of Roman silver production was only matched in the 18th century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_economy#/media/File:Worl...
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Note this isn't mainly about lead pipes:
"most significant... may have been through background air pollution from mining and smelting of silver and lead ores "