Lead Poisoning: A personal view
by Harry Hoover
Many years ago when I decided I wanted to cast my own bullets as part of the pistol shooting hobby, I
thought it would be smart to get a lead level test done. So I did, and boy, did I get a surprise. My
blood lead levels were high, very high, in fact way over the danger zone. The actual level was on a
different scale to the one used today so the numbers aren't important, but it was a serious concern,
especially as I'd never handled lead. I hadn't even ever cast my own sinkers.
Of course, like most kids, I'd run around with a mouthful of lead airgun pellets as it was much more
convenient than keeping them in a pocket, and the tongue is a marvelous tool for dispensing one at a
time for rapid follow up loading, but surely that wasn't the cause of my lead levels? The lead in my
body at that time probably came from my years as a maintenance welder, grinding and welding on steels
painted with all the old lead based paints, usually in confined places with little or no ventilation
and often using welding rods with high lead levels in the fumes, again in the same confined places.
Anyway, I was determined to make my own bullets, so I set about learning how to handle lead safely,
and over the following five or six years, as I cast and sized countless thousands of projectiles, my
lead levels steadily came down.
On the new blood lead level scale, with zero as a starting point, an average population should not
have blood lead levels higher that 0.5. If a person's lead levels exceed 0.75, it's classified as a
notifiable disease, and the doctor must report the fact to the local Medical Officer of Heath. My
initial level was over 2.5, and over the years, had steadily decreased to about 1.5.
It was then I got very sick, with a nasty little complaint called Ulcerative Collitis, and while the
medical profession told me there was no known cause or cure, a Naturopath told me that the Collitis
was caused by a damaged immune system with the damage being caused by lead poisoning. I was fairly
impressed with this, as the Naturopath didn't know me or my sport or my previous history. He
recommended a detoxifying programme to get the lead out of my system, and a year later, subsequent
blood tests revealed my lead levels had dropped to 0.67, which, while still higher than allowable,
was a vast improvement on previous levels. I should add that I had stopped all bullet casting and
lead handling, apart from loading ammunition, and I wasn't even doing much of that because of my
commitments to the study programme I had embarked on.
So, imagine my complete shock when a recent blood test showed my levels have risen from 0.67 to 1.16
over the last year, and I haven't so much as thought about casting bullets. From everything I've ever
read, I believe it is very difficult to absorb cold hard lead through skin contact, as the oxide layer
on the outside of a piece of lead is impervious to almost everything, including most acids.
But my increased lead levels have to have come from somewhere. Time to do some testing. First choice
is to test others who drink the same water as I do and see what their levels are. All clear? What's
next? I do quite a bit of air pistol shooting at home, but surely just picking up a pellet and loading
it can't give one lead poisoning?
I decided to do some testing. First off, I weighed a batch of 20 .177 calibre lead pellets, and then
recovered and weighed another 20 from the rear of my target range. The fired pellets were all
considerably lighter than the unfired ones, even the ones that had little deformation appeared to have
lost an average of 0.3 - 0.5 of a grain in weight. But surely, I thought, even if these pellets have
a few fragments fall off on impact, the fragments will lie on the floor and not pose any risk. ???
So then I decided to do some real experimenting, but a little more carefully.
I weighed one projectile on electronic scales and it weighed 7.9 grains. I then loaded and fired this
pellet through a compressed air Steyr LP10 air pistol, and caught the projectile in a soft foam rubber
container which caused only minute visible deformation of the pellet, i.e., it wasn't flattened on
impact. Re-weighing that projectile gave a weight of 7.8 grains. A loss of 0.1gn. With an assistant,
I repeated this experiment many times, with different firearms and the result has been consistently the
same. Firing a lead pellet through an airgun (pistol) causes it to loose between 1 and 3 percent of
its initial weight. That lost lead can only be in two places. In the barrel, or in the air between
gun and target.
You know of course, what this means, don't you? You don't need to have pellets impact on a steel
backstop or target to generate lead dust in the air.
Which means that for all those people who have an air gun range in their basement and do air pistol
training without good ventilation, you are risking becoming sick. VERY SICK. Please, go and get a
lead level test done now. And check your own facility. PLEASE.
I must point out that what I have done is the crudest of crude pilot studies. And there are dozens of
factors I have not begun to investigate. Just a few are; does pellet make and weight have a bearing?
Projectile speed? Gun type or barrel length make a difference? Temperature and humidity? Compressed
air or CO2? Will lubing the pellets make a difference? Who knows? But what I do know is, my own
health has been compromised enough, and I don't want anyone else suffering the same fate. And my lead
levels have gone up enough with just air pistol shooting to mean my doctor has notified the Medical
Health Officer.
For those who are interested, I performed a statistical analysis (T-test, paired for 2 tails) on the
data I have gathered so far, and the results are statistically significant. That is, the difference
between the first set of figures and the second are substantial enough to be unable to be due to
chance.
If this sounds like scare mongering it's not meant to be. I'm sure most people who use airguns
regularly at home have never given thought to the possibility of lead poisoning, and it will be a
simple matter to check. If there is a problem, we can change how we do things, maybe install an
extractor fan and filter system, or perhaps other solutions will present themselves.
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