Lead Poisoning

[klw]

I've had minor lead levels in my blood for more years than I can remember. I'd have a blood test ever few years and the levels were never anything to worry about. Would probably cast at most once a week. Maybe less.

When I retired, however, I started casting a lot more. Three two hour casting sessions every single week. Finally it occurred to me that I probably should have my blood lead levels tested again. The values were up. Never hit 30 but they were up.

I've always kept details records of my casting sessions. I also know when I went shooting so I can correlate my blood lead levels to my trips to the range and my casting sessions. Once I did that the cause for the occasional rise in my blood lead levels was obvious. Everytime I cast a lot, three or more times a week for several weeks or months in a row, my lead levels shot up. When I didn't do this, when I stuck to just one casting study a week, the blood lead levels either stayed where they were or dropped slightly.

I highest my blood lead levels ever got was 28. I stopped casting for three months. The lead levels dropped like a brick. So taking time off REALLY helps.

And there is another thing that helps, good ventilation. If I just cast in the garage with the door up my lead levels would inch up over six months. When I put a big fan right behind my furnace and right in front of a large window and had the garage door open my lead levels dropped slightly. But when I used the fan but went back to casting almost every day my lead levels started back up. They didn't go up a lot but they went up.

So if you have lead levels in the 20's I'd strongly suggest not casting for three months. I'd also suggest a fan right behind your furnace blowing the stuff out a window. And I'd have an air intake somehere else. Finally I'd suggest not casting more than once a week.

I get into trouble when it has been awhile since I've had a lead blood level test. I clearly forget the problem because I want to cast a lot. So I do. And after I've done that for a couple of months my lead level starts inching up again.

But I think that lead posioning can be minimized if you are a bullet caster. You'll never completely get rid of it but you can clearly minimize it. Cast no more frequently than once per week. Have good ventilation. Wash your hands a lot.

[725]

I'm around 3 or 4. Good ventilation, don't eat or drink, wash my hands, and even wear gloves once in awhile. You hit the "28's" and you need to look at your system more closely.

[mooman76]

I believe you get more lead contamination from handling lead rather than from breathing in vapors. Some say you don't get the actual vapors unless the lead is hot enough to be at or near biling which is way hot. Also you might get some from indoor range where that allow lead bullets to be shot, that is if you spend allot of time there.

[TAWILDCATT]

HERE WE GO AGAIN:I am 84 been casting since 1939.had 45 reading once.I blamed leaded gas as I washed parts in gas.and in service we washed our 50s and 30s in av gas.best bet is to take iron or zinc suppliments.last check up I had 9 reading.the doctors dont know much about the problem.as it is not unless it gets to 60.dont eat/drink/smoke and wash your hands,and change clothes.there are no "lead fumes"untill lead gets to white hot.the rest is dirt.this discusion is all over and more bull than any thing.it maninly is a problem when children eat the window sills.:coffeecom [smilie=1:

[Pepe Ray]

Surprise lead sources will invariably be more responsible for contamination than found in the average casters set up.

1. In some parts of the country lead is found naturally in the ground water.

2. A careless plumber can introduce a source in your copper domestic water lines.

3. Indoor shooting (even with wax boolets) will increase your levels because of lead in the primer mix.

4. Changing your ingestion habits because of specific activities will introduce unusual items (different source of water because of location) which contain lead oxide. OH yes, it's the OXIDE of lead that is the real danger. Lead itself is nearly inert. That is "non reactionary". The reasons why it's used for radioactive shielding and around acids and batteries etc.

Your must be a detective to find your actual source of contamination. Don't panic just because your handling lead. The PROPAGANDER is working.
Pepe Ray

[NSP64]

I saw on the discovery channel that if you take in more Iron then that lowers your lead levels.

[Russel Nash]

Just an FYI... pardon the thread drift....

one girlfriend had a cat or dog which got sick all of a sudden.

The vet said it was lead poisoning.

Since one of my bullets didn't show up in the X-rays of its internals, I headed off to Home Depot to get a do it yourself lead test kit.

I tried it on the Christmas tree.

A'yup, turns out the artificial tree and or the lights were covered in lead.

