CLEANING BRASS CAN BE HAZARDESS TO YOUR HEALTH

[jmmitc06]

From the documents/tests I have posted and read I would agree that totally copper clad bullets would provide less lead exposure, but what that Rainier link is not mentioning is the PRIMERS.

Our County Sheriff indoor range (open to the public sometimes) is a state of the art facility. You must use their ammo which is frangible bullets and lead free primer ammo.

Indoor ranges should have the air at you back blowing it away from you. If it is not a lead free range Indoors I would wear a ball cap also, Dust and particles in your hair,also what about your range bag, dust settles on it and then it goes in the car, home and you handle it.

You mention driving on the freeway, one of the studies show what the average blood levels are in non shooter is highly polluted cities. So there are lots of sources. Live in a old home with lead pipes and solder joints.??

Yeah, I forgot to add to mine, I bet that the lead residue on your clothes is enough that if I had a kid or was really worried about it, I would change clothes. I don't do that right now, but it's still a good practice if you are bent on eliminating the risk.

The airborne lead levels actually are more dependent upon what industrial processes are going on more so than the population density. Most airborne lead comes from metallurgy, coal combustion and tetraethyl lead, the last of which is now banned in the US more or less. So in the US I would wager that the typical lead level of an urbanite is essentially close to nil, especially since the normal levels according to text books and in most medical labs is zero.

However, lets consider the worst case scenario and what health effects we could expect. The lead levels in urban air from Semarang, Indonesia in 1999 as according to "Airborne Lead and Particulate Levels in Semarang, Indonesia and Potential Health Impacts" by D.R.Browne, found that around .6 micrograms per cubic meter in residential / commercial and around 8.41micrograms / cubic meter in industrial zones. So an indoor range is alot of lead even relative to Indonesian industry but we don't live at the range. The typical hour or so a week at the range is fine, as constant high level exposure to lead and other particulates in this population was only associated with a 1.6% increase in mortality. So I feel okay going to the indoor range if its a few hours on average a week.

http://www.researchgate.net/publica...al_health_impacts/file/3deec51dd72d7de397.pdf

 

[jmmitc06]

Marathonrunner,
Who is "they" with respect to "they say reloaders who use tumblers........"?????

The biggest push to ban lead is from the anti-gun agenda organizations trying to instill fear, not the medical or environmental community, as far as internet publications/exposure . I do believe there is a valid concern for lead absorption, but they are using this now as a new tactic, accusing shooters and reloaders of "exposing their children to lead".
Is this "they" ?:
Lead Pollution at Outdoor Firing Ranges: Poisonous Pastime | Environmental Working Group

Once again I ask- where is the science ?
Who has tested the corncob dust for lead levels to come up with these remarks ?
I'll go along with "government" recommendations for maximum lead levels for now, since it is harmless to use caution. But when the caution and common sense approaches hysteria, I'm now skeptical, being naturally distrustful of all forms of unfounded hysteria. I have no doubt that some persons have elevated lead, but I want to see the correlation between that and their activities that led (no pun intended) to that condition.

I'm open for being corrected on this but I don't think molten lead "fumes" cause lead poisoning. I think the problem is when the lead is fluxed and then we are talking about different toxins.

So the next step is to ban all surplus ammo I guess, because some of it has "mercuric" primers, and that sounds awfully close to that deadly "M" word.

I have read here numerous people talking about how dangerous tumbling media dust is, but not one reference at all as to how they came to this conclusion. We know that primers have lead styphnate, so we assume this is the same as "lead".
And I think that is where the misinformation comes into play.
Actually it is more of an irritant than a toxin, but common sense measures are to be taken, just not to the extent that it is somehow the same as plutonium dust, as some folks seem to think.

From the MSDS for lead Styphnate:


"Wear impervious (cut-resistant) gloves and other protective clothing (aprons, coveralls) as appropriate to prevent skin contact when using this product. If generating a dust, wash thoroughly after handling, especially before eating, drinking,
or smoking.
RESPIRATORY PROTECTION: Respiratory protection not normally needed. If dusting occurs or fumes are generated above the PEL/TLV, use a NIOSH-approved half-face or full-face respirator equipped with High Efficiency Particulate (HEPA) filter cartridges.
GENERAL HYGIENE CONSIDERATIONS: Do not eat, drink, or smoke while using this product in dust form."

Bear in mind this is for unburned lead styphnate as a factory worker might be exposed to, not the ash and residue left in a fired cartridge case. There *is* no MSDS for the burned residue and as far as I know, no science that has determined whether it is still toxic after being "exploded" (burned/incinerated) in the cartridge.

