I ask because of conflicting mentions (though admittedly mostly in passing) of how Romans perceived lead.
In a SciShow episode on lead, the host mentions that ancient Romans would use lead as an artificial sweetener for their wine, as the metal binds to the same taste receptors as sugar. But I've recently gone to a museum exhibit about Pompeii, where they had a display about women's beauty products from Roman times, and the display mentioned that Roman women used lead-based skin powders "despite knowing how dangerous lead was to health".
Did the Romans really sweeten their wine with lead? Did they ever figure out it was suicidal to do so? And did roman women really use lead-based beauty products while knowing the risks to their lives?
Clay pipes for conducting water have the following advantages. In the first place, in construction:—if anything happens to them, anybody can repair the damage. Secondly, water from clay pipes is much more wholesome than that which is conducted through lead pipes, because lead is found to be harmful for the reason that white lead is derived from it, and this is said to be hurtful to the human system. Hence, if what is produced from it is harmful, no doubt the thing itself is not wholesome.
This we can exemplify from plumbers, since in them the natural colour of the body is replaced by a deep pallor. For when lead is smelted in casting, the fumes from it settle upon their members, and day after day burn out and take away all the virtues of the blood from their limbs. Hence, water ought by no means to be conducted in lead pipes, if we want to have it wholesome. That the taste is better when it comes from clay pipes may be proved by everyday life, for though our tables are loaded with silver vessels, yet everybody uses earthenware for the sake of purity of taste.^1
It is not so easy to render assistance when poison has been taken in food or drink, first because patients do not perceive it at once as when bitten by a snake; and so are unable to afford themselves any help immediately. Moreover, the mischief starts, not from the skin, but from within. But the best thing, as soon as any one has perceived it, is to swallow a quantity of oil at once and vomit; then, when the praecordia have been emptied, to drink an antidote; or failing that undiluted wine. ... If it be white-lead, mallow or walnut juice rubbed up in wine is best.^2
This is a claim that has been addressed before on Reddit, in the context of the latest version of Cosmos peddling the long-discredited lead thesis of Rome's "fall", as /u/Talleyrayand notes the Romans were well aware of the dangers of lead poisoning and generally avoided using lead where they suspected it could lead to contamination.
Furthermore, the people tending to peddle these explanations rarely offer an explanation as to why this supposed casual intake of large quantities of lead stopped or, failing that, why it didn't lead to the destruction of the many successor states that arose out of the Roman Empire, who tended to think of themselves as the heirs of the Roman Empire and strove to emulate their antecedents.