Lead contamination in hunted meat
ehn.org
ehn.org
Having hunted nearly 40 years for all types of game and in a large number of different settings I wanted to provide a few observations from experience to help the conversation:
- Lead tends superior ballistically to alternatives
- Lead induces less damage to the firearm
- To use non-lead alternatives you typically either have increase the size of the projectile( (s) in the case of shotgun shot ) and/or increase the powder charge. This typically means an individual will need to purchase different firearms. For instance, to get close to the ballistic performance of lead shot in a 12 ga shotgun you will need a 3.5 inch shot shells. The vast majority of shotguns accept 2.75 or 3 inch shells.
- Steel shot in shotguns is more likely to wound game by creating bleed tunnels causing the animal/bird to bleed out much later and not be retrievable. Lead creates more catastrophic immediately fatal wounds.
- When I took hunters education we were taught about lead and how to prepare game to minimize the risk of exposure. When my children took hunters education 15 years ago they were provided the same education. Not to mention the education they received from me.
- Damaged meat can be identified and cut away. I was taught to cut at least 3 inches outside of the wound margin. From the xrays I have seen this seems appropriate. This doesn't just include the entry wound but also other areas of impacted meat. Process your own meat and take pride in the result.
- Copper bullets do not expand as quickly and as effectively as lead bullets leading to more wounded game.
Over here when lead was prohibited for hunting waterfowl, there was lots of heated debating about the issue. People hunting with grandpa's old shotgun had to either get a new gun for use with steel, or use the hideously expensive Bismuth shells. Seems most active hunters switched to newer guns. I haven't heard anything about modern guns wearing out prematurely due to shooting steel.
> To use non-lead alternatives you typically either have increase the size of the projectile( (s) in the case of shotgun shot ) and/or increase the powder charge. This typically means an individual will need to purchase different firearms. For instance, to get close to the ballistic performance of lead shot in a 12 ga shotgun you will need a 3.5 inch shot shells. The vast majority of shotguns accept 2.75 or 3 inch shells.
Or, you know, if your gun can't take those spiffier shells, slightly limit your shot distances?
> Steel shot in shotguns is more likely to wound game by creating bleed tunnels causing the animal/bird to bleed out much later and not be retrievable. Lead creates more catastrophic immediately fatal wounds.
IIRC there was some research from Denmark suggesting the opposite, namely that the significantly harder steel pellets would have a higher probability of punching through bone and hit vital organs rather than deforming and lodging in the bone. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
> Copper bullets do not expand as quickly and as effectively as lead bullets leading to more wounded game.
I think this is a relatively newer development, and it seems every year manufacturers are introducing newer copper bullets with more ductile alloys, precut grooves and whatnot to make them expand faster. I don't think it will take long, to the extent it hasn't already happened, that copper bullets will be good enough for the vast majority of usage. Sure, if you want to hit a rodent at 800m or some other extreme form of long-range marksmanship, you really want the density of lead, but most rifle hunting is done at significantly shorter ranges.
Great point and one I tend to agree with. But this actually causes an issue. At issue here is that the steel keeps its shape and does penetrate deeper without expanding creating shot size holes through those organs which do ultimately cause death after the bird has flown away and later dies. Unless you hit the heart directly the organs will take time to fail.
Lead on the other hand causes more catastrophic injuries which makes the game more retrievable resulting in less wasted game.
Even if you don't find the bullet, it's pretty easy to see the bullet damage when the skin is removed, and those bits gets cut away with large margins before curing, othervise the meat will start to rot there.
"The ballistic tip bullet (rapid expansion) had the highest fragmentation rate, with an average of 141 fragments per carcass and an average maximum distance of 11 inches from the wound channel. In one carcass, a fragment was found 14 inches from the exit wound.
Soft point bullets (rapid expansion) left an average of 86 fragments at an average maximum distance of 11 inches from the wound channel. In this research, bonded lead-core bullets (controlled expansion, exposed lead core) performed almost identically to the soft-core bullets and left an average of 82 fragments with an average maximum distance of nine inches from the wound."
https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/hunting/ammo/lead-short-summary....
It's up to you how concerned you should be, but if you hunt large game with a rifle and are cutting away less than these distances, you are probably occasionally ingesting lead fragments.
Idea - a non-profit, lead by a few high-profile celebrity hunters, which pays the cost of some "free upgrade to lead-free ammo" coupons that are offered (free on request) with hunting licenses. And a "safely feed your family" brochure goes out with every license, period.
> Upon impact, a lead bullet can fragment into tiny microparticles, too small to see with the naked eye or sense when eating. A deer processor in Pennsylvania who requested anonymity shared his first-hand experience. "Seventy-five percent of the time when I find a bullet in the carcass, I only find the base. I know the lead is all in the meat somewhere," he told EHN.
> Scientists have used X-rays to visualize and count sometimes hundreds of minute lead particles in hunted meat, and have detected high concentrations of lead in hunted carcasses using chemical analysis. Although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration does not recognize a safe limit for the amount of lead in meat, the European Commission set maximum levels at 0.1 parts per million (ppm).
> Concentrations of lead more than 100 times this limit have been detected in the meat of lead-shot carcasses as far as six inches from the entry wound.
In which direction? Was there any indication of damage? Did they only measure from the round bullet entry?
The statement provides no additional details. The entry wound is often small, about the size of the projectile. While the damage after entry is greater and often identifiable. It is important to follow the projectiles through the game.
Everything has some risks and you need to prioritize somewhat. Not that I hunt anyway.
The projectile of a piece of ammunition is also used by the feds as an excuse to ban importation if they deem it not suitable for sporting purposes.
