Are ingots hazardous?

[Gunslinger]

When you've smelted WW (or any other kind of lead) into ingots to they still have lead dust on them? Is it necessary to wash your hands if you want to show a buddy an ingot? Or are the ingots perfectly safe once cold?

One of my good friends finds it very exciting that I cast my own. She also finds metallurgy exciting, so I plan on giving her an ingot sometime... I just wanna be sure I'm not putting her in any danger :roll:

[Wayne Smith]

Are boolits hazardous? To handle, I mean? An ingot is no more hazardous. Washing hands after handling any hazardous substance is only common sense. She needs to learn these basic lessons if she is interested in metallurgy.

Dangerous? Yes, if hit over the head with one!

[44man]

Wash hands after handling any lead in any form.

[Recluse]

Are ingots hazardous?

I dropped a five-pound ingot on a bare foot one time in the younger days. Did the immediate Dance of Indignant Pain While Speaking In Tongues. [smilie=1:

One smelting session, I was striving for the prefect ingot and using my Lyman ingot mould, finally got several really nice ones. Wanted to have some for paper weights on my desk.

Got to thinking about handling the thing and the lead and all that stuff. Went to a home improvement store and got a can of clear spray laquer, gave the ingots a moderate coat, and that was that.

:coffee:

[Calamity Jake]

Yap Wayne pretty well summed it up, just wash after handling lead.

The only way you will get lead dust is to grind on it or handle lead that has been weathered and has lead oxide on it(white Powder), the oxides and grind particals are heaver than air and will rapidly fall the ground.

Again just wash after handling lead.

[Boerrancher]

I don't buy into all of the lead hazard hype, and think that much of it over the years has come from the eco anti gun nuts. There is no doubt that if ingested in large amounts it is harmful as it is a metal. I find it interesting that when these studies on lead first started it was lead based paints that was used in the projects and public housing, and it was causing low I.Q.'s Living near the lead belt and having quite a bit of lead and tiff(the stuff lead paint contained) buried in the ground around here, no one has lower I.Q.'s. The town of Herculanium has the largest lead smelter in the state and the folks that have lived there for generations working the mines are not drooling on themselves. When I was a kid you could still buy the little lead soldier kits at hobby shops. I don't know of any of the older kids that had them turn out any more brain damaged than any other kid when they hit their teenage years. Common sense folks, common sense. It would seem in this day and age it is a lot less common.

Best wishes from the Boer Ranch,

Joe

[docone31]

When I was younger, we used to go in the spring to the local fishing hole. We had lead split shot sinkers. My father showed me how to bite the sinker to clamp it on the line. I used to keep a sinker in my mouth all the time while fishing. Kinda like chewing gum.
I also used to collect mercury. I would go to the dump and get switches. They were glass tubes that had contacts and mercury. It would tip and complete a circuit. I collected the mercury and used to watch it roll around on my palm. I would seperate it into small balls and it would roll together.
I have been tested for both. Nada.
Hmmmm.
I did that a lot when I was younger.

[RustyFN]

Are ingots hazardous?
Yes, smelting WW's into ingots leads to casting. Casting is very addictive and a little casting will lead to more. The next thing you know you will be like a crack head and be up all night casting, it never seems to end. Excuse me I have to go heat up my pot.:mrgreen:
Rusty

[Dan Cash]

Gunslinger, you ask if lead ingots are hazzardous and I regret to tell you that they are deadly. You must immediately package them up and ship them to me so they may be safely and officially disposed of. :-)

[Baron von Trollwhack]

Recluse has it..............but this thread is one to have a little fun with.

Example: Lew Wetzel, of pioneer fame would hold several RB in his mouth in times of danger as he had perfected the survival art of loading his musket while running. Despite the "lead in mouth", running with a loaded a gun, and frontier skirmishes, he lived to an advanced old age. For some, It won't be the lead that gets them, or the paint chips ingested as a child, more likely the problems of a crack deal gone bad.

BvT

[jonk]

Lead is fairly inert. If you don't boil it hot enough to give off gas, or ingest it, you'll never have issues.

I do wash my hands after handling in case I go eat something and forget, but I'm fairly sure that you could hold that ingot till the cows come home and without some heavy solvents that can penetrate the skin acting on it, it would never go through your skin.

[jcwit]

Lead hazardous? Not sure, but now we know why all of you are so obsessed with casting.

[Gunslinger]

Gunslinger, you ask if lead ingots are hazzardous and I regret to tell you that they are deadly. You must immediately package them up and ship them to me so they may be safely and officially disposed of. :-)

Ha ha I knew it was only a matter of time before someone would say something like that :-D.

.... an no, you can't have it... it's all mine mine mine......

