Lead records from Arctic glaciers indicate that people all over Europe would have been affected by pollution from metal smelting during the Roman era

The new research adds context to a long-standing debate about the role lead pollution and poisoning may have played in the collapse of the Roman Empire. Some historians have argued that Roman elites and emperors who purportedly displayed odd,

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. Researchers analyzed ice core records for an approximately thousand-year period corresponding roughly with the period from the Roman Republic through the decline of the empire,

The Roman Empire's pervasive influence once reached across land, sea, and even sky. During the golden age of Roman imperialism, air pollution grew so inescapable that researchers now suspect it caused widespread neurological damage over much of Europe,