I have a dilemma I’m facing: Is it moral to use lead products (In this case ammunition) for recreation? I’m unsure since it’s not really necessary (This isn’t self-defense ammunition) and the workers probably do get some problems manufacturing them.
I can’t tell you for sure about lead exposure in ammunition plants, but I can absolutely guarantee that OSHA monitors it and will shut down and fine any plant that exceeds whatever OSHA considers an unsafe worker exposure level. Ammunition plants are big outfits and cannot escape OSHA’s attention.
Probably a much greater worker hazard is presented by the many small manufactories of fishing lures. Lead is used in the manufacture of many of those. Lots of them are hand-assembled because fishermen like intriguing and unique lures, and it’s hard to make many of them by machine. The best fishing flies almost always have a lead component, and are almost always handmade. There are rules about that, but some of the makers are such small outfits you can’t be sure how they do things or whether they are sufficiently monitored.
But then, you have to worry about the ultimate disposal of your old car battery too. The seller of new batteries are supposed to turn the old batteries over to a certified disposal concern (and pay a fee to do it, which is added to the cost of your new battery). But do any of us really know what every one of them does with them?
Out in the outdoors, lead slugs that are fired do end up in trees, in the ground, on the ground. It does give one pause until one tries to find any of them even in an area that’s used for target practice. They’re not all that much volume even in a small area. Try finding one on an old battlefield where tens of thousands of rounds were fired, and you’ll see that it’s true. Add to that the fact that lead, out in the open, quickly forms a coating of oxide that seals it and prevents most of the slug from going anywhere. Then, too, one has to consider the fact that there is a vastly greater quentity of all kinds of toxic things in the environment than we are ever likely to equal.
I live in an area of karst limestone hills. There is toxic lead and zinc ore all over the place in the limestone formations, usually at low, scattered levels, but sometimes in vast concentrations. But, if you test the water flowing right out of those layers, the lead and zinc content is infinitesimally small. I know of one well whose water interchanges some with an old lead mine. It gets tested now and then, but never shows any more lead content than any other water does. That environmental lead would hugely outweigh the lead human beings are ever likely to blow out the business end of a gun.
But lead is toxic, and that’s a fact. I do know that in some places where there is a lot of duck hunting, you have to use steel shot because the ducks will sometimes dive down and ingest shot because it’s bright for a little while, and attracts them. Hard on the gun barrel, but perhaps that’s wise in such places. On the other hand, if one is deer hunting, a missed shot is almost certain to end up buried in a tree among hundreds of potential trees and be locked up there for, what, maybe a century or more? And when the tree falls and rots, the slug will be underground automatically as the rotting wood forms soil.
Personally, I wouldn’t worry about it. But if it bothers you in target shooting, you can buy steel deflectors that will direct the slugs into a receptacle. After years of shooting, you might collect enough to sell it or just give it to a fishing lure maker.