[montana_charlie]

Boerrancher and docone31 said it the way I would have...
CM

[leftiye]

Depends how hard someone hits you with the ingot as to whether they are hazardous. (Nope, no dust on a freshly cast ingot - any kind of dust)

[44man]

Lead is fairly inert. If you don't boil it hot enough to give off gas, or ingest it, you'll never have issues.

I do wash my hands after handling in case I go eat something and forget, but I'm fairly sure that you could hold that ingot till the cows come home and without some heavy solvents that can penetrate the skin acting on it, it would never go through your skin.
That is the reason. Wash before eating or stuffing a new chew in. Just getting it on your hands won't hurt you.

[Sierra Shooter]

I have a friend that ownes a tire shop. He will sell me his used wheel weights by the five gallon bucket. Can anyone give me a fair price, per five gallon bucket, of wheel weights?

[Huntducks]

I don't buy into all of the lead hazard hype, and think that much of it over the years has come from the eco anti gun nuts. There is no doubt that if ingested in large amounts it is harmful as it is a metal. I find it interesting that when these studies on lead first started it was lead based paints that was used in the projects and public housing, and it was causing low I.Q.'s Living near the lead belt and having quite a bit of lead and tiff(the stuff lead paint contained) buried in the ground around here, no one has lower I.Q.'s. The town of Herculanium has the largest lead smelter in the state and the folks that have lived there for generations working the mines are not drooling on themselves. When I was a kid you could still buy the little lead soldier kits at hobby shops. I don't know of any of the older kids that had them turn out any more brain damaged than any other kid when they hit their teenage years. Common sense folks, common sense. It would seem in this day and age it is a lot less common.

Best wishes from the Boer Ranch,

Joe

:drinks: right on.

I was a plumber for 30 years melted and poured more lead joints then you could beleave no lead problems here well maybe a lot in my a$$.

[mpmarty]

Sierra Shooter, friends don't charge friends for buckets of wheel weights. Last five gallon bucket of WW I bought from the local tire shop was $50.00 a week ago.[smilie=1:

[rhead]

If there was some way to check the blood lead levels of high school graduates as they were getting ready for the sat's for the last 30 years and chart the average against the average scores for the same period you could probably have congress demanding that lead wheel weights be passed out free with every meal. It would be obvious that low levels od lead in the blood was causing brain damage. The same could be proved for mercury, DDT, or many other things. Statistics are meaningless by themselves.

[jcwit]

Remember back in the 50's being told not to eat snow because of fallout. Somehow we all managed to get through it and grow old.

[Beerd]

I have a friend that ownes a tire shop. He will sell me his used wheel weights by the five gallon bucket. Can anyone give me a fair price, per five gallon bucket, of wheel weights?

trade him donuts, pizza or (gasp!) beer
..

[carpetman]

jcwit---that was don't eat yellow snow and it still holds true today.

[The Dove]

Do not eat lead!!! Do Not suck on lead!!! If you handle lead, wash your hands before you suck your fingers!!! At least that's what I think??? Let's think about something, do you fish? If so do you wash your hands after each time you put a sinker on your line? Just use a little judgement and call it good.

The Dove

[Heavy lead]

They are pretty hazardous if you hit somebody upside the head with them too.

[jcwit]

No it was do not eat the snow because of fallout. We also had warnings about drinking to much milk because of fallout.

Back to the lead issue, its found in nature, is a natural element. Granted it can be hazardous, as can arsenic and many other elements. Common sense, common sense should prevail if that is possible in todays world.

[azrednek]

It is my understanding it is lead oxide is what is hazardous when handling lead. Washing hands after handling lead ingots or using gloves just makes good sense. In the early 70's when I sold new wheel weights, the weights were coated with an oily and waxy substance that often stained the inside of the box. Our back-up supplier's weights were painted.

I'm assuming the reason the weights were coated was to prevent and block the lead oxide but the coating may have been done simply to add a cosmetic appearance to keep the weights looking new. Most tire shops would use new weights on the outside of the rim and used weights were often used on the inside of the rim. I'm speculating again but I assume if the customer paid for wheel balancing and saw used weights there might be some doubt if the wheels were really balanced.

[docone31]

I am no chemist, however I knew a few.
With what little knowlege I have over the process, it is Tetra-Methyl Lead that is the culprit.
This is by no means saying, toss out common sense. Lead is toxic and builds up. We are finding expeditions where they are finding lead cans still containing food in outback expeditions. Early pioneers used lead as their plates to eat off of, the Romans had lead pipes for plumbing, hence pb is lead.
I will tell you what though, molten lead can burn.!
If proper precautions are taken, I am sure lead can be handled safely.
Better to be safe than sorry.

