Dear all

After hearing this week some rather concerning news about the strong possibility of lead bullets being banned here in the UK, I was wondering if this ridiculous ruling is in effect in any other European country currently?

If it is, can anyone please shed any light into the rationale behind the ruling becoming legislation? I am told in the UK it is being based on lead contamination in game and the potential damaging effect it can have on unborn children. Also it is being said that it is also tied in with the pollution of the environment.

Please note my post specifically relates to lead bullets and NOT lead shot.

Any information gratefully received.

John
what a great question
intime i do believe lead bullets will be banned as will lead shot
as for using the arguments towards lead poisoning towards health issuses then you will need a pretty big lead bullet to cause enough lead contamination to give any ill effect
as you are well aware all damaged meat is dis-regarded to to health issuses and where would all the contamination lie
as a rule inside the chest cavity, as a bullet does not fragments enough to cause leads dust
just how much lead does a man need to indulge in to suffer from leads poisioning
that is more the interesting picture

I think they have been banned one of the Scandinavian countries and in the US, California has a limited ban, but the anti's seem to be intent on extending it..

Must say I'm watching this thread with interest from afar. The anti's here haven't jumped on the lead free bandwagon yet.

The only lead free bullet country I know of is Japan, and in the overall scale of their gun laws that is just the icing on the cake.

From the recent journal articles I've read on the topic, they theory has shifted from the danger of ingestion of intact bullets (by endangered raptors) to ingestion of dust fragments supposedly quickly absorbed into the blood of humans (and endangered raptors of course) consuming game meat. From memory there is an article in the Journal of European Wildlife research discussing the "relative distance travelled from the bullets path" in boar and red deer and concluding that one sprinkling of lead dust on a shoulder from a chest wound is too much for public health according to EU standards

(http://www.springerlink.com/content/cgn3m6j87731u322/?p=728bd21a533947d4925bb2ef4c2bfc89&pi=1)

Some other recent stuff you might want to look at includes:
Title: Determining Tissue-Lead Levels in Large Game Mammals Harvested with Lead Bullets: Human Health Concerns
Author(s): Tsuji LJS, Wainman BC, Jayasinghe RK, et al.
Source: BULLETIN OF ENVIRONMENTAL CONTAMINATION AND TOXICOLOGY Volume: 82 Issue: 4 Pages: 435-439 Published: APR 2009

Title: Bullet fragments in deer remains: Implications for lead exposure in avian scavengers
Author(s): Hunt WG, Burnham W, Parish CN, et al.
Source: WILDLIFE SOCIETY BULLETIN Volume: 34 Issue: 1 Pages: 167-170 Published: 2006

Not yet Italy, neither France.

If I am not mistaken (occurs) Sweden is the only country with a lead-free bullet law.

Lead is mined out of the earth.....O.K. so a bullet lands on the earth; encased in a copper jacket or a 10% lead handgun bullet.....let me contemplate this for a while.....?

Lead bullet contamination of meat that is shot is so insignificant as to hardly be measurable.

Norway hav a ban on lead in shotguns

quote:

Originally posted by Gerry:
If I am not mistaken (occurs) Sweden is the only country with a lead-free bullet law.

No such law, no such law in progress either.

I cannot believe that this thread has not had the response that I thought it would..
Should this legislation go through:

243 will become obsolete.
Shotgun shooting with cartridges costing £20 box
all rifles will have the incorrect twist for mono-metal bullets..
No shooting on military ranges!
We are aware of the problems with 22rf and richocet's, they will pale into insignificance compared to solid copper...
All your reloading manuals will be obsolete!

And do we really think as an Island with only a few thousand reloaders that the US bullets makers will spend millions in R&D on new bullets for the UK..

Forestry companies do not like copper in trees for obvious reasons...

The list is endless.

regards
griff

quote:

quote:
Originally posted by Gerry:
If I am not mistaken (occurs) Sweden is the only country with a lead-free bullet law.



No such law, no such law in progress either.

HerrB....,

See....? I told you I can F**k it up on occaison!



Thx.

Griff,

I agree completely as you know.

Shooters in this country need to realise that this is a back door way of attacking and restricting the sport, that is not only real but also current and under the radar.

I know many of us use copper bullets, and to good effect, but the effects overall on the sport are enormous.

