Is there ever any lead or other harmful metals in ancient coins?

[Future Man]

I haven't bought my first ancient coin, but I plan to do so soon (Roman).  My interest has sprung from my upcoming first trip to Italy and historical readings I have done.  Anyway, as a total newbie, one whose initial purchases will probably be of the economy-minded variety, my first thought is, is it generally ok to actually handle ancient coins, in terms of lead content etc. (since, to be honest, the idea of actually holding something so old yet manmade is part of the appeal for me--my kids will probably want to do so too.  What does one watch out for, if this can be an issue?  Thanks for any replies!

[slokind]

Traces (unless you happen across some cast-lead object: Roman coins are not lead).  Bronze in some regions contains lead sufficient to make it take a strike more easily.  Sculptural bronze often contains a couple of percent more, to help it fill the mold before it hardens.  Even statuary bronze contains less than 10%, so far as I know.
As to the children: don't worry.  Just don't let the baby teeth on a coin that is uncommonly soft.  Where tin or zinc was scarce, they sometimes eked out the copper alloys with lead.
The ancient objects that are of lead are, preeminently, the packing around the tenons and clamps that join pieces of stone or the setting of statues or tripods etc. in their bases.
Pat L.

[quisquam]

What about arsenic? In ancient times arsenical bronze was used, for example for weapons and tools. I don't know if it was ever used for coins, though.

Stefan

[Lloyd Taylor]

Lead can be at high levels of concentration in some Athenian bronze coins of the 1st - 3rd Century.  Ref attached extracted from CHEMICAL DATING OF BRONZE COIN BLANKS FROM THE ATHENIAN AGORA  by E. R. Caley and  W. H. Deebel, Department of Chemistry, The Ohio State University, Columbus 10. Subsequent work by Kroll and others on Athenian coins from the archaeological site of the Athenian agora, has confirmed that Pb levels of up to 30% are present in many 1st Century Athenian bronze coins.

Interestingly, the high lead content is manifest in a soapy feel to the coin, compared to unleaded bronze, at least in the two examples I have in my collection.

[Ardatirion]

The lead tesserae were, of course, almost entirely of lead.

https://www.forumancientcoins.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=2267

[moonmoth]

The later Alexandrian tetradrachms have the soapy feel and often red patination typical of a noticeable lead content. Some provincial bronzes also get that red patina.  This mix of copper, tin and lead is normally called potin.  Many celtic coins are also made of such a mix.

[commodus]

As long as you don't eat your coins you should be okay.

[Steve Minnoch]

Though all of those people are now dead,

So we're all ghosts, hanging around, rattling chains?  (or yanking them?)

Steve

[Paleologo]

Lead was ordinarily used for water pipelines in Roman times. Lead fragments are a very common find at sites where Romans inhabited. In fact, I guess a theory about the decline of the Roman empire involves the people's large-scale blood poisoning because of the pollution of water supplies by lead in the pipelines. Could it be Peter Heather's theory, or am I totally mistaken?

[mix_val]

Lead pipes develop calcination (scaling) which protects the lead (and the water going through the pipe!).  What is far more likely is lead contamination from cooking utensils such as lead pots.  Boiling slightly acidic solutions and you dissolve lead.  The romans made a sweet concentrate called sapa by boiling wine down in lead pots.  The chemical responsible for the sweet taste was "sugar of lead" or lead(II) ethanoate.  This no doubt found its way into many food preparations.

I'd be careful about the dust when cleaning your coins.  Probably a lot of lead contamination there.  I read somewhere that it takes 25 years for lead to cycle out of your body

[commodus]

The miniscule amounts one may contact during the cleaning of coins pale compared to the everyday use of household and industrial chemicals that are so ubiquitous in modern society.
Incidentally, the (inexplicably) widely accepted theory that lead poisoning was a factor in the downfall of the Roman Empire is about as silly an idea as was ever put forth, if one really thinks about it carefully. Many factors led to Rome's fall, as many did to its rise. One of the leading factors of Rome's rise was plumbing. Its fall was far, far more complicated.

[mix_val]

Incidentally, the (inexplicably) widely accepted theory that lead poisoning was a factor in the downfall of the Roman Empire is about as silly an idea as was ever put forth, if one really thinks about it carefully. Many factors led to Rome's fall, as many did to its rise. One of the leading factors of Rome's rise was plumbing. Its fall was far, far more complicated.

This is impossible to prove either way but I wouldn't call the idea silly.  Just one of many factors leading to the fall of the empire.      From wikipedia

"A 2009 History Channel documentary produced a batch of historically-accurate defrutum in lead-lined vessels and tested the liquid, finding a lead level of 29,000 ppb, a staggering 290,000% higher than the current US drinking water standards of 10 ppb. These levels are easily high enough to cause either acute lead toxicity if consumed at once in large amounts or chronic lead poisoning when consumed in smaller quantities over a longer period of time (as defrutum was typically used).[2] Also, because chronic lead poisoning can cause infertility and high infant mortality, some scholars hold that the long-term digestion of defrutum, along with the eating food and drink with bronze utensils containing lead (which were mended with pure lead) was a contributing factor in the decline of Rome.[1]

See   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defrutum

An emperor with a taste for lead sweeten wine would not be the best person in charge!

[Danny S. Jones]

Though all of those people are now dead,

So we're all ghosts, hanging around, rattling chains?  (or yanking them?)

Steve

LOL - I should have phrased it this way... "Most ancient coins passed through the hands of thousands of people in ancient times. Though all of those people are now dead, I don't believe there is a correlation between the two."

This thought came from a conversation I had with a friend yesterday about the fallacies of experimental research. Conclusions are often made trying to correlate some prior event with the results which may or may not be related. i.e. Coins were handled by ancient Romans. All ancient Romans are dead. Therefore, handling coins caused the death of ancient Romans. The same logic might be applied to the question of lead poisoning causing the fall of the Roman empire. (Though, admittedly, I cannot speak to that subject, and will leave it to others to form their own conclusions.)

Regards,
Danny

[commodus]

Oh the presence of lead in the Roman body was doubtless far higher than in ours and thius cannot have been healthy by any means. However, to suggest that this led to Rome's fall is rather overly simplistic.

[Enodia]

Lead was ordinarily used for water pipelines in Roman times...
... In fact, I guess a theory about the decline of the Roman empire involves the people's large-scale blood poisoning because of the pollution of water supplies by lead in the pipelines.

interestingly enough the Romans were apparently aware of the health risks of lead.
Vitruvius wrote of this in his Ten Books on Architecture (Book Eight)...

"Water conducted through earthen pipes is more wholesome than that through lead; indeed that conveyed in lead must be injurious, because from it white lead is obtained, and this is said to be injurious to the human system. Hence, if what is generated from it is pernicious, there can be no doubt that itself cannot be a wholesome body. This may be verified by observing the workers in lead, who are of a pallid color; for in casting lead, the fumes from it fixing on the different members, and daily burning them, destroy the vigour of the blood; water should therefore on no account be conducted in leaden pipes if we are desirous that it should be wholesome. That the flavour of that conveyed in earthen pipes is better, is shown at our daily meals, for all those whose tables are furnished with silver vessels, nevertheless use those made of earth, from the purity of the flavour being preserved in them"

~ Peter

[Robert_Brenchley]

Many of the metals found in coins are poisonous. When I was a kid I nicked some copper sulphate from the chemistry lab at school and used it to kill the bindweed that was smothering the garden. They have to be converted to soluble salts first, though, and then ingested. Not many of us dissolve our coins in acid and drink the end result, so I wouldn't worry! The chances are you're taking in orders of magnitude more of these substances from the environment than you ever will from coin collecting.

[slokind]

Concerning the lead pipes used to deliver water in Italy: in most regions there was enough lime in the water that the pipes were quickly coated with it.  When I was little I lived in a town where the faucet water came from the (mostly underground) Salinas River in California.  We called it 'hard' water.  We put some lemon or vinegar in the final rinse when shampooing hair.  It was perfectly healthy (and prevented laundry soap from sudsing excessively) but unfriendly to, e.g., coffee pots and teakettles, which got coated with lime crust, too.
The happy truth about most Roman pipes was proven by simply examining the insides of pipes found by archaeologists.  In a "soft" water region, it could have been more serious.
Pat L.

[mix_val]

interestingly enough the Romans were apparently aware of the health risks of lead.
Vitruvius wrote of this in his Ten Books on Architecture (Book Eight)...
~ Peter

I'm not surprised that someone figured out the health risks back then but getting people to understand back then must have have been even more difficult than it is now.

[Paleologo]

Concerning the lead pipes used to deliver water in Italy: in most regions there was enough lime in the water that the pipes were quickly coated with it. 

This is absolutely true for the area of Rome, where local water is a plumber's bonanza    but you only have to go as far as Umbria or Florence to find a totally different situation, as you can effectively test just by trying to wash your hands.

[moonmoth]

Lead water pipes were standard in Victorian houses in Britain, and no doubt earlier ones too.  Only fairly recently has copper become the standard.  So could this explain the fall of the British Empire?  (*)  This must be the Plumbic Theory of Cyclic Civilisation!


(*) No.

[commodus]

Lead water pipes were standard in Victorian houses in Britain, and no doubt earlier ones too.  Only fairly recently has copper become the standard.  So could this explain the fall of the British Empire?  (*)  This must be the Plumbic Theory of Cyclic Civilisation!(*) No.

Actually, the majority of 19th century American houses have (unless they have been replaced, which is doubtful in most cases) lead pipes, also. Also, many municipal water systems in older neighborhoods of American cities have lead piping in their infrastructures. Much has been replaced through the decades but much has not. The general public gives it nary a thought, living in blissful ignorance while worrying that touching coins may poison them.

[Danny S. Jones]

I consulted a physician friend of mine who said that ingesting too many ancient coins may lead to colorectal cancer. The same may be said for medieval and even modern currency. 

[Enodia]

I consulted a physician friend of mine who said that ingesting too many ancient coins may lead to colorectal cancer. The same may be said for medieval and even modern currency. 

the exception being Canadian coins... they're far too pretty to cause anything so heinous.

~ Peter

[mix_val]

Lead metal is fairly inert.  As I said before, you need acidic conditions to speed the dissolution of lead into water.  The problem with ancient coins is the corrosion (or patina when its pretty) that occurred over 1000+ years.  The corrosion is a mixture of oxidized metals that made up the coin.  Mostly copper oxides, carbonates ..etc  but in the case of a copper/lead alloy, also lead oxides.  Lead oxides are not very soluble in water and shouldn't be a problem (it was used as a face powder in recent history) but if you consume it, the acids in your digestive system will dissolve the lead and allow it to be absorbed by the body.   So when you clean your coins, be careful to vacuum up the powder and wash up afterwards.     Oh and don't eat your lunch while you clean your coins! 

[Robert_Brenchley]

Back in the late 1970's, there was a great fuss because they discovered that kids living near Sphagetti Junction (a big motorway junction a few miles away) had dangerous levels of lead in their systems, from exhaust fumes. After that, they brought in unleaded petrol. At the time, there were still a lot of lead water pipes around. They were replaced bit by bit (I used to use them to make fishing weights), but there was never any concern about lead in drinking water, even in areas with soft water.