Nriagu described Claudius as “dull-witted and absent-minded, ” because of the over-ingestion of lead. His paper identified 19 who he believed “had a predilection to the lead-tainted food and wine.” One of those victims of lead poisoning was Emperor Claudius. Nriagu based his argument on the diets of 30 Roman rulers. In his article, “ Saturnine Gout among the Roman Aristocrats- Did lead poisoning contribute to the Fall of the Empire?” Nriagu argued that the decadent lifestyle of the Roman elite between the years 30BC- 220AD particularly exposed them to lead, leading to severe poisoning that destroyed their physical health, cognitive ability, fertility and manifested itself as a form of gout. Jerome Nriagu first published his argument for lead poisoning in the New England Journal of Medicine. The question is, is the case against antimony any stronger than lead? Drawing of Cooking Utensils from Pompeii. The letter has sparked speculation that poisoning- albeit from a source other than lead- did indeed erode the brilliance of Rome and bring about its doom. However, in 2017 a team from the University of Southern Denmark reported in the journal, Toxicology Letters, that they had identified another potential suspect for widespread Roman health problems: antimony. There is also no direct evidence in the ancient or archaeological record to suggest widespread lead poisoning. The Romans knew of the dangers of lead and took limited measures to protect themselves. While the use of the metal may have increased in the imperial period, how much this affected the population as a whole is difficult to quantify. It is now generally accepted that Nriagu overplayed the leads’ role in the decline and fall of the Roman empire. The consequent erosion of the mental faculties of the ruling class led to the empires’ mismanagement and its subsequent fall. Nriagu argued that the incidental ingestion of the toxic metal, via water pipes and from food cooked in lead-lined pots caused the mental and physical decline of the Roman people over multiple generations. In 1983, Canadian Research scientist Jerome Nriagu theorized that lead poisoning led to the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.
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