I found out my wife took my one year old son in for his checkup. They took blood for lead level measurement. SOP I was told. What I was not told was that if they find ANY lead level in his blood I will get a visit from the county health department.

A guy at work related a story from one of his shooting buddies who has some lead in his blood getting getting treated very badly by the health department, stong arm tactics and forced inspections and such.

I do cast bullets and solder electronics. I keep it all in that garage. Kid does not go in the garage. I wash hands and clean up the area after casting. Any reason to worry?

If you do an internet search for lead poisoning, you'll get an overload of info on it...

http://www.utexas.edu/safety/ehs/msds/lead.html

Why would "they" take blood at a check up on a child? And for lead level measurements ? Is there somekind of contamination in the area where you live?

Scota4570,

Since it's not in your user profile, it might help if we knew what country you are in. (And if in the United States, then what state.) Laws can vary tremendously from state to state and, of course, from country to country.

Specifially, I'm curious about your statement: "A guy at work related a story from one of his shooting buddies who has some lead in his blood getting treated very badly by the health department, stong arm tactics and forced inspections and such."

-Bob F.

Lead can be taken up by skin contact, breathing or ingestion.

If your son has not touched anything with lead on it he cannot get it through his skin.

If he has not breathed in the vapours while you are melting lead for bullets or soldering he shouldn't be able to breath it in.

The other way people commonly get lead poisoning is from eating plants or animals with high levels of lead. As long as you dispose your lead carefully i.e. not in your garden or anywhere near a pond you should be fine.

I previously got lead poisoning. Mostly from reloading shotgun shells when young. Washing hands may not remove all the lead and I would strongly recommend wearing good quality disposable gloves. At work we use 'Nitrile' gloves and these seem to cut out all the nasty chemicals to a much grater extent than standard latex etc.

I would find it hard to believe your son would have significant levels as you actually have to be exposed to high concentrations of lead to significantly accumulate it in a short period.
regards
robe

I contacted my local health department. I live in California, USA. After much phone tag I was able to speak to the person in charge of the lead program.

If my son has lead over the threshold level,8 ug., I will be vistied by cettain people. A public health nurse, and an enviornmental health/ hasmat specialist. They will try to determine the source of the contamination.

The worst case they ever say was a situation where Dad was casting fishing sinkers and the kid way playing in the area. I cast bullets but my son does not come into the garage. Other sources are grasshoppers(eaten on purpose!), pottery, and lead paint.

I am sure all is well. No to worried. I want my boy to be healthy. If he is contaminated I want to know about it.

I just have a problem with government officials searching my house. I do have large amounts of ammunition, lead for casting, reloading supplies, and guns....really obscene amounts. I don't want to have to argue with pointy headed buerocrats about what is legal and what is not. I do not watn to see and artical in the paper out my "arsenal". I can pretty much expect to have them call the sherrif and fire marshal if they see my stash. Then more explaining......Being in law enforcement myself, I can tell you what will happen, it will be confiscated and sorted out later. Then I need to get a lawler to get my stuff back. I would be charged for hasmat teams to clean my garage. It is all an ugly mess.

A lot of this comes from domestic water supplies too. Our first 2 kids drank mostly bottled water and no problems, our third we used tap water and had trace amounts of lead show up in her. And yeah, we got the inspection too. Main thing they looked for was old paint, and since everything was recently painted not much they can do. I think just the statement that your kid does not go into the garage will suffice. However, if you are on a city water supply you may want to have a sample checked.

Oh, one more source of lead is if you have any cheap brass faucets. If you do, let the water run for a few seconds before you get water from them to drink. The lead can leach out of the brass, so let it run a bit to flush that water out.

Thanks,

I guess my biggest bitch is that the government is involved. Medical records are supposed to be confidental. I DO NOT WANT THE GOVERNMNET IN MY MEDICAL RECORD FILES. It should be up to me to take care of any problem. A government program could be there to help but only when I call them. I should not be placed at the mercy of government buerocrats against my will. It is pretty obvious that government money, grants, jobs, programs and such are involved here.

