Blood lead levels at 5.0ug/ml

[deerstalkert]

Probably "Lead Dust". Horrible stuff.

It floats and wafts and travels and settles everywhere. All over your floors and furniture. In your mugs and on your dishes.

It's a fine yellow or brown powder. Kids end up eating it. Pets end up eating it. Pregnant women end up eating it. Then the kids turn out like something from Deliverance.

Lead Dust can come from anywhere too. Your neighbor. The guy down the street. Someone casting balls three towns over with the wind blowing the wrong direction.

Can't be too careful with Lead Dust.

Everything I just said is complete nonsense. But there are folks out there that believe this nonsense. And it's why lead is being banned everywhere now.

Don't lay our PBJ sammiches on our lead pots and we'll all be fine.

you had e thinking " springer, you have much more sense than this!!!" right down to the second from the last sentence!

blood levels are not the best indicators of actual lead in your system. tissue and hair analysis are best. lead in the blood is still free and can be eliminated. once settled into tissue and joints it takes chelation to remove.
i should dig out my test sheet and post it. Dr's that did the analysis asked my Dr, "when did this patient die".
maybe that is what is why i am brain dead most of the time.

 

[Nor Cal Mikie]

Eventually, something is going to kill you.

and when you die from being run over by that truck, forget the tire tracks and your crushed skull. You died from Covid!!

 

[Frontier's]

Dark chocolate even contains a very small amount of lead.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

Really odd as I use delead and wash my hands afterward. Anyone have experience with this?

Seems like it’s not terrible. Lead poisoning starts around 40ug. Health effects at 10ug. I just need to be careful and clean my act up somehow. Really surprised because I do wash my hands after with special soaps everytime I shoot or clean guns.

We had problems at my departmental range. It's not the lead on your hands in most cases. As a human you have more worries from lead oxide, the white coating you see on old lead bullets, and the used in the past, cheap, white pigment found in oil based paint that caused the kids to get sick if they put paint chips into their mouths. That's why folks hit with lead bullets that are not removed by surgery don't get lead poisoning..., the projectile doesn't oxidize inside them.

Lead poisoning we found was from the bullets hitting armor plate and splattering at the indoor range. The tiny bits of dust would then oxidize over time. Guys assigned to the range when they swept up spent brass, were knocking lead dust into the air and it was getting on their clothes, and into their nasal passages, on their hands and ingested. Shooters were getting lead dust into the treads of their shoes and taking that home, where it would sit and oxidize, and then cause problems.

Unless the range where you shoot has a concrete floor, OR has so much lead splatter left over in the ground beneath the targets in an outdoor setting, it's probably not from shooting.

You can mitigate contamination from lead round ball or conicals by putting a little veg oil on them to prevent contact with the air, and thus halting oxidation.

OMG, those kinds of toxin levels aren't from shooting.
Have your water tested

Necchi is right, that may be a problem area too. You may have several smaller contamination methods combining.

LD

 

[Okie Hog]

Lead poisoning can be a serious thing, especially with children.

i'm an EOD guy who has been diagnosed with lead poisoning twice. Both incidents happened during the burning of military small arms ammunition-lead dust. Last time was in 1991-92 during the destruction of all unserviceable ammunition from Desert Storm. We burned many millions of small arms rounds in open pits covered with pallets.

When the job ended i took an OSHA physical for employment by an environmental remediation company. Worked for that company for a month when i was notified that my lead levels were very high. The doctor wanted me to undergo chelation therapy. Instead i took huge doses of vitamin C and my lead levels were normal within a month.

Lead dust is a big deal. Many indoor firing ranges lack proper ventilation:

https://projects.seattletimes.com/2014/loaded-with-lead/4/
Be very careful when melting and casting lead.

 

[Brokennock]

assigned to the range when they swept up spent brass

That's why we are not supposed to "sweep" the range. I'm fact we were told to not even allow brooms on the range, we were supposed to use rubber floor squeegees and had a machine that was supposed to be used to wet clean the concrete floor at least once a month.
Lead levels did get better when we replaced the steel plate backstop with rubber "mulch" on many of the ranges I worked on.

 

[Sam squanch]

Heavy metal in your system?? This guy is responsible…….

 

[deerstalkert]

Heavy metal in your system?? This guy is responsible…….

can't believe Ozzy is still alive. maybe preserved is a better word?

 

[maillemaker]

I've been casting bullets since around 2010, I think. I get my lead levels checked every year as part of my annual physical. Never a problem.

 

[Rudyard]

Eventually, something is going to kill you.

Some folks want to live forever . We had lead water pipes ,' It reminds me of a 90 year old man who cut up horn & Stag for the cutlers I asked him "Do you worry about the dust ?" He said "No it just made soup".
If Pearl cutters did suffer from the hook like particles , I've cast & shot much of my life ime near 79. but no plans to stop shooting lead .My first job was in a factory that made spades ect these got tempered in vats of lead .close by me. The old man who did that job had been at it years Of course it might have killed him but it hadn.t when I left .The spades got heated in slit ovens then plunged into whale oil vats the harden them , gobs of smoke . I couldn't escape except at dinner time then we went and sat by the railway tracks and often saw the "Waverley' & the' Devonian' Steam trains cross .

Years later I crossed regions of the Saharah that where used by the French to test A bombs you could see the big numbers at intervals presumably as guiding markers . Then we stopped at a sign that said in French & Arabic 'Tropic du cancer' an old boy ( Elderly Local) who was also rode on top of the Camions / wagons he looked at it and turned to me with a look of horror & said ''L' malad?" IE" will he get Cancer ". I put him at rest , My geography was better than his .
Rudyard's
two pennoth

 

[nhmoose]

Lead from the primers is the big cause of lead poisoning on indoor ranges. That is why most police ranges require lead free green ammo for practice.