After Christmas, the tree and lights got packed up and the critter was never sick again.

[dakotashooter2]

I don't think one can make "blanket statements" about how to handle lead. Like anything else each body absorbs and processes it a bit differently. Some people can get maximum exposure yet recieve little impact while others experience the opposite. The best thing is to have a base line test done then a few test during the course of your casting to determine where you are at.

A couple years back I had some blood work come back with some unsettling results. The blood work was redone with the same results. I was sent to an oncologist and was tested again and everthing came back fine. During the second session of bloodwork I had asked to have my lead levels checked. I came back at 10 and my doctor never gave it a second thought. During my discussion with the oncologist I questioned my lead level and mentioned I had been doing quite a bit of casting about a month before my initial blood work. He immediately told me that was the likely cause of the problems with my intitial blood work. He advised me to take some additional precautions and I have not had any issues since. Given the timeline of the testing IF my lead level had been high it must have dropped very rapidly once I quit casting.


:castmine:

[Russel Nash]

One of the quickest ways to get anything into your bloodstream is to inhale fine particles of it.

Just think about coke-heads snorting lines of coke.

My point is that the same people who cast are also the same people who reload.

They tumble their brass, and in the course of separating the media from the brass they inhale the dust. I bet 90% of the people out there who reload don't give a second thought as to how they separate out the media and/or what precautions they should take.

I always wear a dust mask when emptying the tumbler and spinning it in the media seperator.

One of these days I will splurge and get the Cabela's seperator. I hear it is fully enclosed.

I always wash my hands after that too.

[piwo]

I wear gloves and a dust mask when smelting (freaking lead pipes got #### in em) and wear gloves when casting. I cast indoors, but have stove pipe 3 inches over the pot with induction fan drawing up fumes and such. I've tested at 2 the past 3 years. Having said that, my next lead testing (which is once annually combined with my cholesterol testing) is coming up at the end of this month!. I'm going to try and cast regularly from now till then, just to see how my precautions are faring........

[Tippet]

I think I'll wear a full body-condom and breath through a respirator when I cast. Hope it doesn't take the fun out of it.

[BD]

Sorry for the long post, and for repeating myself if you've heard this before. I've been watching my lead levels for more than 20 years. Along the way I've heard the opinions and advice of about 10 physicians and clinicians concerning lead poisoning. Some of them made sense to me.

I started working in a body shop at age 13 sanding classic cars, many of which had lead filler in the bodywork. I also did a fair amount of remodeling work as a youngster including lead work on Terne roofing and scraping and sanding lead based paint on older homes. In those days we used "red lead" as scratch filler, which actually did have lead oxide in it as opposed to the nitrostan which replaced it in the early '70s. I think my first lead level test was at age 17 after another older guy working at the shop had a result in the 50's. I figure I had 10 years of exposure through this period and my levels stayed in the high teens. It took ten additional years after this exposure was stopped for them to come down into the low teens.

At about age 40, with my lead level at 10, I started shooting more and casting boolits. My lead levels stayed around 10-12 for five years. Then I shot one year of indoor Bullseye league and my next test was 48 which brought a letter from the state. I stopped shooting indoors, but kept casting and shooting outdoors. And I really started to pay attention to my sources of exposure. Two years later I tested at 9. The basic changes in my shooting and reloading were that I only shot outdoors, I washed my brass in soapy water before it went in the tumbler, and I was very careful when handling stuff like metal plate targets and stuff at the target end of the range. I even cleaned out the lead from the bullet traps at the local indoor range with Pepe Ray and smelted about 400 lb of it with no increase in my lead levels. But we were careful.

I moved to South Carolina at the age of 50 where the only ranges within an hour were indoors. I joined a "Five Star rated" range with brand new "state of the art" air handling equipment and shot 1 hour a week on average. Within a year my levels went up to 18 or 19.

As a result of these experiences I have come to several conclusions:

1. It's the oxides and salts of lead which get into your bloodstream most readily. For shooters this risk is two fold: lead dust particles which have been exposed long enough to oxidize and are fine enough to be stirred into the air, or inconspicuously picked up on our skin; and lead styphanate dust from primers which is expelled out of the barrel and action from every shot and contaminates the air, gun, brass and finally the tumbler media.

2. Short term exposure with elevated blood levels can be addressed readily by avoiding the source and stopping the exposure. If you monitor your levels on a yearly basis you can address the issue before the blood levels lead to accumulated levels in your bone marrow. Long term exposure, even at low levels, results in an accumulation of lead compounds in tissue which takes much longer to come back down once the exposure has been stopped and may require more active treatment such as chelation therapy.

I think a good idea would be a biannual test for folks whose levels have been generally low and an annual test for folks who have experienced levels above the low teens, or who have had long term exposure at some point in the past. It doesn't do any good to get excited about it. You need to think logically about your sources of exposure, and take logical measures to limit them. And I've seen no evidence that casting boolits in and of itself is part of the problem. It's the dust and particulates that poison you, not the metal in the pot, or the boolits themselves.

Avoid indoor ranges or wear a real dust filter if the indoor range is your only choice. Wash your brass before tumbling it. Clean your hands after handling contaminated stuff. And wash down the area where you cast and load once in a while. Follow these simple guidlines and IMHO casting and shooting should have no more effect on your health than driving, or breathing the air in a large public building.

BD

[Springfield]

My level dropped from 13 back down to 8 and all I really did was to stop tumbling my brass in an enclosed space. And I cast thousands of bullets a week. I also try and remember to bring gloves if I am going to be handling steel targets, they are covered with lead splatter.

[Lloyd Smale]

I no longer like talking about it on the internet as the bad guys patrol these forms and im sure they get ammo for there fight from these discusions.

[Tom Herman]

OH yes, it's the OXIDE of lead that is the real danger. Lead itself is nearly inert. That is "non reactionary". The reasons why it's used for radioactive shielding and around acids and batteries etc.



Hi Pepe Ray,

The reason Lead and its compounds is used for radiation shielding has nothing to do with its being inert. Elements with a high atomic number, or Z, (Lead, Bismuth, Uranium, Tungsten, Gold) have the ability to better stop radiation than elements with smaller atomic numbers.

Happy Shootin'! -Tom

[Tom Herman]

I saw on the discovery channel that if you take in more Iron then that lowers your lead levels.

Yep, it makes sense. Iron can form complex compounds (Chelates) that will bind with heavy metals and flush them out of your bloodstream.

Happy Shootin'! -Tom

[JohnH]

I no longer like talking about it on the internet as the bad guys patrol these forms and im sure they get ammo for there fight from these discusions.

Agreed but for different reasons. I figure if you are overly concerned about lead poisonig, then don't cast. The best way to decide if lead poisoning is a real threat is to ask this question; "How many people have I ever met that suffered from it"? In 50 years, I've met a grand total of one. He ran an auto body repair shop beginning in the 40's when they used lead to fill dents. His hands shook as though he had Parkinsons disease. He would tell you that he never wore any breathing protection and he often ate without throughly washing, and he had a habit of licking his fingers as he counted money. In addition, one must consider in his case that lead was a common component of paints in those days.

And though I have known many plumbers from those days as well, I've not met the first who suffered from lead poisoning. I remember vividly watching as my Uncle and Dad plumbed our house using a gas fired blow torch to melt the lead they used to join the cast iron drain lines and to sweat the copper lines. Those skills were once as common as using PVC and glue is today. Consider that 50/50 lead tin was replaced by 95/5 tin /antimony to sweat copper water pipe because of fear of lead poisoning. Yet how many peole live in homes using 50/50 sweat copper pipe for drinking water? (Almost all that are 15 or more years of age with copper lines) Were any of them poisoned?

And gee, I wonder what became of all those kids who once cast up all their toy soldiers, cowboy and indians from lead.... Oh, they are our parents, grand parents, aunts, uncles, cousins and even ourselves on occasion. We are prolly in far more danger of lead in our bodies from air and water pollution from industrial sources than from casting. How far from you is the nearest coal fired electric plant? How are they disposing of their ash? If you are within 50 miles do you have a well? If so, you may want to have the water tested.

I figure far more people are killed by bad medical practice than by lead poisoning each year and the threat certainly ain't as high as dying in an automoble is.....