I know for sure that if the guys on my syndicate had to use say 500+ shells a year at £1 a bang then the number of guys being able to afford the sport will be drastically reduced, not to mention the driven shoots where you might fire a large number of shots per day and the effect it will have the decision making process on taking a day or not. What about the pest control and pigeon shooting? wopuld you go decoying to fire £150 worth of cartridges? Or shoot out the drey s at the end of the season?

I'm sure people will pipe up and say that if you can afford £500 a day to shoot pheasants then you can afford the shells. But it isn't always so simple. Since petrol jumped up in price last year how many of us started taking the fuel cost into account in a days expenses when in the past it wouldn't have been considered? I know I think about how far a shoot is and whether it is worth the extra fuel to travel.

Personally I think this is probably one of the greatest and most dangerous attacks on our sport that we have ever had to deal with and the lack of coverage in the sporting press along with the lack of action by the sporting organisations is a sorry state of affairs.

Rgds
FB

quote:

Originally posted by Fallow Buck:


Personally I think this is probably one of the greatest and most dangerous attacks on our sport that we have ever had to deal with and the lack of coverage in the sporting press along with the lack of action by the sporting organisations is a sorry state of affairs.

Rgds
FB

+1
no one likes to back a loser but with out the backing we can only lose
the sporting media should be with us , not against

Strewth people! Dont you have any good enviro scientists in your ranks that can be contracted to produce some journal articles to counter the above cited works? If you dont start disputing the science early on and within the same fora there will only be the anti's data available when the bureaucrats decide they should look into it.

Griff, unfortunately I doubt you'll be alone for long as I'm sure the same domino effect that followed bans on lead shot for waterfowl will occur throughout the western world

Richard,

The sporting press can only react to the information that is provided to it, mainly through the shooting organisations. I'm not sure if I'm mistaken but I don't remember anything mentioned in BASC's own publication letalone the wider press.

I have spoken to a couple of editors inthe industry and they have said that they have no knowledge that such plans are afoot, and as soon as they heard about it they were quickly trying to gather the info.

Our reprasentative organisations should be shouting from the parapet the bring this issue to the forefront of shooters minds and make them realise how importasnt this is. Instead we get radio silence and sold out yet again by the precious few.

GBE,

As was put to me the other day; "The science is all well annd good, but the quasi-Science is better!!" basicaly it is a widely accepted notion that lead is BAD. so if people ban lead on the grounds of it's effect on the environment, unborn babies, global warming and whatever else they are able pin on it, they are not attacking our sport, they are just impacting it severely.

I can hear it now. "Dear Mr Deer Stalker, we have no problem with your activities but lead is bad. Sureley there is an alternative? what... No viable alternative? what a shame...."

We need to be carefull not to make out that lead is the only suitable material because otherwise we are handing all the arguments to the antis for why copper bullets are bad for deer. They will just turn our arguments on us down the line and use them to further restrict the sport.

I suppose you know what side of the fence I'm on!!

FB

We need to attack the achilles heel of the powers that be: health and safety.

Mono metal bullets are dangerous:

Over penetration
Ricochet
Danger to foresters if they end up in trees

Use the states own stick to beat them...

The other concern to me is the speed at which it is said this may become legislation. The source has said within 12 months possibly but even if that is an overly pessimistic view it is estimated to be no more than 2 to 3 years away.

How enforceable would this law be? Could it be another dangerous dogs act or hunting with hounds etc? What I am saying is how would this be policed? Perhaps by stopping purchase of lead bullets at source as in your FAC permission will only allow you to purchase expanding mono metal bullets?

Whatever the answers it would put a total downer on proceedings. As FB says this is one of the biggest attacks on shooting we have ever experienced. I always thought it would be a new gun control law that would effect things as per Hungerford or Dunblane but we are talking about something more fundamental which would put so many restrictions on us going about our daily business in terms of cost and inconvenience etc that it would pretty much finish the job.

As is said above, if the Americans developed a bullet using an alternative material to safely replace lead then great, but there is no way they are going to invest the time and expense to make this become a reality just because 0.0001% of their total sales is effected.

Also Barnes TSX seem to be the way forward but if using something like E Tips you can experience extreme pressure spikes sometimes with even moderate loads due to the profile and length of bullet. It's just somewhere I don't want to be forced to go.

The trouble with H&S legislation is that it is a very blunt instrument.

Lead levels in a shoulder bone hit deer may well be detectable in that shoulder, in the hams or fillets for example there would be none.

The idea in my head is that lead would be considered in this scenario as a contaminant in the same way as, say, a deer with a open wound falling into sillage. The carcass would be inspected in the normal way and if decided to be contaminated would be rejected.

the same idea for lead would be difficult to argue agaisnt, especially incircumstances where lead contamination would be a lot more localised and immobile than for example rumen-bourne bacterial contamination.

quote:

Originally posted by Claret_Dabbler:
We need to attack the achilles heel of the powers that be: health and safety.

Mono metal bullets are dangerous:

Over penetration
Ricochet
Danger to foresters if they end up in trees

Use the states own stick to beat them...

Brian this is my point. Your argument does not mean that we don't ban lead, it just means that they will say once lead is banned then H+S will ban the use of solid copper too...

Unfortunately logic rarely prevails in these cases but I'm sure we should be doing everything in our power to fight it.

Rgds,
FB

My only contribution to this is clay shooting (for obvious reasons)

I know for a fact that the CPSA in UK have been given a period of 05 years started some 10 montrhs ago to comlpy. During this period they have to produce evidence, suggest alternative and also to come back with a consultative document so that our goverment (whatever is left of it to decide if they will comply fully or partically with an EEC directive. I don't know about the hunting or rifle shooting but in clay shooting we have 4.5 years left and the clock is ticking ...............

Also on clay side manufacturer of clays such as La porte and C.C.I have been forced (very) quietly to change their bonding agent so that it is biodegradable. I understand this bumped up their cost by at least 15% so far. Shooting grounds owners did not want to publish this fact and I was actually at that meeting. Only some ground increased their cost of rounds. You might have noticed recently.

Being both rifle shooter and a "wannabe" clay buster, I can see the writing is all over the wall. There is actually amazing amount of movement to resist this from the CPSA but relatively little from the NRA.

You folks will know that in a few years time there will be no N.R.A. and no C.P.S.A.

This new organisation Nacrss or something to that effect has got to fight this proposed EEC directive SOON if not our sport will be in dire trouble.

Again the talk on the ground is enforcement is an issue..........you know what I mean by that

my 03 pence worth....

wannabe clay shooter./....

quote:

http://www.springerlink.com/content/cgn3m6j87731u322/?p=728bd21a533947d4925bb2ef4c2bfc89&pi=1

I've read this article and, whilst it does highlight the potential dangers of eating meat taken from within 30cm of the path between the entry and exit wounds, it is not a solid enough scientific platform to build legislation on.
The sample sizes are small statistically and the variation in animal weight within them large.
This applies to both species, only ten animals per sample.
There is no indication as to whether they were all shot at the same ranges.
The author admits that bullet choice was down to the hunter and is an unknown.
The author does not say whether the bullet track through the animal was the same in all cases.

This article indicates that there is a problem to be addressed if the intention is for food from animals killed in this way is destined to enter the retail food chain.
However, I would expect the EU to use articles of this type as a springboard for further research before bringing in legislation.
There are too many unknowns here for this to be more than a signpost in my opinion.

Trapper Dave,
Thanks for reading the article. As you've said it has major flaws and reads to me like the product of an honours or similiar undergrad study. It is now time to produce our own info before such articles become taken as gospel. From what I saw we failed to take control of the lead in waterfowl "research agenda" in the early stages and we've paid for it ever since.

The authors do not attempt to mislead:
"The animals sampled had been shot with bullets that
differed in many characteristics, including the extent of
mushrooming; all the bullets, however, were routinely used
to kill the wild boar and red deer. The relationship between
the bullet type and lead content in tissues around the bullet
pathway was not included in the analysis, although it is a
factor very important for the extent of contamination. The
study was meant primarily to emphasize the problem of
game animals’ contamination by lead bullets, irrespective
of bullet type. The bullet selection was primarily a matter of
a hunter’s decision. The tissue samples were collected from
red deer and wild boar shot by hunters using lead bullets
made by various manufacturers."