Hey bro I feel your pain. In defence of the program, it was started when the leading cause of lead poisoning was eating lead based paint chips, and not only were parents unaware of the risks but many lived in rental property and this was a way of getting the landlord to comply promptly.

Having said that, you do feel kinda violated when 3 people with clipboards walk through your house. But they should not need to go through your garage, just say your son does not "spend time in there".

When was your house built?

House built 25 years ago. No lead paint, pipes, and such. If there is a problem it is due to bullet casting. Possibly stuff being tracked into the house and eaten by him. At one time I did, foolishly, throw some dross on the back lawn. I doubt there is a problem that would be enough to show up in him though.

If there is I will clean up the garage. I would put all the lead in sealed buckets. Then sweep and mop the floor. Whipe down all the bench surfaces. Clean up all dust. Paint the walls. Paint the floor. If nothing else It would be a project I have been meaning to do to help resale value. What guy can resist a beautiful workshops? I already did the palacial bathroom project for the ladies, to help resale.

Elimating lead from gasoline was huge for cutting down enviornmental lead. As and aside, one of my good friends was an old time family physician. Practiced for over 30 years. He was also a toxicologist. He saw exactly one case of suspected lead toxicity. I think the risks are somewhat overblown.

That said I do not shoot at indoor ranges. All the ones in my area leave a sweet metallic taste in my mouth. I can never figure out how an operator can get insurance with such poor ventilation. At a private local range a couple of the guys have tested over 20. Those are the ones that clean up the indoor butts without a dust mask, or wetting the sand and lead dust. It seems that you need pretty intense exposure to make a reading on your blood.

Scott,

This happened to me a few years ago so take what I say with a grain of salt, but my hunch is that your reloading and shooting hobbies have ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with this! So don't beat yourself up at all about it. I'd do all the stuff anyway, so as you know if one of the inspectors doesn't have an agenda or anything you're OK.

My understanding is that most lead is ingested, so soldering vapors, etc aren't really the culprit but more when you don't wash your hands after handling bullets or solder. So get paranoid about that like I am. I also have a ventilation fan in the garage that I turn on when I do stuff like casting, soldering, or (heaven forbid) make chamber castings using sulphur. You can get lead test kits at the better hardware stores. The more expensive ones you can check yourself, the cheap ones you send off. You can use those if you want. I never did as I realized it was the water supply early on. Oh, if it is your water too be prepared for the pro-active group to get less active when it turn out to be a municipal problem and their only suggestion is to get a water filter (heaven forbid they tell their boss some water lines need to get dug up and replaced).

Hang in there bud!

Another source of lead contamination is indoor shooting ranges....

http://time.blogs.com/daily_rx/2005/06/lead_exposure_a.html

And the next time you think about getting a sip of water out of your PVC garden hose...think again...

http://www.ems.org/nws/2004/08/09/lawsuit_wins_pro

Do not forget. Just tell them no they can not look in the house. NO NO And NO. Get a warrent. No and what part of NO Don't you Understand. Then I would get a new doctor.

Stand up for yourself. Don't let the nanny state have there way.

And why don't you let your kid have some fun helping you cast some bullets or just watch. If they are real young having them watch for 2 or 3 bullets will not hurt anything. If they are older they can help and be told of the dangers.

We all want are kids to grow up to be responsible firearms owners by restricting them form helping with some of the fun stuff we could lose them to othere things.

See that your family gets copious amounts of vitamin C. It combines with the heavy metals, and lets you pee them out. It also flushes the other metals you need, such as zinc, copper, etc., so be sure to supplement those.

You will inhale lead dust at an indoor range. If you're doing that, you should be on C for sure.

Always wash your hands thoroughly, and wash your bench down with soap and water when you're done casting.

Nannystatism. Eccchhhh!

House built 25 years ago. No lead paint, pipes, and such. If there is a problem it is due to bullet casting.

