39 Members Of Congress Stand Ready To Defend Your Freedumb To Use Lead Shot, Tackle

[hatrack]

WASHINGTON — Aiming squarely at guarding the rights of sportsmen and America's ammo, bait and tackle shops, a powerful group of congressmen is pushing back against environmentalists and any federal regulation that would restrict the use of lead in outdoor gear.

Congress rarely tackles hunting and fishing issues, but 39 lawmakers from 25 states — including two from Texas — are sponsoring the Hunting, Fishing and Recreational Shooting Sports Protection Act of 2011 to prevent environmental organizations from hijacking obscure Environmental Protection Agency rules that could be used to force sportsmen to switch to nontoxic alternatives in bullets and fishing equipment.

The bill's sponsors have drawn support from the nearly 300-strong Congressional Sportsmen's Caucus, created to serve as "the sportsmen's ally and first line of defense in Washington promoting and protecting the rights of hunters, trappers and anglers."

Environmentalists see it differently; they say residual deposits of lead left by hunters and fisherman are being ingested by waterfowl, raptors and mammals, killing eagles, swans, cranes, endangered California condors and countless other wild animals.

EDIT

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7538458.html

[damntexdem]

1. I have an organizational title for them: Idiots Against the Environment and Public Health

Lead is a terrible pollutant that greatly harms the young, in particular. Not just young nonhumans, but also the humans who eat animals poisoned with lead.

[eqfan592]

2. Has there been a study done to show the impacts of the usage...

..of lead ammunition? I know lead is not good to consume, but is the use of lead ammunition really causing a significant public health risk that is measurable in some way? I ask because I truly do not know.

[AnOhioan]

3. google "Lead shot effects"

over 650K results

[PavePusher]

6. Yeah, but are any of them actually credible? n/t

[TheWraith]

4. Depends on how you define "public health risk."

The use of lead ammo isn't killing anyone. But there is the potential for environmental impact, and there's also evidence that use of lead-based bullets leaves lead microfragments in hunted meat. If someone then eats that meat, it means ingesting those lead fragments. Studies showed that hunters and their families who ate hunted meat shot with lead-based bullets have blood lead levels usually twice that of other people. Of course, those are still well below what's considered "lead poisoning," and the study only found a few people, mostly older hunters who had been eating lead-shot meat their entire lives, who came close to the definition of lead poisoning. There's also the prospect of animals eating either the shot, meat containing lead, or plants which have absorbed the lead, thus leading to sicken them and potentially mess up the wild animal populations. Lead shot has already been banned for waterfowl hunting--you have to use steel shot, or something else, like tungsten.

The counter-argument against this is that there isn't any urgent public health crisis, and restricting the use of lead would drastically increase the cost of ammunition, affecting mostly competitive and target shooters who use thousands of rounds a year. Also that it constitutes simply an effort to restrict hunting by people who don't like it, by virtue of making it harder for hunters.

Personally I think that a reasonable reaction to the scientific data is to require the use of lead-free ammunition when hunting, although not necessarily for all ammunition. I for one have already switched to 100% steel shot, and use bullets containing as little lead as possible, even though I don't hunt, just target shoot. After all, why take the risk with your local environment when there's no compelling reason to?

[napoleon_in_rags]

11. There's some sanity.

Direct human consumption of lead is safety issue. I remember biting into those little lead weights to clamp them down on my fishing line as a kid. I remember hearing stories of people using lead bird shot, spitting them from the cooked bird. Yeesh!

[Nihil]

12. Hmmm ...

> Studies showed that hunters and their families who ate hunted meat shot with
> lead-based bullets have blood lead levels usually twice that of other people.
> Of course, those are still well below what's considered "lead poisoning," and
> the study only found a few people, mostly older hunters who had been eating
> lead-shot meat their entire lives, who came close to the definition of lead
> poisoning.

How old are the politicians who are proposing and supporting this bill?

Were they raised in hunting families by any chance?

From memory, lead poisoning has been connected with learning difficulties
and behavioural problems ...

:think:

[XemaSab]

5. My understanding is that birds ingest the pellets

and get lead poisoning.

I know that several condors have had to be re-trapped and given chelation for high levels of lead in their blood and a few have died.

[pscot]

7. This issue was raised 60 years ago

Why take a giant step backwards now?




http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/resource/birds/pbpoison/ingested.htm

Laboratory and field studies alike indicate that waterfowl ingest lead shot during feeding. Although ingestion of grit is not an important factor in the ingestion of shot, it does affect the erosion rate of lead after the shot is in the gizzard. Species that feed most actively on the bottom of shot-laden areas have the highest rate of shot ingestion (Bellrose 1959). Moreover, when traps were set over areas previously subjected to intensive hunting, captured ducks (fluoroscoped live) had an appreciably higher rate of shot ingestion than ducks from other locations. For example, 7.3 percent of 3,900 blue-winged teal (Anas discors) captured in September on areas previously hunted had swallowed shot pellets (Bellrose 1959:256). Nowhere else in the United States was the incidence of shot that high for this species. Similarly, wood ducks (Aix sponsa) have a low ingestion rate of shot in many areas of the nation (1.6 percent), but 9.4 percent of 941 birds trapped in areas extensively hunted had shot in their gizzards. Feeding on bait in the soft bottom mud in these duck traps was so intense that over a period of several weeks 1 foot of fine silt was removed as the ducks worked deeper and deeper to obtain the grain that had been used as bait. They also ingested lead shot in the process, apparently as food.
Because lead poisoning results from ingested lead pellets, the occurrence of lead shot in waterfowl gizzards provides information on the degree of exposure. Although die-offs show that waterfowl continue to ingest shot after the hunting season, large numbers of waterfowl gizzards cannot be obtained easily except during the hunting season. Until recently, therefore, much of what was known about shot ingestion was derived from the examination of waterfowl gizzards collected from hunters during the fall and early winter. Bellrose (1951) found that 3-4 percent of the ducks livetrapped and examined by fluoroscopy before the hunting season had shot in their gizzards. The numbers increased steadily until December when 12 percent of the gizzards contained lead.

[The Doctor.]

8. Hmmm... that's compelling.

I wasn't sure as it seemed the percent of lead to overall environment would be insignificant. It makes sense, however, that fish and waterfowl could have issues in hunting-intensive areas... especially wetlands (obviously).

I imagine forested areas are much less likely to show spread of contamination.

The question then is; 'What is a viable alternative?'. What sort of shot can store and expel the kind of kinetic energy necessary without diluting effectiveness?

[pscot]

9. Years ago lead shot was replaced with steel

but hunters never liked it much. It's hard on shotgun barrels because it doesn't deform the way lead does. And it doesn't pattern as well as lead. There have always been diehards lobbying for its return. I wonder if it would really matter. Duck hunting has kind of died out, along with the great flights of waterfowl. The birds just aren't there any more.

[AtheistCrusader]

10. We were also prevented from using solid copper bullets for a time due to the prohibtions

on certain armor piercing ammo. Talons and the like aren't actually armor-piercing, and don't go through police vests, but they fell afoul of the definition due to being made out of a single solid metal other than lead.

(Beryllium and Bronze and some other metals WILL go through vests)