Bullets
containing lead poison people and wildlife, and there's such an easy
fix!
Make
a Difference: Act Today!
Subsistence hunting has a long and rich tradition, and a successful
hunt often determined whether many a family would make it
through the Winter. One of the stranger stories to come out of the
Lewis
and Clark expedition in 1804, concerned how the expedition members, so accustomed to eating buffalo meat on
the plains along the Missouri River, and nearly starving for lack of
same while crossing the
Rockies, upon finally
reaching the Yakima's confluence with the Columbia River in Oregon,
rejected Yakima offers of free salmon, and instead bought dogs from the
Native Americans, which they roasted and ate, before finally relenting
and gorging on the salmon.
Today's urban and suburban dwellers often fail to appreciate how deeply
ingrained the hunting tradition is, and how important a bonding ritual
it remains for many Americans. Hunting is also an
important check on burgeoning populations of white tail deer and wild
boar, who have adopted to suburban living in an environment nearly
devoid of their natural predators. In addition, generous hunter
donations to food programs for the needy, brought
in over 2.7 million pounds of low cost, highly nutritious wild game
meat, over the 2007-2008 hunting season.
But hunting is also big business, as Americans spend over a billion
dollars a year on ammunition alone. The most widely used bullets have
lead cores, and lead bullets expand, fracture and send tissue-damaging
shards
through the target animal's body upon impact. No one disputes the
danger of
ingesting lead, which is why when cleaning and butchering deer, the
hunter avoids using meat immediately surrounding the bullet's path
through the game.
However, new studies indicate that the impact dispersion of lead
through
the deer's body is more expansive from the bullet's passage channel
than previously thought, and basically undetectable without special
testing. In other words, when you consume game killed by lead-core
bullets, it is very likely you are ingesting lead. See Minnesota Dept. of Natural Resources tests at Bullet
Fragmentation.
More importantly, keeping
in mind that the Center for Disease Controls indicates there are no "naturally
occuring levels of lead in people", studies
indicate elevated levels of lead in subsistence hunting families, at a
time when physicians and scientists are rejecting the notion that there
is any such thing as an acceptable level of lead in the body,
particularly where it concerns pregnant women and children. Higher
elevated
levels of lead directly affect the nervous, hematopoietic and renal
systems, while less elevated levels are associated with adverse
cognitive and neurobiological impacts. See Lead
Bullet Fragments in Venison from Rifle-Killed Deer.
Lead oxidizes,
dissolves, breaks down, and leaches into the soil, allowing it to reach
aquifers. The New York State Department of Environmental
Conservation began replacing lead bullets for its Conservation Officers
and Forest Rangers in February of 2008. The DEC also banned lead shot
for hunting water fowl, and lead fishing sinkers of less than an ounce,
to protect wildlife, notably the Adirondack Loon, as well as other
predators who may consume lead-contaminated fish. The US Army banned
the use of lead bullets on
firing ranges ten years ago, after being forced to close hundreds of
ranges, citing the danger of working around such high concentrations of
lead. The Army's version of the "green bullet", which mixes tungsten
and
nylon, has raised health issues of its own, with tungsten being cited
as a possible source of childhood leukemia. See Families Against
Cancer .
Norway, Sweden and
Denmark, all countries with strong hunting cultures, and democracies
where opposing viewpoints are actually listened to, have banned
the use of all lead based ammunition in the past couple of years,
just as 28 states in the U.S. have veered between outright bans in
certain areas (where the California Condor struggles to survive, for
example), to counseling hunters to use common sense, and make informed
decisions, about ammunition used in hunting.
At the same time,
wildlife rehabbers have noted an upswing in the percentage of poisoned
raptors, particularly bald eagles, who ingest lead from gut piles left
behind by hunters. While we revere the bald eagle as our national
symbol, Ben Franklin, who championed the wild turkey for this role, had
it right: bald eagles are more scavengers than predators, and are thus
more susceptible to lead poisoned carcasses. Levels of lead ingestion
which cause concern in humans are usually lethal in smaller creatures
like raptors. The Raptor Center at the University of Minnesota had 45
bald eagles admitted with lead poisoning this year, and lost them all.
See Univ
of Minnesota Raptor Center - Lead Poisoning.
Where much progress has been made in educating fisherman about the
hazards to wildlife in using lead sinkers and fishing tackle, for
example, see Nina
Schoch and the ADK Loon Program, or Lead Poisoning in
Raptors and Other Wildlife, when it comes to ammunition, the
same old interest groups stand up and holler the same old complaints.
