Lead and Transfer Of Lead To Human Consumers of Wild Foods

Lead was banned for shot (and soon fishing weights as well probably) because it can leach into groundwater. Not much of a concern in most places, but in areas of intense hunting (esp near urban centers). Birds also eat it thinking it's gravel. When they are eaten, the lead is passed up the food chain (google eagles and DDT)
I can see the case for it...lead's still fine for bullets though.

Not just Canada:
Efforts to phase out lead shot began in the 1970s, but a nationwide ban on lead shot for all waterfowl hunting was not implemented until 1991. Canada instituted a complete ban on the use of lead shot in 1999, after banning its use near bodies of water and on national wildlife areas earlier.
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from this release from the US Fish & Wildlife Service.

Netherlands, Norway, Denmark and Canada have banned lead shot completely, while Sweden, Finland and the Flanders region of Belgium ban it on some wetlands
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from here

As for eating the meat, I doubt that there would be enough time from shooting to consumption for lead to dissipate into the tissues, but I don't know.
 
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Ive carried a shattered lead .22 bullet around in my leg For 25+ years and have never had an elevated blood lead level. I quit getting it checked about 10 years ago. Sorry thats kind of off topic. Lead does the most damage to children 6 and under when their nervous system is developing.--KV
 
When I was a kid, running through the woods with a single shot pellet rifle, I used to carry a wad of lead pellets in my mouth like snuff for faster follow up shots. Not so smart. However, that was 25 years ago and I have suffered no adverse effects.
 
Even with the hydrochloric acid breaking down the lead in your stomach, you wouldn't absorb enough lead for it to hurt you - most of it would pass. Now if this was something you do on a regular basis, the repetition would allow your lead levels to get higher.

Regarding carrying lead in your mouth, the pH is pretty neutral, so you're not really getting much exposure. Regarding having it in your body, it would develop a patina and become pretty inert.

Where you see it alot in adults is bridge workers, who are using needle guns to get the "red lead" off the beams so they can be repainted. Now, they're supposed to have ventilation, respirators, etc., but of course, there are those that choose to ignore the rules. You can see elevated levels in their blood, but they're constantly inhaling tiny particles of lead - massive amounts of surface area that can react in the body - kinda like how you can't light a steel beam on fire, but steel wool can go up no problem.
 
The only lead exposure that even remotely worries me is that from shooting a lot of cast lead bullets with lead based primers. Sometimes if I run three or four hundred rounds down the pipe in a poorly ventilated place, I can taste that sweet lead taste afterwards.

On the other hand I have no symptoms at all - and more importantly neither does a friend of mine would probable have 10x the exposure I do. And I would guess I have a hundred times the exposure a normal person would.
 
I concur with the advice given. Lead can be made bioavailable during oral injestion but it takes a heavy dose to ellicute actue affects. Chronically lead can build up in your system through exposure to aerosol dusts via lungs and via chronic ingestion. The oral exposure route is still the most efficient exposure routs so don't go injesting lead pellets on a regular basis.

As for lead from a bullet wound and failed extraction of bullet - again this is not likely to end up in the blood supply because this administration route (shot in the leg) bypassed dissociation of lead from its elemental form in the low pH environment of the stomach.

Lead shot has been banned because over time the shot accumulates in sediments and enters the food web via decomoposition processes and because waterfowl and benthic feeding fish injest shot directly from the sediments during their feeding activities. This causes them to have lead poisoning.

Steel shot, although requiring modifications to firearms, doesn't present the same risk factors to wildlife as lead shot does. I support the bans on lead shot. It provides the same benefit as removing lead from gasoline in the 1970's which substantially decreased human exposures to this element via inhalation. Lead based paints, and their consumption by children can still be important in areas which haven't removed these products.
 
Starting this year lead shot and lead bullets have been banned for all hunting purposes in much of central and southern California. Supposedly carrion birds, especially the endangered California Condor, have been suffering from lead exposure. Interestingly, a lot of the area where lead has been banned is not part of the current range of the condors, but the ban was specifically instituted to protect the condors.
 
The "designated shooting area" in the Los Padres National Forest near me has a small creek running by it
I am waiting for the tree huggers to TEST the creek one day
It has to have lead since the whole area is covered in about 2 inches deep of shells and bullets :eek:

The only lead bullets I shoot are the brick of 500 22's when I am dirt poor
It really fouls up my 10/22 :mad:
 
lambertiana said:
Interestingly, a lot of the area where lead has been banned is not part of the current range of the condors, but the ban was specifically instituted to protect the condors.
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That's not surprising at all, actually.
 
Another source of lead inhalation/contact is anglers that cast their own sinkers. The fumes are deadly, as is the constant handling of lead dust from the molds.
 
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