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Good question.

I wonder if the Romans knew they were getting dumber from sweetening their food with lead.

Not just the Romans, but anyone over 50, particularly in urban areas, got dosed with plenty of lead as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead

Has anyone plotted the amount of lead in the electorate over time?

It'll be interesting to see as the baby boomers pass away [0] if the political pendulum swings from "rah rah fu got mine, cruelty is the point, suck it libt*rds" conservatism, back to liberalism. It'd give me hope that Tr_mp winning again was just "one last hurrah" of those right-of-center (or by international standards, far-right) in the US.

[0] https://incendar.com/baby_boomer_deathclock.php

If one had to pick a single demo that propelled Trump in ‘24, it was young men [1].

[1] https://apnews.com/article/election-harris-trump-women-latin...

Lead does not readily degrade, either. It is still in the soil, the dust, our building, our foods, et cetera. People seem to be generally less exposed in each successive generation, however.

https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/pub/1570

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