The NRA, ever eager to maintain and expand the status quo,
dismisses the lead testing reports, ignoring data concerning other
sources of lead which regionally skew lead levels, and sees the
non-lead
campaign as a prelude to taking hunter's weapons away, which seems to
be their
non-seguitur response
to any type of arms control at all. The NRA and many hunters'
groups contend that banning lead-based bullets will force subsistence
hunters to spend more than they can afford on ammunition, and may drive
many hunters
out of their chosen sport. They don't seem to have any regard for the
fate of wildlife killed by ingesting lead bullets or their fragments,
nor do they seem to address the issue of lead leaching into soil and
aquifers. I
suppose it would be too much to ask for any of the manufacturers to
give a non-political answer, and crassly admit that the issue is
retooling
factories, and using non-lethal components more expensive than lead.
As the Minnesota tests showed, there are alternative sources of
ammunition which do not send lead shards and fragments far from the
wound entry channel, mainly copper bullets (see examples at Barnes
Bullets). Because the NRA always delivers such
doctrinaire rejections of any restrictions on any weapons or
ammunition, states are forced to appeal to the common sense of hunters
directly. In a state sponsored test,
Arizona hunters tested non-lead bullets, and 60% of the respondents
rated the bullets favorably. See Arizona
hunters survey.
As copper bullets tend to be more expensive than lead-core bullets, I
propose a kind of bailout of ammunition manufacturers and indigent
hunters,
which will cost "just pennies a day". Consider the high price of copper
in
today's market, and the fact that there are continual
movements afoot to eliminate the penny. Think about it: we all receive pennies in change, but
never think to put them in our
pockets
in the morning, or make any other plans for using them. As a result,
many of us
have unplanned penny
collections in huge, heavy jars, threatening to crash through the
straining floorboards beneath them. We should start a national penny
drive. Most pennies dating back to before 1982 are 95% copper, so
instead of beating our swords into plowshares, maybe we should
pound our pennies into copper bullets to enable
considerate and educated hunting, which will minimize the lead exposure
to
wild game eaters. Since a true copper penny is probably worth more than
one cent, purchasers of ammunition should be able to receive two
cents credit for every copper penny turned in, and non-hunting penny
donators would
be able to receive tax deductions for turning pennies in.
Steve Hall
Radiograph of Lead Shot in immature
bald eagle's digestive track, fromUSGS
On a more serious and urgent note, with a January-February 2010
deadline for action looming, Dr. Mark Pokras of theWildlife
Clinic & Center for Conservation Medicine,Tufts Cummings School
of Veterinary Medicine atTufts University, wrote
"We have a
wonderful opportunity to change the face
of US policy on Lead for fishing and hunting gear...but a very
short window
for action.
The Dept of Interior
and USEPA
are considering rules that would require the replacement of lead
fishing and
hunting gear with non-toxic alternatives. Discussions are going on
NOW and
decisions may well be made in late Jan or early Feb. As you would
expect,
the fishing and hunting lobbies are aligning against this in a big way
and have started a letter
writing campaign. They have scheduled a meeting with the head of Dept
of
Interior (Ken Salazar) for Jan 26th to lobby their side. It is
VERY
important that our information is heard in this debate. I am going
to try
to go to DC in the next week or so to meet with officials
in various
offices and if anyone from your organizations could join me,
that would be
terrific (of course I have no funds for this...).So the time is NOW to
try and
generate a letter writing campaign to show that there IS
widespread
support for such a ban. Letter or emails should be in your
original
words...not just form letters and should stress several elements
(add your
own, too!!). Letters should be from the heart and could certainly
contain
scientific citations, websites, or your experiences with lead
poisoned
people and animals. Note that Pres. Obama strongly supported
legislation to
protect children from lead poisoning when he was a senator.Here
are a few
points to consider including:
that
there is LOTS of GOOD scientific evidence to show that lead
has significant health effects on people, domestic animals and
wildlife -- both acute and chronic.
that alternatives DO exist for lead hunting
and fishing gear and that they are not prohibitively expensive.
that hunters and anglers have always been
thought of as active conservationists and that there is an
important role for them in making this change -- to protect
health, to protect the environment and to protect the resources
that we all cherish."
PLEASE
write to:
Barack
Obama, President The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500
Ken
Salazar,
Secretary Department of the Interior 1849 C Street, N.W. Washington DC 20240