How Dangerous Is the Lead in Bullets?

[Charles Kozierok]

This article was posted in P&N, but devolved almost immediately into "the usual", in part thanks to a deliberately inflammatory title. Maybe we can do better.

How prevalent are lead bullets anyway? I thought most were jacketed, either completely, or at least mostly (with hollow points being unjacketed but at the end away from where the primer is).

I'm not sure how practical it is to ban lead from ammunition altogether. But it's valid to question what happens to all of those bullets after they are fired. This is especially true of people who like to "just go out back" and shoot in their backyards.

 

[K1052]

It's very uncommon to see soft tip (exposed lead) ammo outside of hunting rounds and some revolver calibers.

The military can use different materials (steel, nylon, tungsten, etc) for the core of the round since they aren't concerned with over penetration. I'm not sure if a suitable replacement for lead in police/civilian applications exists yet.

 

[shortylickens]

Not nearly as dangerous as having it injected into your skin at 1200 feet per second.

As for laying around, they arent dangerous to humans unless someone is dumb enough to grab one off the street or dig it out of a brick and eat it. If you are eating random chunks of metal you find then you got bigger issues than lead poisoning.

Most of the danger comes from lead vapor which is really only a problem on small indoor ranges without good ventilation when people are shooting TONS of ammo.

In a street shooting thats hardly an issue.


The OTHER problem which has actually been dealt with is when hunting. If you use birdshot or buckshot while hunting anything which doesnt hit your game will lay loose in a field. Birds, (especially geese) tend to eat these for some strange reason. Then they die out in a field which is the exact opposite of wildlife management.

BUT, most states now require you to shoot steel when hunting and during hunting season stores wont have anything but steel on their shelves. So this too is a non-issue.

 

[SarcasticDwarf]

OSHA lead exposure standards are too lax to protect military firing range employees. Repeated exposure to the toxic metal causes

The article is about lead exposure for range employees.

Really, unless you spend a LOT of time on the range it is not going to be an issue.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

So.. much ado about not much. Typical.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

The OTHER problem which has actually been dealt with is when hunting. If you use birdshot or buckshot while hunting anything which doesnt hit your game will lay loose in a field. Birds, (especially geese) tend to eat these for some strange reason. Then they die out in a field which is the exact opposite of wildlife management.

BUT, most states now require you to shoot steel when hunting and during hunting season stores wont have anything but steel on their shelves. So this too is a non-issue.

The hunting issue is a big one, much bigger than people have been talking about during the last few years. My brother worked with the California Condor restoration project at the Oregon Zoo for a number of years, so he kept abreast of issues concerning rehabilitation efforts and survival rates for reintroduced birds. And one of the biggest problems that condors were facing, both reintroduced and wild-born animals, was lead poisoning from bullets in game that had been shot and left behind or stripped in the field. Because lead is a relatively soft metal, it tends to fragment on contact and disperses through far more of the flesh of whatever it strikes. This isn't just a problem for condors, as it means that it's virtually impossible to remove the lead from wild game that's been shot by lead bullets, including meat intended for human consumption. There's been a big push to ban lead ammunition for this reason, but gun advocates have attacked such legislation as more gun grabbing rather than acknowledging the risk that lead poses.

Some quick stats and info can be found here, including slides comparing fragmentation in lead and non-lead rounds and links to scientific studies on the environmental impact of lead ammunition.

 

[shortylickens]

For hundreds of years people hunted with lead and never had an issue. Now all of a sudden they're being poisoned?

 

[Jodell88]

For hundreds of years people hunted with lead and never had an issue. Now all of a sudden they're being poisoned?

For hundreds of years they thought the world was flat and earth was the center of the universe.

 

[K1052]

For hundreds of years they thought the world was flat and earth was the center of the universe.

Back when turning 40 generally meant you had one foot in the grave.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

For hundreds of years people hunted with lead and never had an issue. Now all of a sudden they're being poisoned?

What do you mean never had an issue? Historically lead has been used for basically everything that any metal has been used for, from pipes to coinage. It's been used to make dyes, it's been used as an additive in paint and gasoline, it's been used for ballast, and it's been used to cast other metals. It's cheap, abundant and easy to work with. We only found out that it poisoned people a century ago; lead production has been with humans for over 8000 years, and it's been poisoning people just as long. Granted, it's only when lead production took off on an industrial scale that it really started to become an issue, but scientists have come to the agreement that the only safe amount of lead is zero. Why on Earth would you want to eat it when there are other alternatives available?