I am not totally convinced of this Scott, there are many ways for little kids to get lead. Does he eat from glazed plates, especially ones made in China? Or cups, mugs, bowls, etc. Does he have a cheap toy painted white he chews on? Do you have any cheap plastic venetian blinds in your house? There really are SO many sources for lead contamination any more, and this is one reason why the health dept people are supposed to visit. Of course I bet the majority of them probably don't do what they are supposed to do, but that is what they are SUPPOSED to be doing, looking for sources of contamination you are not aware of.

Denton makes a good point about vitamin C, I just got in the habit of everyone taking a supplement, including me.

Anyway, hang in there and good luck. Hopefully this will be a moot point as your son will be clean!

I built my house and I moved in 1982. When I had the copper water lines put in guess what the used to solder them together "Lead" now they use lead free solder. I had no idea at the time it could be a health hazard. You might want to have your water tested for lead.

I agree on the lead solder, it is a bigger problem than most people think. The other sleeper problem is copper, if your water is acidic it can disolve the copper and it builds up in your system. I know people that had to replace their copper lines after 5 years, they started to leak and break up from their water.

From what I read if you think you have any of these troubles. You can solve it just by flushing your lines in the morning. It takes a while for the water sitting there for it to leach out. My flushing them in the morning you are letting the water that sat there all night go down the drain. Then during normal use during the day the water dosen't have enough time to leach any out.

The only lead poisoning a physician friend had ever seen was traced back to home made pottery. I was told if you don't do the glazing thing correctly, it's a disaster. Liquor/port/wine stored in lead crystal decanters is another big no/no. The acidity in the liquid leaches the lead out, AND allows it to oxydize.

Also, elemental lead is not really absorbed by the body. Lead-oxide is absorbed (and that is what was the ingredient in paint). It is also why lead vapor is more of a problem (it oxidizes somewhat readilty). You could basically eat bullets and not have a problem (body PH is such that the lead doesn't oxydize). Now if you had a gizzard like birds, and ground up the lead, different end result.... FWIW, Dutch.

Scota,

Being an old cop from a socialist state myself, I understand your concerns.

First, NEVER mention you have firearms or ammo in the house or around children to a physician. EVER!

The crusading ones will tell agencies who will snoop until they find something to hang you with. The ambivalent ones will check a box on a form and forward it to your insurance company who will immediately yank your policy. Bet on it.

As far as verbal questioning about the matter, use the term "boundary violation" and threaten to take the matter to the state board. They'll get it, you can be sure.

My heartfelt apologies and thanks to any physicians I've slighted who don't subscribe to such Nannyist policies.

Wait wait: I don't think that Scott ever said that his child had the problem. I think that he is worried about a problem that does not exist. I grew up in old houses, drank fromlead water pipes, and have cast fishing weights, bullets and lead soldiers for most of my life. I was around cars, trucks, tractors and gas stations when all you could get was lead gasoline. I painted boats with red and white lead paint. I have had my blood tested and have never been told that I had lead in it. (Other than my wife who says its in my ass, or a State trooper once who accused me of a lead foot.) If you are worried about it have the child tested. Talk to you doctor about it. I am a lawyer and I have never heard of the "State" searching a home for a lead problem.Some old rental properties yes, and then to have remedial measures taken. Now, that said, if there is a problem serious enough to warrant that kind of intrusion, you need to know it and track down the source. Health records are confidential under HIPPA rules and may only be used for health related issues.
Your gun collection, amunition storage, and reloading supplies are your business and if they have no relationship to the blood lead problem, will not be checked. The only inspection I have dealt with is a quick lead paint dust or chips, drinking water check that can be done without going into closets or under beds, or into cabinets or into the garage. If you have a problem with the health department, make them wait until you talk to your attorney. I for one would be glad to represent you in that case.
Judge Sharpe.

'Morning Judge

In re-reading Scott's post, you're right in that there's not yet a health problem. My concern was that the "potential health issue" will be used as probable cause to conduct harassment with another, non-health related objective. Regrettably, it's often done in our more "progressive" jurisdictions.

Good advice yours, to seek counsel before engaging the Health Dept. It's an easy segue from health to politics and law, witness Clinton's Center For Disease Control for example.

Cheers!

Redial