“…The period of the Black Death is certainly the lowest point in this one ice record, but more than four decades of research involving analyses of lake‐sediment, marine‐sediment, and peat records from many sites across Western Europe has already established not only that human activities have contributed to atmospheric Pb pollution uninterruptedly over the past 2,000 years, but that it is necessary to go back 2,500 or even 3,500 years in order to establish background, prepollution conditions (Figures b–f), which is beyond the 2,000‐year time frame of the ice record. These studies have included sites in, for example, England, Switzerland, Sweden, Spain, France, Germany, Scotland, and Austria (Bindler et al, ; Brännvall et al, , ; Breitenlechner et al, ; Cloy et al, ; Elbaz‐Poulichet et al, ; Forel et al, ; Garcia‐Alix et al, ; Jouffroy‐Bapicot et al, ; Klaminder et al, ; Küttner et al, ; Kylander et al, ; Le Roux et al, , ; Leblanc et al, ; Lee & Tallis, ; Manteca et al, ; Martínez‐Cortizas et al, , ; Mil‐Homens et al, ; Shotyk et al, ; Thevenon et al, ). This research in turn rests on the exploratory work by Clair Patterson and coworkers during the 1960–1980s of the historical dimensions of metal production (Murozumi et al, ; Patterson, , , ; Settle & Patterson, ).…”