I know, bad etiquette triple post (bonus points?) but there are a few things here to comment on.

First Pb is an element, so when you combust Pb containing compounds, even completely you still have Pb left over. This is not like an organic compound that is 'destroyed' when it is combusted. For example, you combust glucose (C6H12O6) you get CO2 and H20, but if you combust Lead Acetate you will get Lead back out, it takes nuclear reactions (fission, fusion, radiation) to change element types so since lead is toxic, combusted lead styphnate residue is toxic since it will have lead in it. It doesn't have to be demonstrated explicitly because we know that lead is toxic.

Also lead styphnate would most definitely be toxic even before combustion, it's an ionic compound of Pb2+ and styphnate an aromatic nitro substituted anion, it's not simply an irritant. When you injest it or it enters your body somehow, it will dissociate into a Pb2+ ion and styphnate. Your body, being stupid, can't tell Pb2+ apart from calcium and sticks it in your bones and Pb2+ really likes to turn off enzymes needed to synthesize hemoglobin. Where these Pb2+ ions come from and what the counter ion is, basically doesn't matter if it will dissociate. This is why compounds like lead acetate are more dangerous in alot of ways than metallic lead (just Pb). Non-dissociating salts of lead would be find, that's kind of how EDTA chelation works, it forms a ligand with Pb that can be excreted. Lead is lead, that's what elements are, so the lead in priming compounds is in fact "lead", it's not government misinformation it's science.

No you won't find a reference to a scientist who has studied tumbling media for lead, because simply put, there are better things to research. However, the same logic applies above, the lead went somewhere so if you put brass and tumbling media in, the lead is either in the media, brass or the tumbler. No it may not be in the media necessarily but it's a reasonable assumption given that it's designed to polish and remove surface contaminants from the brass. Unfounded hysteria isn't good, but if you play with heavy metals like we do, I think some concern and caution is founded.

Mercury is actually pretty safe as a metal, but mercury (II) fulminate besides being pretty unstable compared to modern priming compounds does produce some really nasty chemicals when combusted most notably mercury isocyanate. Additionally, mercury II fulminate is incredibly toxic on its own and unstable enough to potentially auto-detonate so while I don't think they will ban mercuric primers given their advantages, it is more likely they would be banned before lead primers. So the M word is actually a word to think about. I've never used tetrazene based primers but I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't become more popular in the future.

Sorry for triple post, chemistry spider senses were tingling.

 

[Bkreutz]

No you won't find a reference to a scientist who has studied tumbling media for lead, because simply put, there are better things to research.

Like the mating habits of the snail darter or which direction a canine faces when defecating?

 

[jmmitc06]

Like the mating habits of the snail darter or which direction a canine faces when defecating?

Not sure if that was intended as a serious derision but as silly as those experiments sound, they weren't performed solely to actually study dog pooping direction or the mating habits themselves.

The dog experiment was performed as a test of 'animal magnetism' which is a non-trivial subject of research: biomedical researchers would like to know how bodies interact with magnetic fields (MRI research), industrial safety, etc. The methods are strange but they did demonstrate the ability of mammals to interact with magnetic fields. It actually was a fairly important study because we often assume that biological things (like humans) are relatively inert in magnetic fields (not MRI/NMR strength fields) which may not be the case.

The animal mating studies are important to learn more about living systems as a whole, the point of biology, and also for environmental and endocrine research. Knowing about animal hormones gives insight into systems that are not easy to research ethically (humans) and knowing about those things is important when determining the environmental impact of our action (Tellico Dam, glad we built it though). Additionally we have to know about these things when we develop animal models for human diseases and since it is a protected species it makes sense to know about how it reproduces. I don't agree with the endangered species act as a whole but it makes sense if we are going to designate species as endangered and want to do something about it, we should know a thing or two about their mating.

Very often the media likes to spin what we do into crazy scientists doing crazy stuff but most of the time there are good reasons for what we do. Reminds me of when they did the mental development research on Drosophila (fruit flies) and the media said we were making 'retarded' flies, but that research was actually about studying human development in down syndrome (they were studying the actions / expression of a particular gene product, hard to do that in humans).

