Occupational Exposure to Heavy Metals Poisoning: Scottish Lead Mining

Abstract

The study examines historic occupational lead poisoning (occupational plumbism) amongst the mining labour force at Tyndrum lead mine in the Scottish southern highlands in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries set against the backdrop of the wider national context. Traditional archival research is combined with environmental science to both identify incidence of poisoning and the historic health risk factors that were specific to the industry, particularly at the surface of the mine. Emphasis is placed upon employment practices, technology and wider social conditions such as diet and alcohol and the toxicity of the different compounds of lead (mineralogy) that the workers were exposed too.