[mold maker]

The biggest danger we face with lead, is the dusty crud that floats on the fresh smelt. Most of this is lead oxide. When stiring to flux, or removing the dusty slag, be extra careful not to breath any of that dust. That which is airborn is fine enough to be disolved in the lungs and goes strait to the blood stream.
I worry a lot more about 700* lead rain, from the tinsil fairy than what is on my ingots. If you worry about it, oil or wax them, to stop the oxide from forming. It'll act like flux when ya remelt them.
By the way, I too must have quiet a lot of lead in my a$$. I sure have slowed down in the last few years.

[snaggdit]

Sierra Shooter, since you are in Kali, you are kind of on your own. The going price seems to be $20 a pail, but your mileage could vary. I would quote him the price that "everyone says they are paying" and see what he says.

[Bob Krack]

I worked (as a construction Millwright) at the National Lead plant in Los Angeles, CA in the late 60's. I met several employees there that eventually went home, hospital, or worse after suffering high lead blood levels.

None of them were from "touching" lead or any lead products with their hands. It was always from ingesting or inhaling lead and lead by product dust.

Today I know at least 3 persons carrying lead alloy somewhere under the skin (in each case, Drs felt it was safer to leave the projectiles than to remove them).

Anyone trying to say that any and all contact with lead or lead products is perfectly safe in any and all cases - should have THEIR lead blood level tested!

Having said that, a simple "do not breathe lead fumes (above 900 degrees or so), do not breathe dusty air known to contain lead, and do not eat or drink any substance that might have any coating (however small) of lead dust". Wash your hands and wash or protect any foodstuffs that might have come into contact with lead or lead product dusts.

Touching lead will not harm you (unless it is traveling really FAST when you touch it). It's so easy to wash your hands after touching lead/lead products - it seems to me foolish not to.

In closing, lead (as well as many other toxics) can affect child development but will have relatively minor effects on adults.

Bob

[Dean D.]

My paternal Grandmother was struck in the chest by a .32 cal. boolit when she was 10 years old in 1899. Doctors back then were not willing to try to extract the boolit as it had lodged right next to her heart. They patched her up and hoped for the best. Gramma passed away in 1981 after a long life at the rip age of 92. The body is wonderful about encapsulating foriegn elements.

That said, a bit of common sense goes a long ways. As Bob said above, fine particles are the worst offenders and the respiratory system is very efficient in absorbing those fine particles.

[JSnover]

Big chunks under the skin are usually not a problem. They get calcified (I think that's the word); covered with a protective coating by the body's immune system. The lead can't leach out. There was a woman who died from lead poisoning a few years ago, caused by a bullet lodged in her knee. It wasn't removed and didn't cause any harm until the knee was injured again, some years later. The bullet shifted and the seal was broken, kept getting scraped on the bone every time she moved her leg. It was on one of the medical/detective/documentary shows a while ago.

[Paul]

...........Can anyone give me a fair price, per five gallon bucket, of wheel weights?


Here in Missouri, I just got a 5 Gal. Bucket ... 130 Lbs. ... for $25

99% Lead WW, about #1 lbs of steel WW, one Zinc so far, and a few valve stems... of course when melted.. I'll have about 30 lbs+ of waste steel clips etc...

Buy all you can!!!!

Paul

[Whitespider]

Lead replaces metals like zinc, calcium and iron in the body’s biochemical machine. Lead screws with proteins that make some genes turn on and off by displacing other metals in molecules. This changes the protein molecule so it can't do what it’s supposed to do. Proteins affected by lead regulate blood pressure (causing developmental problems in children, high blood pressure in adults), heme production (causes anemia), and sperm production. Lead also displaces calcium in reactions that send electrical impulses through the brain, or in other words, it makes you stupid by reducing the ability to think or remember stuff.

The body requires lots of things in small amounts that are poisonous in large amounts. Iron is used by the blood to carry oxygen, but too much will kill you. Too much oxygen is lethal. Lead isn't like that, it's simply poisonous. The main concern is small children and the associated developmental problems, plus kids do things that increase their risk like put things in their mouths, don’t wash their hands, etc.

No such thing as minimum safe exposure limit because lead accumulates in the body.

In reality, any lead is too much lead.

So you really should , for your own safety, and your family's safety, send all your lead to ME!!! I know how to properly dispose of it, believe me, I do!!

[softpoint]

Right about it being hazardous if dropped. Even a one pounder, on the big toe,with flip-flops on........No questions on how I know this.......:mrgreen:

[1Shirt]

Made it to 70. :coffee:Been casting for more years than I can count, I wash my hands when I handle lead, cause they feel dirty and are. That said, am much more afraid of the current anti gun administration and Obama than I am of lead contact.
1Shirt:coffee: