Lead Acetate

Lead acetate is a chemical compound with a sweet taste. It is derived by treating lead oxide (PbO) with acetic acid. The resultant red oxide is very toxic like other lead products. Lead acetate is often used printing and dying agent in textile industries, a drier in paints and varnishes and a reagent to make other lead compounds. It is easily soluble in water and glycerin and is a principle active component in the hair coloring dyes (progressive type) when used in low concentrations.

Lead acetate is also known as lead of sugar, lead diacetate, salt of Saturn, plumbous acetate and Goulard’s powder after the name of Thomas Goulard.

Historically lead acetate was been used as an aphrodisiac because of the sweet taste it exhibits. The Romans used to boil grape juice in lead pots, as they had limited sweetening options besides honey. This grape juice boiled in lead pots produced a reduced sugar called defrutum which is concentrated again to sapa. This sugar was in turn used as a sweetener or sugar substitute in wine and to preserve and sweeten fruits. Lead acetate or any of its compounds might possibly leach from this sugar syrup and causing lead poisoning to any one consuming these products with this sweet syrup used as a sweetener. It is believed that Pope Clement II who died in October 1047 was poisoned with lead sugar. Although the toxicology examinations confirms these old rumors, this issue is still not clear if it was lead poisoning that killed the Pope as in those times lead sugar was used as a cure for venereal diseases. Albert Christoph Dies in 1971 swallowed ¾ of an ounce of lead sugar by mistake. Although he recovered from its toxicity (slow and incomplete recovery), he lived with illness until 1822. In Panama, Mary Seacole tropically applied it among other remedies against an epidemic of cholera. Because of its recognized toxicity, lead acetate is not used anymore as an aphrodisiac.

Through out history leas acetate and white acetate have been used in cosmetics. Although in western countries this practice has ceased, it is still used in men’s hair coloring products. Sugar of lead is used as a treatment for poison ivy. Hydrogen sulphide a poisonous gas can be detected with the help of lead acetate paper. A grey precipitate of lead II sulphide is formed on the moistened paper when hydrogen sulphide gas reacts with lead II acetate. It has been reported that like other lead salts lead II acetate can pass the embryo through the placental barrier leading to fetal mortality.

Submitted on September 4, 2008