Lead has long been known for its high toxicity. While the properties of lead as very soft malleable metal have long made lead useful to man since antiquity until today – from the Roman who used them to construct their pipes (hence the symbol for lead Pm from the the Latin plumbum) to the leaded gasolines and lead-based paints which are still in used in some countries – concerns of its effects on health and environment have forced people to replace lead with safer alternatives.
Between the effect of the lead of health and environment, the harmful effects of lead on the environment are less known by the general public. This is partly because while the neurotoxic effects of lead have been observable since ancient times, the effects of the accumulation of lead in the environment is invisible to the eye and is a modern pollution problem.
There are three main ways that lead is harmful to the environment:
1. Certain populations of micro-organisms may be wiped out once soil lead concentrations reach 1,000 parts per million (ppm) or more, slowing the rate of decomposition of organic matter.
2. At soil lead concentrations of 500 to 1,000 ppm, populations of plants, micro-organisms and invertebrates are adversely affected, allowing more lead-tolerant populations of the same or different species to take their place, altering the ecosystem.
3. The presence of lead in the atmosphere leads to exposure of vegetation and animals to lead, preventing the normal biochemical process that purifies and repurifies the calcium pool in grazing animals and decomposer organisms.
Lead is also a heavy metal so exposure to it is affected by a process called biomagnification. This means toxic substances build up in higher concentrations the higher up the food chain an organism is. That’s bad news for human which are on top of the global food chain.
Having a product that uses a considerable amount of lead, such as leaded crystal stemware, will inevitably cause more lead to leak into the environment, either directly from the product, or from the production process and its waste by products.
We can all do our part to reduce the contamination of lead in the environment by choosing lead-free alternatives, such as lead-free crystal stemware. Some companies, such as Club Dux makes its crystal stemware 100% lead-free and clearly identifies their products as such.