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XVI. On the Action of Water upon Lead

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 January 2013

Robert Christison
Robert Christison
Affiliation:
Professor of Materia Medica in theUniversity of Edinburgh.
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Extract

In an experimental inquiry into the action of water on lead, published by me in 1829, in continuation of some previous researches by Guyton-Morveau, it was stated as the general result, that all very pure waters, such as distilled water, rain, and melted snow, act upon lead,—dissolving a trace of it, and causing the formation of an insoluble carbonate of lead in large quantity. It was like-wise shewn, that this action is prevented by the existence of neutral salts in solution; so that most terrestrial waters, as they contain saline matter, act feebly and only in circumstances favourable in other respects. Farther, it appeared to flow from comparative experiments, that this preventive power depends upon the acids of the salts, and not upon their bases;—and that their energy as preventives, that is, the minuteness of the proportion required to annihilate the action, is in the ratio of the insolubility of the compounds which the acids of the salts are capable of forming with oxide of lead.

Type
Research Article
Information
Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of The Royal Society of Edinburgh , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , 1844 , pp. 265 - 276
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1844

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References

page 265 note * Treatise on Poisons, first edition, 1829, p. 384.

page 266 note * Treatise on Poisons, third edition, p. 489.

page 267 note * On again lately analyzing the water, I found the solid residuum to be exactly one grain in 17,500. Nitrate of baryta, after twenty-four hours' rest, occasioned an exceedingly scanty deposite of sulphate; and the residuum left, on evaporating 17,000 grains, effervesced very slightly with diluted nitric acid. The sulphates and carbonates were thus again proved to exist in very minute proportion. In this water a stick of polished lead became tarnished in an hour; and in four days a little white powder formed on the bottom of the vessel under the lead.

page 272 note * Conversely, it is probable, though not yet proved, that, if polished lead remain untarnished or nearly so for twenty-four hours in a glass of water, the water may be safely conducted through lead-pipes.