And wisely does not attempt to draw statistical conclusions from the samples.
The Boar ranged from 26 - 86 Kg in weight
& the Red Deer from 88 - 116 Kg.
The amount of lead contamination varies considerably between individuals but with the higher concentrations showing in the bigger bodyweights although in nearly all cases, contamination at the 30cm distance from the wound is within EU guidelines.
The references cited range from those concerning ingestion of lead from the environment to those concerning contamination from shooting, quite a broad spectrum. Many references are Polish, leading one to wonder whether there is a research department specialising in this area.
The analytic techniques seem standard.
It's a creditable piece of work.
I'm not sure its worth a Masters on its own since there are too many loose ends/unexplored issues arising.
Its the kind of paper you might publish to stimulate interest in further work and hope to generate research funds from

Trapper,
I have different evidence!
I have 26 pictures of fallow that have been
x-rayed, and all show extensive lead bullet fragmentation.All taken from dealers randomly through out the country..
Furthest fragmentation is 45cm from POI.

regards
griff

Griff,
I'd be interested to see those pictures if you could e-mail them.
They support the author's contention that there is an issue to be addressed.

The problem for this BB is that there is a vast gulf between the highlighting of the issue and the production of any scientific defence as others here request.

If you factor in the number of European Deer Legal calibres, the number of possible bullet weights and heads, the range of loads, the number of shootable species, a representative sample of the shooting ranges covered, the bodyweight ranges of target animals etc etc.......you get some idea of the number of tests that would have to be performed to put together a comprehensive package of counter science.

I suspect many manufacturers have a lot of this data already, produced when they developed their bullet heads. Whether they are prepared to share it is a different matter.

If you look at the article in question again, I'm not sure whether the issue is as big as is being viewed.
Take this section:
"All the animals examined showed the highest level of
contamination to be typical of the tissues surrounding the
maximum expansion of the bullet pathway, i.e., around
the mushrooming site. That site could be located close to
the entry or the exit wound.
Assuming a sufficiently high bullet velocity, the bullet
pathway in heavy animals (adult wild boar, adult red deer)was relatively long. The resistance of skin and cohesive
tissues as well as the hardness of bones caused the bullet to
mushroom the most near the entry wound, thus causing the
highest contamination of the tissues surrounding that
wound (Fig. 1)."
Fig 1 is a drawing showing an expanding and contracting cone of tissue contamination surrounding a cone of damage around the bullet path. The article is a little too light on the methodology here and the authors do not explain how they undertook this part of the study.

The point I'm getting to here is that they show most contamination within the body cavity. In practical terms, that means that the meat on the limbs and fillets are largely uncontaminated and its the offal that is most exposed to contamination.

So, there is an issue here, but, unless there is a market for Umbel Pie, is there really a problem warranting several £M worth of research to counter?

Griff, would be great if you could post some of those pictures. Sounds fairly damning unfortunately...

Lead contamination of venison/wild game around the bullet path in the carcass, has never been adressed here in Norway as far as I know.

When the Swedes put banning of led bullets on the agenda, the reason was fear of lead pollution of the nature/hunting fields.
Fortunately their new Concervative Government put the proposal where it belongs, in the dust bin. (correct me if I´m wrong).

The total banning of led shots in Norway was because of fear of polluting both birds/small game and nature.

quote:

So, there is an issue here, but, unless there is a market for Umbel Pie, is there really a problem warranting several £M worth of research to counter?

Dave,

Stop trying to look at this logically. The push for a lead ban is simply another indirect attack by the Anti's on gun ownership and hunting/pest control...

They are not interested in "science" or the actual risks involved, rather they just want to drive another nail in our way of life...

Regards,

Peter

Pete,
My apologies. FB keeps telling me I think too much as well.
Must lighten up a little.

On the other hand, if the Antis think they can float legistlation through on the back of that little sieve, I've got news for them!

Dave,

My post wasn't a dig at you at all mate; just the anti's get right up my nose with theirscare mongering

We all know lead bullets have been used for hunting since black powder days..

How many people do you know who've actually been confirmed to have elevated levels of lead (let alone lead poisoning) from eating game?

Lead is actually very inert stuff, andfrom a shooters perspective, when used with common sense poses no significant risks...

Regards,

Peter

"How many people do you know who've actually been confirmed to have elevated levels of lead (let alone lead poisoning) from eating game?"

Dammit Pete,
You mean to say my hair falling out is due to age and infirmity after all?

Yes here DK Denmark we’re not allowed to use lead at all, and in wood we're not allowed to use steel so it's either bismuth- tungsten or tin.
For my 20 bore drilling it’s only lead or steel that has acceptable pattern and speed

quote:

243 will become obsolete.

So the possibility of a ban on lead bullets is not all bad

quote:

Originally posted by Trapper Dave:
Pete,
My apologies. FB keeps telling me I think too much as well.
Must lighten up a little.

