Pervasive Arctic lead pollution suggests substantial growth in medieval silver production modulated by plague, climate, and conflict.

ABSTRACT: Lead pollution in Arctic ice reflects large-scale historical changes in midlatitude industrial activities such as ancient lead/silver production and recent fossil fuel burning. Here we used measurements in a broad array of 13 accurately dated ice cores from Greenland and Severnaya Zemlya to document spatial and temporal changes in Arctic lead pollution from 200 BCE to 2010 CE, with interpretation focused on 500 to 2010 CE. Atmospheric transport modeling indicates that Arctic lead pollution was primarily from European emissions before the 19th-century Industrial Revolution. Temporal variability was surprisingly similar across the large swath of the Arctic represented by the array, with 250- to 300-fold increases in lead pollution observed from the Early Middle Ages to the 1970s industrial p

SUBMITTER: McConnell JR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6660774 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature