Thread: Lead bullets and their risk to human health

Yeah there's no safe level of lead for human consumption. Try not to eat it.


I manage the risk while continuing to use lead bullets by not taking meat from close to the likely fragmentation zone, and sometimes head or neck shooting animals. Using smaller bullets also helps - there's simply less lead around to begin with. Maybe this explains the .270 people. Many of the studies on the subject are a bit misleading - while lead consumption certainly is a risk, mitigation by specific butchery practises appears to be really effective at reducing the risk of exposure. Look at Hampton 2023 - read between the lines - very low lead in Kangaroo/Wallaby meat - because they are all headshot, so the bits exposed to fragmentation are not eaten. The factor by which the venison mince exceeded guidelines was minute in comparison to the quail. The butchery approach of those that donated the venison mince isn't known - was it "right up to the hole" from some? There are a number of other studies that make this abundantly clear

"The highest concentrations were found in samples from edible meat from the area close to the wound channel (max 3442 mg Pb/kg), followed by the saddle (max 1.14 mg Pb/kg) and with the lowest levels in the haunch (max 0.09 mg Pb/kg)"

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30412876/


The cost and performance of non-lead alternatives simply doesn't match lead in many ways so I'm balancing things as I see fit.


It would be interesting to get a blood lead test. I eat a lot of bluefin tuna though so I'm probably packed to the gills with methylmercury


While lead is a real risk to humans and wildlife especially scavenging avians, there are also a few researchers around the world who have made a career out of finding "anti-lead" research to be a lucrative path to funding and dominate the field, so while there is valid research to be done there are often issues, bias and omissions in the existing peer-reviewed literature. Unfortunately peer-review is far from a foolproof process as anyone in science should know, the quality of reviewer comment can be highly variable. Jordan Hampton appears to be one of these and has released a series of papers that while peer-reviewed, are of pretty questionable value.