GTA
All Springer/NP/PCP Air Gun Discussion General => Air Gun Gate => Topic started by: EvilE on January 09, 2012, 11:58:25 PM
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I always read the warnings about lead pellets, and lead in general, that it takes very little to mess a person up. I am just wondering how much a risk is it really shooting and plinking with lead pellets all the time? ???
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For your own education, you may wanna check out the various shooting sites, and read the FDA, CDC, etc. reports.
i feel comfortable after 50 years of using lead sinkers, lead bullets, lead anything. I just washed and never ate them!
Your call.
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I've been shooting pellet guns for well over 40 years and I find that they are far more dangerous to the critters I shoot than to me.
Richard
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After 40ish years of lead pellets i have seen no big issues. I try to aware of lead danger do not eat or breath lead are the main things, i.e.normal stuff like no rubbing eyes mouth eating and make logical good choices ;)
more airgunning is better , Tony.
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Don't leave dropped or spent pellets laying around. Get a good trap and clean up after yourself, too.
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As said above dont eat them or lick your fingers after playing with them and your fine.
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How harmful are lead pellets?
It depends on how fast they are moving.
Seriously though - I try to use pellet traps to catch most of them but I don't worry too much about a few strays.
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I'm careful to wash my fingers real well after shooting. Pellets give a lot of lead to finger contact compared to PBs. Most PB bullets are clad and you usually grab them by the brass case because it's usually bigger than the bullet. My fingers are black after a shooting session. Shooting for 35 years and still no lead poisoning :)
I am curious about the lead that lands in the dirt with respect to ground water and my well. Probably not enough lead to make a difference but I still wonder if I'm slowly killing myself.....
-Tom
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I personally don't worry about every warning I read on products.
I worked with raw lead for years working for the phone company repairing lead sheathed cables damaged by squirrels.
I worked with old time lead solder for years, breathing the fumes off the soldering irons.
I worked with buckets of methyl-etheyl-ketone in the Air Force, without gloves or respirators, washing air filters for test consoles.
I smoked Kent cigs in my younger years, reported to contain asbestos in the filter. True or just misreported, I don't know.
I'm as healthy, or more so, as any other 66 year old.
Face it, life on planet earth is hazardous to your health. No one gets out alive.
You can always shoot copper coated or non lead pellets. Your choice...
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First, do not underestimate the affects of lead, especially if it has been digested. As a 45 acp shooter, we noticed high levels of lead in the blood stream from shooting indoors (with exhasut fan), but most of it probably came from handling and sorting the empty shells. That said, I was advised by a fourm member (retired chemist?), that most of the black on your hands is the graphite coating on the pellets and NOT actually lead dust.
If it were lead, and in the amount that is getting on your hands, it would not be visible to the human eye. My wife, an environmental litigation specialist, has handled many lead poison claims and agrees with the latter statement. You would not be able to see it if it were actually lead on your hands from a pellet.
Use common sense. Keep your hands clean and don't put your fingers in your mouth, eyes, or your nose for that matter. In being careful, you get a bonus and will have less head colds as well!
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I'm careful to wash my fingers real well after shooting. Pellets give a lot of lead to finger contact compared to PBs. Most PB bullets are clad and you usually grab them by the brass case because it's usually bigger than the bullet. My fingers are black after a shooting session. Shooting for 35 years and still no lead poisoning :)
I am curious about the lead that lands in the dirt with respect to ground water and my well. Probably not enough lead to make a difference but I still wonder if I'm slowly killing myself.....
-Tom
The pellets are coated, so I wonder what it takes to remove that coating and actually get down to the lead that in there. Then, that lead would have to make its way into the well water. How long were you planning on sticking around? I took up cigars, in the hope that I won't live much past 80...
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Ya...what he said! Washed my hands in M.E.K. and Trich, welded without a respirator and have shot 10's of 1000's of pellets and PB rounds for many years. Last years physical/blood-work was nearly as good as the previous 30 years.
Warnings are mostly lawyer-speak based on some chemical and physical science. Lead and many other substances are toxic by mass ingestion or other absorption methods over extended period of time. If you were to read the Fedreal TSCA listing, about all you would ever touch or eat is oatmeal and pasteurized milk.
Don't put lead pellets in your soda pop or on your sandwiches, wash your hands before eating and you are good for 50 + years of shootin.
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I would say the air around me after I eat my carne asada burrito is more deadlier than lead...and why worry? We'll all fade away from this messed up world we live in before you get any complications from lead. WAIT! If your body does contain high levels of lead from pellet shooting that just might help you after an apocolyptic event! LMBO
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Inhaling lead dust particles in a manufacturing plant or eating paint chips containing lead gives this common earth element a bad name. Just follow standard accepted handling protocol and pellets are safe.
