Lead Toxicity and Exposure concerns

Tackleberrywho

browning 12 bore wrote: »

there is a place near wicklow that takes all your game meat also the pigeons but i wonder if there is somewhere else and yes to sell the meat

A few places country wide, but not sure on Birds as the lead content etc.
if i want to eat birds i shoot with steel or copper coated shells

lead in your pencil is not always good

It wasn't me!

I guess you're using all copper rounds for the rifle so.

Dusty87

Tackleberrywho wrote: »

A few places country wide, but not sure on Birds as the lead content etc.
if i want to eat birds i shoot with steel or copper coated shells

lead in your pencil is not always good

Thats bullsh1t. I know a man eating game, rabbits, pigeon all his life and never a problem with him. He's 78:eek:
Thats the scaremongering they're doing in England, (less buyers of game, less demand, less be shot)
No laws here about lead shot
Dont mind all that talk Tack,

Tackleberrywho

It wasn't me! wrote: »

I guess you're using all copper rounds for the rifle so.

No IWM, I don't eat the head either.
Since restaurants do not use aluminium for the risk of Alzheimers I was "presuming" they would prefer to not have lead in food for human consumption.
And steel shot and Copper shoot coated is freely available, just in some cases more expensive.

Since I am not a restaurateur I can not comment further, However the health risks from lead are real, and eating 180 birds with lead may damage the OP's Pencil.

I'd prefer not to try and disprove warnings on all ammo boxes about health and lead!!

Feargal as Luimneach

Dusty87 wrote: »

Thats bullsh1t. I know a man eating game, rabbits, pigeon all his life and never a problem with him. He's 78:eek:
Thats the scaremongering they're doing in England, (less buyers of game, less demand, less be shot)
No laws here about lead shot
Dont mind all that talk Tack,

What about raptors scavenging on animals that have been shot with lead shells. Raptors can die from lead toxicity. They eat the leads shots, people spit them out.
http://www.goldeneagle.ie/portal.php?z=105
http://www.springerlink.com/content/06713k3751071108/

jwshooter

Feargal as Luimneach wrote: »

What about raptors scavenging on animals that have been shot with lead shells. Raptors can die from lead toxicity. They eat the leads shots, people spit them out.
http://www.goldeneagle.ie/portal.php?z=105
http://www.springerlink.com/content/06713k3751071108/

they would never get to eat enough of it ,lead shot is not as bad as its made out to be .

just another way where bunny huggers are trying to discredit us .

show one independent study where ,it says a few grains of lead when digested can kill some thing .

Tackleberrywho

jwshooter wrote: »

they would never get to eat enough of it ,lead shot is not as bad as its made out to be .

just another way where bunny huggers are trying to discredit us .

show one independent study where ,it says a few grains of lead when digested can kill some thing .

i'd be more afraid of firing Blanks TBH (no Pun's intended)

Rather not risk it!

Sparks

Tackleberrywho wrote: »

However the health risks from lead are real, and eating 180 birds with lead may damage the OP's Pencil.

That's pretty much nonsense Tackleberry. Game has been eaten for centuries with far more lead in it than you get today without ill effect. You get far higher lead toxicity levels if you're a target shooter than if you eat game (tests have found ISSF shooters with higher levels of lead in their blood than foundry workers). The concern about lead shot is to do with long-term contamination of water tables, not the very short-term contamination of a single game bird or animal. One pigeon's-worth of lead shot, which is spat out rather than eaten, is basicly risk-free (the highest risk is to your teeth on the shot). But several hundred years worth of firing lead shot fired all over the country and let migrate to the water table is a cause for concern for some, hence the moves towards steel or copper shot. It's a matter of scale and even 180 birds isn't enough to make a drop in the ocean.

deeksofdoom

Tackleberrywho wrote: »

i'd be more afraid of firing Blanks TBH (no Pun's intended)

Rather not risk it!

Stop showing yourself up, for god sake!:rolleyes:

Tackleberrywho

Sparks wrote: »

That's pretty much nonsense Tackleberry. Game has been eaten for centuries with far more lead in it than you get today without ill effect. You get far higher lead toxicity levels if you're a target shooter than if you eat game (tests have found ISSF shooters with higher levels of lead in their blood than foundry workers). The concern about lead shot is to do with long-term contamination of water tables, not the very short-term contamination of a single game bird or animal. One pigeon's-worth of lead shot, which is spat out rather than eaten, is basicly risk-free (the highest risk is to your teeth on the shot). But several hundred years worth of firing lead shot fired all over the country and let migrate to the water table is a cause for concern for some, hence the moves towards steel or copper shot. It's a matter of scale and even 180 birds isn't enough to make a drop in the ocean.

Historical Data, people died in their 60's or less and infant mortality was high.

in reality, EATING lead is not to be incouraged.
5 or six ingested pellets per bird in a human out of hundreds of birds consumed may cause lead in blood to effect reproduction.

A friend of mine can not have kids from lead levels in blood (Factory worker).
i would not want to tempt fate in that dept.

bird shot is small pellets and can be easily swallowed, No amount of solid lead in a human is good for you.

I am not talking about lead water issues, I'm talking about HUMAn direct ingestion of lead.

on this occasion Sparkie I am indeed not talking nonsense;)

Tackleberrywho

deeksofdoom wrote: »

Stop showing yourself up, for god sake!:rolleyes:

Deeks

I'm not showing myself up.
If you saw first hand what effects lead can do on a person you might think twice about it.

i know a good few fellas who got hundreds of thousands for lead in the blood

It wasn't me!

FFS, if you chew your bloody food, you'll find the lead shot and spit it out. If you don't chew your food, you've probably got significantly greater evolutionary problems (and reproduction is a point of questionable value).

Sparks

Tackleberrywho wrote: »

Historical Data, people died in their 60's or less and infant mortality was high.

Yes, but you tended to notice when they died blue, incontinent, impotent and demented.

in reality, EATING lead is not to be incouraged.
5 or six ingested pellets per bird in a human out of hundreds of birds consumed may cause lead in blood to effect reproduction.

It's not really likely. Hundreds of birds will take hundreds of days to consume, and the vast, vast bulk of the lead will be excreted with the remains of the food in the normal manner. The little that's extracted by your digestive tract will be eventually excreted (though it takes far, far longer to excrete heavy metals like lead, it does eventually happen). So if you eat five or six pellets over the course of half a year or more, your lead levels won't rise to any kind of worrying level.

You would probably have to be shot with the lead (and for the pellets to remain embedded afterwards) to notice any significant rise.

A friend of mine can not have kids from lead levels in blood (Factory worker). i would not want to tempt fate in that dept.

It's a concern for factory workers; for shooters, not so much. Our exposure is far more limited and far more easily controlled. Hell, just washing your hands and wrists in cold water (NOT hot water) after shooting will prevent over 90% of exposure. This is a lesson that's been going round even Irish ISSF circles for longer than I've been shooting.

bird shot is small pellets and can be easily swallowed, No amount of solid lead in a human is good for you.

Not if it remains in your system, but shot is excreted within 24 hours normally, and you don't absorb enough lead in that time to be a worry. Your highest risk from that scenario is breaking a tooth while chewing the meat (and frankly, if you're swallowing it whole without chewing, you've got other health concerns as well, like indigestion, stomach problems and even poor nutrition. Chew your food!)

I am not talking about lead water issues, I'm talking about HUMAn direct ingestion of lead.

I know. My point is that the concern over lead shot that we're seeing in the EU is to do with lead water table issues, not direct human ingestion of lead.

Sparks

From this study on the lead levels in hunters:

Game meat may contain variable amounts of lead in the form of fine metallic residues originating from hunting ammunition. The effect of frequent game meat consumption on the blood lead levels of hunters, who are a high-risk lead exposure group, was studied. Blood lead levels of hunters and control subjects were measured using isotope dilution ICP-MS. Dietary information about game meat consumption was obtained from a questionnaire. The blood lead concentrations ranged from 21-171 ng/mL with a geometric mean of 57 ng/mL (n=25). However, the individual blood lead concentrations of the hunters did not correlate with the number of their weekly game meat meals (r=0.046). The blood lead levels were compared with a control group (n=21), which consisted of voluntary blood donors from the same region. Analysis of variance, adjusted for age, did not reveal a significant difference between the two populations (p=0.89). Thus, it was concluded that frequent consumption of wild game meat has no significant effect on blood lead levels.

In other words, if you shoot, you have higher lead levels, but it's not because of eating the meat. It's more likely to be because of handling lead ammunition, breathing in lead particulates after firing the shot and cycling the action, and cleaning the rifle and so forth.

Rovi

These seem SO appropriate here:

Feargal as Luimneach

jwshooter wrote: »

they would never get to eat enough of it ,lead shot is not as bad as its made out to be .

just another way where bunny huggers are trying to discredit us .

show one independent study where ,it says a few grains of lead when digested can kill some thing .

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12739854
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12860107
http://www.ebd.csic.es/jordi/EcotEnvSaf.pdf
There you go! Independent study....;)

Did you every see cattle die from lead poisoning from licking old car batteries?
Only small amounts of lead can be fatal to them.:mad:

Think of it a golden eagle can live up to 25 years, scavenging is a major part of your diet and they will pick up lead shot. Since lead cannot be excreted by body it builds up in tissues like bone. Lead toxicity slows builds up as a result after years of exposure.

The reason lead shot is not banned in this country is expense. People are too cheap to buy the dearer safer copper/steel alternatives.

Sparks

Feargal as Luimneach wrote: »

There you go! Independent study....;)

About raptors who have far higher exposure levels and are a completely different species from primates...

Since lead cannot be excreted by body it builds up in tissues like bone. Lead toxicity slows builds up as a result after years of exposure.

Actually, adults will excrete 99% of the lead they're exposed to after a few weeks. Children less so, which is why lead-based paint on toys is so much of a problem.
But mostly, you can't absorb the lead except when it's in gaseous or particulate form. The sole exception was the tetrahydl lead they had in leaded petrol (which is why it was banned), you could absorb that through the skin. As shooters, we have a major source of exposure, but it's not eating game; it's being at the breech end of the rifle. The propellant vapourises and atomises lead off the bullets and inside of the rifle barrel, and we're exposed on opening the breech and/or cleaning the rifle, or in enclosed ranges. But washing your hands and wrists in cold water negates that for the most part (the lead particulates settle on your forearms and work their way down to the hands where they're transferred to food and ingested; washing with cold water sluices them away safely). Hot water opens the pores and you risk exposure that way, so cold water only. That's the advice we've been given for decades and it protects you from the vast majority of the exposure, and studies have shown this.

And for pistol shooters, change your shirt/jacket. Rifle shooters tend to have specific clothes for the range (shooting jackets and the like) - pistols shooters can shoot in anything, so they're more likely to shoot in their street clothes, but a dedicated jacket would help reduce exposure.

Of interest is this case study of lead poisoning in a shooting team in the US, which highlighted the need to also clean the range if it's an indoor range.

Sparks

Split out from another thread as this topic's worth a thread of its own.

Dusty87

Feargal as Luimneach wrote: »

What about raptors scavenging on animals that have been shot with lead shells. Raptors can die from lead toxicity. They eat the leads shots, people spit them out.
http://www.goldeneagle.ie/portal.php?z=105
http://www.springerlink.com/content/06713k3751071108/

Ah yes another great comparison, raptors and humans.;):rolleyes:

Sparks

And some studies showing the main cause of concern with lead ammunition (namely, leaching into the water tables from ranges).

Dusty87

Tackleberrywho wrote: »

i'd be more afraid of firing Blanks TBH (no Pun's intended)

Rather not risk it!

Iv been eating pigeon for years, and i still managed to get her pregnant and she on the pill:eek:

Dusty87

Feargal as Luimneach wrote: »

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12739854
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12860107
http://www.ebd.csic.es/jordi/EcotEnvSaf.pdf
There you go! Independent study....;)

Did you every see cattle die from lead poisoning from licking old car batteries?
Only small amounts of lead can be fatal to them.:mad:

Think of it a golden eagle can live up to 25 years, scavenging is a major part of your diet and they will pick up lead shot. Since lead cannot be excreted by body it builds up in tissues like bone. Lead toxicity slows builds up as a result after years of exposure.

The reason lead shot is not banned in this country is expense. People are too cheap to buy the dearer safer copper/steel alternatives.

Then you will also know its not as effective as killing cleanly as lead.
Id give you links but TBH i couldnt be arsed as i know from experience

Tackleberrywho

Dusty87 wrote: »

Iv been eating pigeon for years, and i still managed to get her sprogged and she on the pill:eek:

Well you are only a young lad like myself lol!

I've eaten from aluminium pots and i am not suffering from Alseimers yet!

however I would not eat out of them (pots,pans,mess tins) now.

And i always wash my hands after handling ammo before eating.
I'd rater than be safe than sorry, my grandfather had alseimers, some say from handling fertilizer in the 30's-70's.

All I know is lead is not to be consumed, SAFE levels, well thats open to debate.
After all you smoke, wheich prob is waaaaaay worse for you than a few pellets.

you have a "sprog" so you need not worry. Job done!
The rest of us intending on having kids and shooting longer may want to take more precautions

Spark's is commenting on ISSF and Water quality.(to a lesser extent ingestion)

I am specifically referring to ingestion, I WOULD choose Steel shot or Winchester copper coated shot. Especially if it is freely available.
What goes in my stomach is my decision

Yee boyo's can do what you like, that was my thoughts on the subject, based on Facts and person experiences.

I seem to be on my own on this one, however i'm well used to that.;)

landkeeper

what a lot of trossachs tac :rolleyes:, the main reason birds especially ducks/swans etc get lead poisioning is the manner in which they they feed , also the fact that they pick up grit(and shot by mistake ) to help grind food in their crops that is kept there for a prolonged period that is why lead shot is banned from wetlands
humans would just excrete the shot in due course ,
raptors are apex predators therefore they are exposed to levels of chemicals that in smaller birds /mammals are relatively harmless for example the near eradication of peregrines in the british isles in the 60s was down to pesticide build up in the population

Sparks

Tackleberrywho wrote: »

I've eaten from aluminium pots and i am not suffering from Alseimers yet!

That's because aluminium pots are treated so that they don't contaminate the food in them. Which is the case for pretty much any food-grade container or cooking vessel made in the modern world. If you're buying home-made vessels from somewhere deep in turkmenistan, then maybe you'd have an issue, but in Dublin, you're safe enough.

And i always wash my hands after handling ammo before eating.

Hands and wrists and forearms if you've a lot of hair on them.

All I know is lead is not to be consumed, SAFE levels, well thats open to debate.

It's not about consumption, it's about exposure on the range. See the study above; the amount of game eaten had no relationship to the hunter's blood lead levels. It's down to using the firearms, not eating the game.

After all you smoke, wheich prob is waaaaaay worse for you than a few pellets.

Actually, smoking on the range is another big no-no. Apart from the fire risk (increased in an indoor range due to build-ups of unburnt propellant), smoking drives up the amount of lead you absorb through inhalation.
Smoke outside the range to avoid lead toxicity

Spark's is commenting on ISSF and Water quality.(to a lesser extent ingestion)

Actually, I'm commenting on lead exposure in general. Ingestion of lead through shot in game is not a risk factor. Ingestion of lead through poor hygiene at the range or while shooting is a factor - the particulates get on your hands, you pick up a ham sandwich a few hours later (not game!) and wind up eating a lead-covered sandwich. That's how shooters ingest the lead, for the most part. (There is a risk of inhalation in indoor ranges with poor cleaning practices, but that only affects a minority of shooters today).

Yee boyo's can do what you like, that was my thoughts on the subject, based on Facts and person experiences.

As someone reminded us recently, the plural of anecdote is not data.

Tackleberrywho

the Irish DF no longer supply Mess tins made of Aluminium and All my pots are stainless!!

And any birds I shoot for the pot I use copper coated shot.

you will find that lead pellets can lodge in your intestines, unless you eat a lot of AllBran

It wasn't me!

Tackleberrywho wrote: »

you will find that lead pellets can lodge in your intestines, unless you eat a lot of AllBran

You will also find that I chew my food. That would be my first course of action.

Sparks

Tackleberrywho wrote: »

you will find that lead pellets can lodge in your intestines, unless you eat a lot of AllBran

I think if you're eating that little fibre, you'll have more immediate concerns...

4gun

Sparks wrote: »

Split out from another thread as this topic's worth a thread of its own.

For awhile I thought I had Deja vu

4gun

Dusty87 wrote: »

Iv been eating pigeon for years, and i still managed to get her pregnant and she on the pill:eek:

Sorry Dusty, but someone should have told you that pigeon is NOT a trustworthy form of contraceptive, in fact I'm sure any study of the case would find the use of pidgeons to be totally ineffective :D

Dusty87

4gun wrote: »

Sorry Dusty, but someone should have told you that pigeon is NOT a trustworthy form of contraceptive, in fact I'm sure any study of the case would find the use of pidgeons to be totally ineffective :D

Left meself open for that one. Very good 4gun:D:D