There's not a lot that can be done to fix this today, because cartridges were designed with lead projectiles, and guns designed around the cartridges. To get a heavier bullet, it would need to be a substantially bigger(longer) bullet, therefore not working in any gun.
A reasonable proposition is for a new cartridge to be designed around an all copper(or steel, whatever) bullet. It would take a lot of time to get adoption, though, unless the military uses it.
The US military has already moved to steel core, lead free projectiles over a decade ago, specifically because of safety concerns about lead contamination. However, steel core ammunition is explicitly illegal in the US, because it's considered "armor piercing".
That's... not really how that works. The US has tens of thousands of laws related to guns, and they intersect in different ways in different jurisdictions. Federally, though, at any rate, AP ammunition is only illegal for /handguns/. For rifles, there is no such legal restriction and steel core rifle rounds are commonplace. Most hunting is done with shotguns and rifles, you can easily find steel pellet shotgun shells.
The bigger issues is 1) Increased costs 2) Different ballistic performance.
Yeah, it hasn't killed you, but how do you know you're not 10 IQ points dumber than you could have been?
https://www.insider.com/amazon-selling-toxic-toys-lead-poiso...
> A breaking investigation from the Wall Street Journal revealed that online retail giant Amazon has been selling thousands of products that have failed federal safety tests, including children's toys containing four to 411 times the safe limit of lead.
3M LeadCheck Swabs, Instant Lead Test, 8-Pack https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008BK15PU/
In the US. A lot of goods that originate from overseas made with metal contain lead in their alloys, and lead paint is often used for white paints in particular. A LOT of goods enter the US market from overseas imports containing lead, and there's no real establish process for testing and validating safety or functionality of these products prior to sale.
Quick link -
https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/prevention/sources/consumer-pr...
https://uspirg.org/news/usp/recall-toys-still-found-lead-pai...
Classic symptom of lead poisoning, ironically.
https://www.era-env.com/ERAWcfService/getmsdscontent.svc/?ke...
It's basically powdered lead in an alcohol carrier that you wipe on your threads with a brush.
At first I thought he was just a grumpy old plumber tired of liberal environmentalist kids with their newfangled safety regulations, but perhaps the lifetime of working with leaded solders and leaded thread sealant has affected him in some way...
Victims of lead based mental illness have the same vote weight that you do.
Working in tech, I can afford to buy higher quality and more expensive things, and the ammunition I use is no exception. But for many people it's not really within their budget. Lead is cheap, it's one of the main reason its used to make projectiles in the first place.
Anyway I have a feeling that you are radically over-estimating the size of the subsistence hunter population. It is a vanishingly small slice of what is already a tiny fraction of the American population. Last I heard only 3% of Americans ever hunted, and it was yet another one of those things that has a real strong positive correlation with household income.
If you really want to empathize with subsistence hunters then your beef is with wacko preppers. I didn't even notice the price difference when I switched to copper rifle loads but after COVID-19 started the price of a box of rifle cartridges tripled.
And if you can use cheap ammo for practice, then I would guess the price of ammo for actual hunting wouldn't be very significant. A dollar extra per animal or something?
I don't really know, just trying to understand.
That's surprising. In bulk, steel is a fraction of the cost of lead (usually, though at the moment the market seems a bit crazy). Is steel shot seen as a luxury product for hippies with money, or where does the difference come from?
It's not just cost - steel and copper bullets expand less, so animals harvested with them can be wounded for longer periods before dying, which many hunters see as unethical.
1) Steel core ammunition is illegal for use in handguns since its armor piercing. Banning lead without relaxing rules on steel would create legal problems. And in some states steel core is illegal in all types of firearms.
2) Steel is more likely to spark if it hits a rock, for this reason it's banned in ranges out west and National Forest/BLM areas due to the risk of forest fire
3) Ammunition is out of stock everywhere and it would would definitely cause shortages and price people out of the market. There are millions of people who need ammunition not only for hunting but pest control, wilderness self-defense, and so on.
4) Someone more knowledgeable than me may argue this but it may not be as humane in some cases, since lead is designed to tumble and fracture killing the animal instantly while steel is more likely to go right through a target.
It wouldn't surprise me if this were the secret goal for some people.
This is not a true statement. I started hunting with a $115 shotgun and a $35 license which in turn provided my 1 deer, dozens of rabbits and countless ducks. If I were to take just the deer into consideration compared to lets say the price of pork at $2.99 / Lb. ( not to mention the cost of beef ) One hundred pounds of pork would cost me $299. The deer cost me $150 and I get to keep the gun. No I didn't need a truck, I walked out the door and into the woods. Yes I had to buy ammo but it lasted several seasons and I got to use the gun for the rest of my life.
My junior and senior year in school hunting provided all the protein for my family.
Of course, just likely anything else, you can make hunting as expensive as you would like it to be.
For bullets you can basically do pure copper. I think anything else falls into a 'armor piercing' category that is banned. I'm not 100% clear on the laws there but I know that is why most bullets are still lead core (in addition to cost factors).
lead ammo bans are a way to ban guns without banning guns themselves, similar to 'microstamping' and other odd proposals. Basically mandate something that makes it so costly that no one can do it
On the other hand it takes a lot more practice then a rifle and you have to get much much closer to whatever you are hunting.
I use a bow with the kids but we rarely catch anything. If you really need the meat better use a gun.
I think the rationnal was also to be a lot less subject to snake attacks. You had to got hunt with a dog to avoid those, and even then it wasn't foolproof. And there was no road access until the late 90s, making moving without horses (who didn't fare that well with dogs) inconvenient at best.