Lead is a nerve poison. Ingestion can cause permanent nerve damage and even death. Thus drinking water is no longer conveyed in lead piping.
Knowing this, Senators Begich and Murkowski have signed on as co-sponsors of Senate Bill 838, which removes lead shot and lead sinkers from EPA jurisdiction as toxic substances. It allows them to still be used and be introduced on a regular basis into the environment. Don’t get all the pellets out of a duck you’ve shot and you’re ingesting lead. Eat fish that have eaten a lead pellet or two and you’re ingesting lead. Miss that shot at a duck and you’ve just put lead into the water system.
So why do something so obviously dangerous to public and wildlife health?
The NRA has decided even though steel shot has been available as a safe substitute they must have lead shot. Never mind its dangers, its proven toxicity. Their interests take precedence over the public’s.
And Senators Murkowski and Begich agree as does Don Young.
Remember this when re-election time rolls around. Your children’s health is not as important as the NRA’s wishes.
The environment, water and wildlife are not as important as the NRA. And you are not as important to Murkowski, Begich, and Young as the NRA.
Art Greenwalt
Fairbanks
Comments (10)
Add commentOh come on!
Show me the evidence that lead weights have an appreciable risk in salt water. Sure, maybe in some little duck pond that gets lots of hunter pressure year after year, but I challenge him to show that my halibut weight in Icy Strait is posing a measurable risk.
This sounds like fear mongering to me, and it discredits some of Walt's more legitimate claims.
Lead shot
Lead in marine situations has not received the attention it has in aquatic scenarios for the obvious reason that most of the time it is not going to enter the water system to any appreciable degree given the relative volumes of the ocean versus a stream.
However, in the case of a much more limited water volume as in a stream, and the fact we draw most of our drinking water from fresh water systems, the effects of lead contamination are of more immediate concern.
In the letter it is not stated if the sinkers are being used in a marine or freshwater setting. Take it to be freshwater as those are the only conditions for which I have seen a concern expressed. Added to the freshwater situation is the lead shot from hunting waterfowl. Not every shot is a hit and all those pellets have to go somewhere.
Cripes,
Do any of these people ever stop to wonder where that lead came from to start with? in order to pose a measureable risk it would need to have truly high concentrations
@AH HA: lead is not refined
@AH HA: lead is not refined in nature. We refine it. It's a problem. You might as well say it's PERFECTLY OKAY to dump plutonium in the ocean because hey, where did the uranium that was refined to create it come from? Or mercury! It's PERFECTLY FINE that it's hazardous to your health to eat certain fish due to mercury build-up, because that mercury came from the planet!
In fact, I'm going to go out and get me a big, tall, refreshing glass of arsenic. IT'S TOTALLY NATURAL.
Lead and other heavy metals build up in your system over time. You don't need to be exposed to high enough levels to cause acute symptoms. Chronic low-level exposure over several years is just as bad, if not worse.
Lead ingestion
Cripes....it doesn't take much.
For instance, the California Condor project which seeks to re-establish the largest bird in North America, has had a big problem of loss of condors to lead ingestion. They scavenge gut piles, carcasses from hunters using lead bullets. The lead bullets, in hitting the animal, fragment and leave small amounts of lead inside. The birds take it in, the lead causes nerve damage which causes paralysis of the digestive system. The birds, having taken in all that meat, now have it rotting inside rather than digesting and they wind up dying from the resulting infection. All from that tiny amount of fragmentary lead in the carcass/guts.
http://www.azgfd.gov/w_c/california_condor_lead.shtml
Lead is dangerous. Period.
I think the writer's overall point is, lead is dangerous in any quantity, and if there is a less dangerous alternative out there it should be explored.
Do you HAVE to use a lead halibut weight Latitude, or are there safer alternatives? And even though your individual lead halibut weight might have an infinitesimal effect on Icy Straight, what if the other 200 boats out there also used the same lead weight?
The other point the writer was trying to make is, legislators always cave to the NRA. They fear the NRA because whatever the NRA wants, the NRA gets. This is because the NRA has an infinite pool of mindless, dues-paying gun kissing rednecks who opposes even the slightest regulation on their precious guns or ammo, even if it's something seemingly minimal like replacing lead in shot gun shells with something less toxic to wildlife and humans.
Imagine 20 duck hunters every weekend hanging near some wetlands. All use lead shot shells. They all shoot upwards, in the same direction. All that lead lands in the wetlands.
Now imagine those wetlands a few decades later. Nothing would live in it, and it would be difficult to clean up if not impossible.
As Alaskans, we must each do what we can to minimize even the smallest risks to our pristine environment.
Even if it means simply substituting one metal for another when both have the exact same result. If you shoot a duck with steel shot or lead shot, it's still dead. Use a steal or lead weight, it's still a weight.
So why MUST you use lead?
Well Jo
Aluminum is too light. Steel rusts. The higher the density, the better.
Oh! Right! What was I thinking? The obvious answer...gold!
Seriously, 10,000 fishermen in Icy Strait using lead halibut weights would not make a difference. It's just not that toxic in lump form.
This is a very good article.
I put lead in my cheerios every morning to prove the EPA and all those environmentalists wrong. Now I don't have to read their stupid reports.
Because I can't see- that was the joke.
Give me back my (Lead) bullets
I assume the NRA is working hard to prevent the EPA from over reaching their jurisdictional authorities by outlawing lead ammunition. Outlawing lead ammunition would carry significant impacts on gun owners. Lead based ammunition for target shooting and personal protection is cheep and affective, and presents little health risks; except to the criminal that tries to enter my house in the middle of the night. Shooting ranges better manage this risk now than in the past due to increased awareness of the impacts from lead on the environment and human health. Similarly, through successful hunter education programs, increased access to non-lead ammunition, and in some cases state laws, bird hunters have greatly reduced their use of lead ammunition.
The NRA is working this issue based on the bigger picture, and I'm glad that our Congressional Delgation agrees that there is a need and use for lead ammunition.
Have all the lead you want...but keep it to yourself
You-know....with all the documented proof beyond any question that lead is toxic in the environment there is no way the EPA is overreaching. It is doing precisely what it is intended to do...protect the wildlife, the people, the land from demonstrated toxins. The NRA's only concern is for cheap bullets. It couldn't care less what effect the lead has. Once again, it shows that guns are its supreme religion and override all other considerations.
I reiterate that when a state as solidly conservative as Arizona, one almost as gun-sick as Alaska, wants lead removed from the bullet/shot market then there is something very seriously accurate about the EPA claims for them to back them up. Why do you think an indoor shooting range has to have such extensive means of handling the lead in the air? It's not a matter of comfort; it's a matter of health. It's that simple.