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Nothing like a good Methane "hit" from the guy eatin his burrito at the next table! Ay carumba!
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I agree with the guy's here common sense and like Richard said I find lead pellets more harmfull to anything I shoot than to myself LOL!!!!!!! :P
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I wouldn't worry about stray pellets contaminating your ground water. I believe it was Virginia Tech that performed a study on leaching from lead bullets and found that, once it makes that white coating of oxide, it pretty much stabilizes. I have old Civil War bullets that were dug up and they are practically still to specs, so the oxidation must be fairly thin.
Just don't go carrying spare pellets in your mouth, LOL! (Don't laugh. A lot of round ball shooters used to do that for timed matches, etc.)
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Same results as SAADE. Handled over 400,000 .45 ACP lead SWC since the mid 80s and now a LOT of pellets. Just had an A1C test for my diabetes and asked for a lead test also. Lead test came back "within normal range". I wash my hands after reloading for my .45 and do the same after a shooting session with my pellet guns.
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Wash your hands after shooting.
As long as you don't put your head down a pellet can and inhale you should be OK. ;)
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For the past sixty years I've been shooting air guns, as a kid it was general practise to put/keep the pellets in your mouth! As a reloader I made my own shot, .45 bullets and bullets or my .303. At 65 I am still healthy and are enjoying my air guns once again![not keeping pellets in my mouth anymore!! :D]
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The metallic lead of lead pellets and bullets is actually very safe. This differs from the organic lead seen in lead paint and leaded gasoline. Organic lead is highly toxic and responsible for the developmental problems seen when kids would eat the lead paint. The organic lead is very easily absorbed into the body while metallic lead (pellets and bullets) is not.
Lead shot is dangerous to waterfowl because the birds eat the lead shot like they eat small stones. This lead shot then stays in their gizzard for a very long time and is slowly dissolved through the combined mechanical action of the gizzard combined with the digestive acids. As long as you haven't grown a gizzard, even accidentally swallowing a lead pellet will not expose you to enough lead to be of any concern. Now, if you are eating a tin of pellets a week, you have other issues that need dealt with.
For folks that shoot powderburners indoors a lot, lead exposure can be a problem but it is not from the bullet. This lead exposure is actually from the lead salts in primers and powder. Further, reloaders are then exposed to these lead salts when they handle the unwashed used cartridges.
Just be smart and lead pellets are fine.
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Lead is especially dangerous for young minds. Children and pregnant women need to avoid lead, it causes several mental malformations and deficiencies in children.
As an adult lead poisoning is the main concern, but that takes alot of lead. Just keep your kids/grandkids safe.
Mark5
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Pretty low risk...
unless you intend to eat them or stand in front of a loaded AG..
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Ive been a plumber in Chicago area for 25 years + we still use cast iron pipe with lead joints some weeks burn more than 1000 lbs. ive heated my lunches on the furnace warmed myself ect. there was a good program with John Stossal called the fleecing of america about 10 years ago on tv about lead and its misunderstanding dont know if i spelt his name correctly he was on 20/20 or that type of show thanks Pat.
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Very good information provided by SciGuy, particularly on differentiation between organic lead and metallic lead. Bottom line is that metallic lead is not going to leach into ground water and poison the world, nor is handling pellets or bullets going to cause problems (unless "handling" involves getting shot with them!).
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As previously stated metallic lead is quite stable . Ask those old WW2 , Korea, and Vietnam vets who have a load of lead in their keesters and are dying from old age about that !!! It is the lead oxides that you want to stay away from.. Don’t go eating it very often , and wash your hands and you will be fine !! If you have any old pellets with the white stuff on it don’t be sniffing that stuff. You can clean them off and re lube them though . Don’t use your wife’s colander for the pellets … She will be more dangerous than the lead if you do .
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Here's a interesting article.
Nathan
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Most hazardous when it moving 850 FPS or so.
Not a big deal use common sense don't splatter pellets on a metal plate inside the house, do not cook in your pellet washing bowl, keep em outta ya mouth, you will die of old age before your lead hobby pellets
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They're much better with oil and a little garlic. Wait...what was the question again?
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For many years i loaded my own bullets and I'm talking 30 years or more as long as clean your hands and don't put your hands in your mouth or breath in the lead dust you wont have a problem. I have been a member to a local gun club for 40 years and many of us reload not one person has had a problem related to lead poison.
Mike
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The bottom line: Use common sense and the kids will live long enough to wear diapers again.