Posted on 06/03/2011 6:03:14 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Ancient Egyptians may have been exposed to air pollution way back when, according to new evidence of particulates in the lungs of 15 mummies, including noblemen and priests.
Particulates, tiny microscopic particles that irritate the lungs, have been linked to a wide array of modern-day illnesses, including heart disease, lung ailments and cancer. The particulates are typically linked to post-industrial activities, such as fossil-fuel burning.
But after hearing of reports of such particulates being found in mummy tissue, Roger Montgomerie, a doctoral student at the KNH Centre for Biomedical Egyptology at the University of Manchester, decided to take a closer look at mummified lung tissue. His work represents the first attempt to identify and study particulates in multiple Egyptian mummies.
The 15 mummified lungs he's examined so far all showed particulates and the levels of them are not much below what he'd expect in modern-day lungs...
These mummies come from a broad cross section of Egyptian life. Some were ordinary workers who lived in a remote outpost called the Dakhleh Oasis, while others were of the upper class -- nobles and priests or priestesses...
While ancient Egypt was a preindustrial society, its people did engage in cooking, metal working and mining, all activities that can generate air pollution. In addition, the Egyptian climate, with its deserts and sandstorms, would have whipped up any grounded particulates into the air where they could easily be inhaled.
Now, Montgomerie has devised an experiment that he hopes will shed light on the origin of these tiny particles.
He is burning different sources of fuel used by the Egyptians and capturing the particulates they create.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
touche
i wonder how the author is going to separate the pollution obtained from breathing the smokey air in the hut from the cooking fire from that of any pollution in the outside atmosphere? From my experience with fires and cooking over them, the smoke always follows the cooker.
The indoor cooking was done in the cool times of the day (night, for example), when everyone else was sleeping — indoors. :’) Sleeping outdoors in commoners’ homes was done higher up, even on the roofs, because it was hard to fall sleep inside the houses until the sun had been down a few hours.
And beauty.
Heh heh...
Separated at birth...
Never mind about the air....I want to know where they got the cocaine and nicotine, eh?
they was growin’ that shite behind the pyramids silly ;0
Aaah!
I thought they may have been supplied by King Solomon's exiled miners, eh?
Me too. Time to find those topics and link back to ‘em, or find new articles for posting...
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