 

[SOLANCO]

If you Google sources of lead poisoning, range use of lead bullets, if it appears, is way down towards the bottom of the list.
I am 75 YO. Not going to get faint hearted about it now. First use of lead bullets was 69 years ago.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

Some folks want to live forever . We had lead water pipes ,'

So did lots of folks, even the Romans. In most of those cases, again, no lead oxide formed. For a lot of people, even the Romans, the pipes developed "scale" aka mineral deposits that provided a protective layer. They found though that the Romans used to enjoy heated, mulled wine, and the basins that they used were old style pewter, or even just plain lined with lead...,

Perhaps the nuttiest of the emperors wasn't mentally ill so much as lead poisoned?

LD

 

[Malamute]

Lead from the primers is the big cause of lead poisoning on indoor ranges. That is why most police ranges require lead free green ammo for practice.

I believe this is a large part of it. On another forum lead exposure came up in people blood tests. It turned out that isolating their reloading rooms and exposure to spent primers and dry tumbled brass solved most of it. One guy had lead turn up in his kids room 2 floors up when they tried to figure out where the source was, he was tracking it up from his reloading room in the basement on his shoes. The kids werent affected so far but they found it in their room on the floor when he tested high for it and they tried to figure out where it was coming from.

I stopped dry tumbling partly for that reason and because wet tumbling with no pins worked better.

In the past Ive seen many comments from people saying things like "Ive been doing it X number of years and it hadnt affected them yet" (not referencing anyone in particular), but without actual tests to determine exposure at different times its pretty hard to say what the exposure and effect may be. It may have affected people in ways they may never know. Also, each person may react differently. Some people smoke their entire life and live into their 90s, others get cancer or emphysema in their 30s or 40s.

 

[Brokennock]

It may have affected people in ways they may never know

 

[CuNosecap]

The majority of the following post is concerning primers in centerfire cartridges. If this is offensive or unmentionable, mods can please remove. But concerning lead poisoning, I think it is important to recognize some facts.
Posts above about lead from primers are correct, and incorrect. I did not know anything about primer composition except the old fulminate of mercury stories. The internet can be your friend.
The article here is very good about the history of the chemistry of priming materials for modern cartridges, but the "cut to the chase" is:
Lead was common up until 2000, but from 1980s on, attempts were being made to find lead free priming material. By "early 1980s by Geco, who released a zinc- and titanium - based primer which they called " Sintox'. Since then, there have been a number of other lead-free primers produced by, for example, CCI Blazer, Speer, Federal and Winchester (Haag, 1995)."
So there is still a lot of lead-containing primers out there (milsurp etc. and on my shelf) but as time passes, that risk decreases, at least from primers.
Here is the article I found helpful:

https://www.bevfitchett.us/ballistics/priming-compounds-and-primers-introduction.html

 

[Mad L]

My father told me long ago that Heavy Metal had given me TB and Heart Trouble (tired butt and I didn't have the heart to get up).
He put me on a strict diet of 'Leather Strap' and switched me to Country Music and got better in no time. Some extra chores to help work it out of my system too.

 

[user 34300]

Vibratory case polishers can kick up a huge amount of lead dust. Primer ash contains a lot of lead. You must use the cover. I made a very large and powerful vibratory case polisher. I made no cover. The lead dust made it's way to every nook and cranny of my garage. There was no way to clean the place up sufficiently to get a negative lead wipe test. I had to throw away my work benches, paint the walls and cover the floors with vinyl tile.

Indoor ranges are problem too. Do not shoot indoors often. For some reason that escapes me, my local range uses large filters to keep the lead inside the range. The filters plug up quickly and restrict air flow. Changing them is a mess. After use they are "hasmat". It seems to be a better plan to ditch the filters. They are not interested.

 

[nhmoose]

I only use my dry tumblers now for tumbling balls to get rid of the sprues. The inside of the tumbler looks like it is plated in lead. I do it out by the garage as the noise is tremendous.

I am 71 years old, shot and cast all my life. My lead test was a 3 7-8 years ago. I do not eat or drink when casing or preparing modern ammo. Wash after with good old soap and water no special remove the lead and the money from my wallet.

The only time I had a problem was when tested by my employer the City I worked for had a subpar range with no air cleaners. Year later after not shooting there problem was gone.

 

[cjsoccer3]

We had problems at my departmental range. It's not the lead on your hands in most cases. As a human you have more worries from lead oxide, the white coating you see on old lead bullets, and the used in the past, cheap, white pigment found in oil based paint that caused the kids to get sick if they put paint chips into their mouths. That's why folks hit with lead bullets that are not removed by surgery don't get lead poisoning..., the projectile doesn't oxidize inside them.

Lead poisoning we found was from the bullets hitting armor plate and splattering at the indoor range. The tiny bits of dust would then oxidize over time. Guys assigned to the range when they swept up spent brass, were knocking lead dust into the air and it was getting on their clothes, and into their nasal passages, on their hands and ingested. Shooters were getting lead dust into the treads of their shoes and taking that home, where it would sit and oxidize, and then cause problems.

Unless the range where you shoot has a concrete floor, OR has so much lead splatter left over in the ground beneath the targets in an outdoor setting, it's probably not from shooting.

You can mitigate contamination from lead round ball or conicals by putting a little veg oil on them to prevent contact with the air, and thus halting oxidation.


Necchi is right, that may be a problem area too. You may have several smaller contamination methods combining.

LD

Range has one of those classic sidewalk texture concrete floors. It looks very much like a Swiss style range. Giant awning that covers about 20 shooting lanes. We ask folks to sweep their brass with brooms when done. I know of one buddy there who shoots only 22lr that tested at 4ug/ml a short while ago.