Ancient Lead Emissions Polluted Arctic

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Researchers have discovered lead emissions from ancient Roman and Greek smelters buried in British peat and Swedish lake sediments (SN: 3/26/94, p.198). But a new study shows that ancient airborne pollutants traveled even farther and contaminated the lower atmosphere of the lower Arctic.

"This...marks the oldest large-scale hemispheric pollution ever reported," Sungmin Hong of Domaine University in Grenoble, France, and his colleagues assert in the Sept. 23 SCIENCE.

The team analyzed cores drilled by the European Greenland Ice Core Project in central Greenland. Lead production increased during a period of Roman cultural expansion 2,500 to 1,700 years ago. Lead …