On the other hand, if the Antis think they can float legistlation through on the back of that little sieve, I've got news for them!

Dave Legislation has been passed on less science than this!!! If they managed to get a waterfowl ban on the basis of the lead that wasn't in the game I'm sure this is emotive enought to get the job done here.

The guys in the know on this, who for whatever reasons cannot be seen to speak out, have already said this will happen fast. It's been tabled and has backing enough to take it to a legislative level.

Perhaps I'm turning into a bit of a cynic, It's probabl the company I keep but I think that the overall agenda is against us and so we need five imes the eve=icdence in our defense than our attackers need in their quest for legislation.

FB

One thing I heard on Radio 4 this week was that no new legislation can be passed before the next general election so we could atleast have best part of a 12 month reprieve and this may allow BASC etc to research enough to provide a convincing counter arguement.

I called the BASC media center about this on wednesday. Not sure who I spoke to but he was plummy and said that there is no legslation a foot and this is nothing to be concerned about

This conflicts wildly with what I have been told.

"so we need five times the evidence in our defense than our attackers need in their quest for legislation."
"12 month reprieve and this may allow BASC etc to research enough to provide a convincing counter arguement."

There's the rub. Even if we started now, we'd need approaching millions in funds to research all the variables. Time to gather the data, time to do the analysis, time to submit to the journals, time for peer review and only then are the publications considered acceptable science.
Typically you are looking at 2-3 years of lead time between inception and publication, sometimes longer.

FB, you are right. It isn't a level playing field and the science that drove the lead ban was mostly based upon waterfowl picking up angling weights and ingesting them so that they got ground up in the gizzard.
Shooting waterfowl got sucked into this as a side issue.
However, DEFRA/Natural England is currently funding research to check compliance and are paying to have samples of shot waterfowl offered for sale analysed for type of shot used.
So, having got a law in place, it seems that the science that put it there goes largely unquestioned whereas compliance testing keeps bureaucrats and eurocrats in cosy jobs if they can keep the issues alive.

Sorry it's only the lead shot that's banned in DK, but over the last years they've been working on a lead bullet ban in Sweden, but until now it has been revoked.

quote:

Originally posted by BlaserGun:
Yes here DK Denmark we’re not allowed to use lead at all, and in wood we're not allowed to use steel so it's either bismuth- tungsten or tin.
For my 20 bore drilling it’s only lead or steel that has acceptable pattern and speed

quote:

Originally posted by BlaserGun:
Sorry it's only the lead shot that's banned in DK, but over the last years they've been working on a lead bullet ban in Sweden, but until now it has been revoked.

quote:

Originally posted by BlaserGun:
Yes here DK Denmark we’re not allowed to use lead at all, and in wood we're not allowed to use steel so it's either bismuth- tungsten or tin.
For my 20 bore drilling it’s only lead or steel that has acceptable pattern and speed

Bjarne, what reason was given to ban lead shot but not in a rifle bullet, would be interesting to know the justification in that?

quote:

Originally posted by nightwalker uk:
Bjarne, what reason was given to ban lead shot but not in a rifle bullet, would be interesting to know the justification in that?

As I recon it was at 1st step by the reason of poisoning of our waterfowl/ wading bird areas and afterwards it was a 100% ban because the just don’t want the lead in our nature.

The bad thing about it was when they banned the lead shot in 96 there was not any other good options, but now 10 years after it look’s better, only thing is that some researcher has now stated that bismuth is maybe toxic to the human body

The exact ban is here from our government

So my guess would be that the next step is a lead bullet ban, for hunting I don't have any problems with that as I use Barnes bullets in all my rifles but for target shooting

In Sweden lead is banned for shotguns in wetland/lake hunting.

Most clayshooting ranges(without leadcollector).

Shooting and hunt clubs have to reduse lead use or we will have a lead ban for rifle and handguns to.(Promise from the goverment)

quote:

Originally posted by Nordic2:
In Sweden lead is banned for shotguns in wetland/lake hunting.

Most clayshooting ranges(without leadcollector).

Shooting and hunt clubs have to reduse lead use or we will have a lead ban for rifle and handguns to.(Promise from the goverment)

That’s a similar ban here in DK except from that we’re not allowed at all to use lead at all on clay pigeon shooting, there is as I’m aware of only one shooting range in DK where they are allowed to use lead when there’s championships with other countries