So in all of those applications there was a 'big picture' question that was being investigated, no such question exists for lead media tumbling investigation I'm afraid. We more or less know there's lead on media and we know what lead does in humans. Knowing the answer to those questions doesn't really apply to anything else, not saying that's a reason not to do it, but when you have to distribute funds you have to demonstrate a good reason to fund it and the reasons put on grants to justify the work is often not what the populace thinks we are doing. It's a problem both from our end, we do a poor job explaining why we do something, and we are often misrepresented.

Not to say that all reloading-centric research would be unwarranted. I really want to conduct a reloading-focused study on lead levels. The hypothesis being that each activity (tumbling, casting, etc.) imparts a per round (assume all rounds equivalent) increase in lead levels. That should localize lead exposure to some set of activities. If that is false, it could indicate that lead levels are the result of bad safety practice or differences in lead biochemistry among reloaders. It would be cool, publishable but hard to get people to do it.

 

[Bkreutz]

Life's too short to be that serious about anything.

 

[David R]

This got me lead poisened

I was trying to get a one hole group.

I was casting Saco # 50 38 cal BNWC.

I was also shooting an 8" smith K frame with a full under lug.

The gun would foul the barrel no matter what I did. I fire lapped it, opened up the cylinder throats, sent it to S&W to have the barrel set back one turn and re cut the forcing cone. I had a new cylinder fitted. The gun still leaded the barre. I have many guns and none had this problem.

I was trying different size bullets, different lubes, different powders.....

Going to the range every day at lunch time. Not turning the exhaust fan on because it sucked the heat out of the range.

In the evening I would clean the lead out of the barrel using a chore boy wrapped around a brass brush.

After I while, I bought a scoped Ruger security six with an aftermarket slab sided barrel.

I continued my search for the perfect load.

In the end, it was a HBWC which I could not cast, only could buy that gave me the satisfaction I was looking for.

Here is a 5 shot target I have carried with me for many years.

One day at the doctors I asked to be tested for lead. She said no. I said yes. She said your insurance will not pay for it. I said I will pay. She said she would put down that I was exposed.

The next day I got a call, my level was high. About 45.

I was told to eat fish, broccoli and liver to help rid my body of lead. In a years time it was back to normal. In that year I did almost no shooting, casting or reloading.

I am back now shooting and reloading. I use more rifle (jacketed) bullets and do not cast at all.

It was not one thing, but a combination of all the things that got me into trouble. I have since had my level tested. It was 9, up from when I was not shooting at all.

The problems I had when the levels were high. Aching joints, my "Pay attention" was not working so well. Enough that I had almost stopped riding my motorcycle.

When this first happened, I went home and decontaminated my house. I am single and had brass all over the house. I cleaned my guns in the living room in a chair. I sorted brass there too. The chair went in the fire pit.

Don't say "It can't happen to me".

Its real.

David I love to shoot R.

Edit: The target is 50 feet.

I traded the S&W K38 because I never did get it to stop leading the barrel.

On my living room wall I have a target with 14 holes in it 5.5" Center to center. Fired from a Remington 700 VL 22-250. 55 grain CAST bullets @ 2600 fps. Pure linotype gas checked. 300 yards.

 

[gregintenn]

How many things can you name that has not in the last 5 years been deemed as "hazardous to your health" by the mainstream media?

 

[Bkreutz]

How many things can you name that has not in the last 5 years been deemed as "hazardous to your health" by the mainstream media?

I think life is hazardous to your health!

 

[HOPSTER]

How many things can you name that has not in the last 5 years been deemed as "hazardous to your health" by the mainstream media?

Too many things to constantly be on guard against.
"All things in moderation" including fear of "stuff".
Key to a longer life.
I smoke *only* two cigars a day. I expect to be just fine....

 

[SW_shooter]

Breathing, eating, drinking are all hazardous to my health. Along with drunk drivers.

-------------------------------------------
Breathe bad stuff in the air.

Eat something tainted. (mad cow meat, herbacides, etc)

Drink something that has bad stuff in it.

Get hit by drunk driver or bad driver.

Yep, life is hazardous to ones health!

 

[chud333]

Not to hijack your thread but had a buddy who was using his tumbler
to Molycoat some bullets back about 20 years ago. Had the tumbler
set up on a small shelf in his bathroom. Somehow the tumbler got knocked off the shelf, they think by the cat. He came home to his entire bathroom being Molycoated. He said you could'nt even stand up in there with a pair of shoes on, the floor was so slick.
Took him hours and hours to get it cleaned up and his wife was not
impressed.

Chuck

 

[Engineer1911]

Cold beer, fresh air, and hot sex all cause cancer. Do not live in California and you will be cancer free!