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Lead was used in Egyptian pottery many thousands of years ago.

And to sweeten wine, which survived into the Middle Ages as people soaking lumps in cheap wine to improve the flavor.

There’s a plausible theory that tomatoes were mistaken for poisonous due to lead dinner plates of that era.

With the possible exception of the counterfeit wine example, that’s all very ethically different from pumping it into the air.

Specifically, it's Lead Acetate vs a lump of metal lead.

"Lead acetate, also known as sugar of lead, is a salt that (ironically) has a sweet flavor—a fairly unusual quality in poisons, which are more likely to taste bitter, signaling to the taster that they are unsafe for consumption. The ancient Romans used the compound—which they called sapa—to sweeten wine"

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/sugar-of-lead-a-...

lead... as a sweetener??

:: looks on past in abject horror ::

And yet every time I get water down the wrong pipe - basically attempting to drown myself just trying to take in one of our most basic life-sustaining inputs - I realize that not only are we still basically monkeys but we haven't really evolved half as much as we think we have as a species. It's a miracle we live long enough to reproduce.

You are literally a winning lottery ticket, so enjoy it while you can.

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