No, (lead use in pipes) but hard water that coated the pipes with dolomite scale largely mitigated the effect of the lead. In Rome they had soft water and a lot of people suffered from lead poisoning. In London they had hard water, so the poisoning effect was negligable. Water in hard water areas delivers enough magnesium that heart disease rates are somewhat lower.
Osteoporosity in these ares should be low too as Mg increases bone structure integrity. (balanced against this is the lack of sunlight D3 in overcast islands.) If you add selenium from hard wheat, stroke rates in these areas should be low as well. In theory English diets should be very protective from cancer and HD as their corn and meat had lots of conjugated linolenic acid, and they had lots of PUFAS and Omega-3's from the fish they ate. Unfortunately, as they milled grain better and better they lost nutritive value, and increased blood glucose, so this led to hypoglycemia and subsequent HD. The cattle in England were good and plentiful, and the work increasingly sedentary, so fat collected in the arteries rather well. Interestingly most pasta in Italy is made with CDN hard wheat or semolina, which should add plentiful selenium, The red wine and fish consumption there is high, stroke and HD rates in Italy should be low due to these factors, and that is what we find somewhat. Cheese and meats defeat this somewhat however.
The object in any analysis is to start with a good theory, or case-hardened prejudice, and manipulate the data until if fits. No sense in willy nilly super computer factor analysis where you get these airy fairy conclusions that refute common sense.
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