Casting bullets and worried about lead levels?

[Zombie Steve]

6 months ago, I was 22 μg/dL (which wasn't the end of the world... about half of what would be considered toxic by OSHA standards). I've kept on casting, but I'm trying to be more careful. I gave 2 pints of blood, although the last time was a week ago, and they tell me it takes 2 months to rebuild and mature the cells.

Verdict today was 16 μg/dL.


I will say that this time when I went in to take blood, they asked if I'd had seafood or an antacid in the last 3 days. I said I had and nobody had ever mentioned it before. I waited 3 days and went in again. Wonder if that screwed up my old test. My doctor said he didn't think it mattered much.

Anyway, if you're worried about your levels and are able to give blood, go get your oil changed. [Coffee] It apparently helps.


In case you're wondering, weight, ldl, triglycerides, and everything else bad was also down. Good stuff was up. BP was 106 over 80.

Think it's time for a steak, some scotch and a cigar. [Beer]

[sellersm]

Glad to hear it! They never want my blood... [Bang]

[SA Friday]

I highly doubt your high lead levels is coming from casting. Lead melts at 375.5 degrees C, but doesn't boil until aprox 1750 degrees C. Your two big exposure risks are inadvertent ingestion of particles and inadvertent inhalation from airated particles during shooting. It's not the bullets that the airated particles are coming from, but the primers. Primer mixtures are fairly guarded proprietary info, but most US (and Russian) made primers are made with lead azide or lead styphnate. It's cheap and works well. The problem is when shooting these at indoor ranges with iffy air flow. I tested at almost the exact same levels you have a few years back and was shooting a lot at an indoor range. I was also reloading a huge amount of cast bullets. I didn't change anything but stopped shooting at the indoor range. My lead levels were below 9 ug/dL in less than 6 months.

For reasons not well really understood, some people have a higher propensity to absorb Pd faster than others. I swear I've had some shooting friends that could eat lead bullets and not absorb a thing. Other's absorb it very easy. Short of kids eating old paint chips, most Dr's are clueless how to deal with lead exposure. When I was going through my high lead levels, two different Dr's had no idea what to do other than completely quit shooting. Ya, good luck with that. Based on what I could find in my research, short of an exposure over 40 ul/dL all you can do is stop the exposure (once you figure out what it is) and let it leech from your bones. Lead is deposited into your bone matrix once it's in your body. It takes a while for it to come back out.

Exposure over 40 is considered a heavy metal poisoning and they will look into chelation therapy. Chelation is putting a chemical in your body that bonds to metal particles and then it's flushed from your system. Unfortunately, chelates do not discriminate and grab lots of different metals in the body and take a lot of the stuff we regularly use along with the bad metals. I've read it's very unpleasant with lots of bad side effects.

Are you shooting a lot at an indoor range over the last year or two?

[Zombie Steve]

Nah, don't shoot indoors. It was mostly about being sloppy while casting (I understand I'm a thousand degrees under the point where it vaporizes). Drinking beer, dipping during a casting session with a buddy. I'm just being more cautious about washing up and not eating / drinking / putting in a big fat chaw of Copenhagen in when I'm casting.


I had been reloading for years before my first test (and before I ever cast boolits), and it came in at 2.

[SA Friday]

Nah, don't shoot indoors. It was mostly about being sloppy while casting (I understand I'm a thousand degrees under the point where it vaporizes). Drinking beer, dipping during a casting session with a buddy. I'm just being more cautious about washing up and not eating / drinking / putting in a big fat chaw of Copenhagen in when I'm casting.


I had been reloading for years before my first test (and before I ever cast boolits), and it came in at 2.
That'll do it. Go buy a big box of nomex gloves at Wally world. They're in the paint department. It will help.

[Zombie Steve]

Glad to hear it! They never want my blood... [Bang]

Damn, now that I've started, I get hounded by these vampires.

[Zombie Steve]

http://ecohistorical.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/lead-paint-chip-yummy.jpg?w=500&h=413

[sabot_round]

I've been casting and reloading for years and I never worry about Pb levels. If I die...I might as well die doing something that I like . [Beer]

[earplug]

Curious about the role of various firearm cleaning products that you might have used. Some dissolve lead into a fairly toxic easy to absorb chemical. Other product just penetrate and left and remove the lead residue.
This might have more of a function of lead poisoning then casting and shooting bullets.

[Zombie Steve]

WD40, Hoppes 9 and Butch's Bore Shine.... But I don't understand. Lead is lead. You're saying it forms some other element when in contact with cleaning products then turns back to lead in my blood stream? [Dunno]

[SA Friday]

WD40, Hoppes 9 and Butch's Bore Shine.... But I don't understand. Lead is lead. You're saying it forms some other element when in contact with cleaning products then turns back to lead in my blood stream? [Dunno]
Any metal can bond ionically to non-metal elements. Depending on the cleaning solution, it might ionically bond with a chemical compound, and depending on the solution it's in, become an ionic lead molecule or a salt. Most result in an ionic solution and can make absorption of the lead easier. WD40 and Hoppes probably won't do this. WD40 won't break down the lead and the active ingredient in Hoppies is 0.05% NH3 which isn't concentrated enough to break down the lead to an ionic. Not sure what the active cleaning ingredient in Butch's bore shine is, so I can't say. Personally, I would be more concerned with exposure to the residue on the dirty brass (forgot to mention this earlier). A lot of lead in that residue and it gets everywhere in your cleaning media and tumbler. I tumble clean in my basement, but transfer any cases from the media out in the garage preferably with the door open. That black dust has a very high concentration of lead from the primers.

[Zombie Steve]

Although I understand what you're saying with the dirty brass thing, my level with a few years of reloading but before I was casting was 2 μg/dL.

[SA Friday]

Although I understand what you're saying with the dirty brass thing, my level with a few years of reloading but before I was casting was 2 μg/dL.
Yep. I would agree. It's more than likely a minor ingestion issue. I just like to be thorough. Never know, might stop someone else in the future from licking their fingers after working with the tumbler.

[Not_A_Llama]

Metallic lead itself is fairly non-reactive. Compounds, particularly organics and oxides, have significantly higher bioactivity. Unfortunately, combustion is one of the better ways to promote compound formation, and our various cleaning products and oils are typically organic in nature.

Elevated temperatures from melting are likewise a good way to produce any of the potpourri of highly-bioavailable compounds.

If you've ever watched a glass of room temp water evaporate over a couple days, you've witnessed the Gaussian distribution of Brownian kinetics. You don't need to be at boiling point to vaporize lead.

I'll happily pay a grand a year to have some other guy melt and coat my bullets for me.


Suggestions for minimizing lead uptake, some proven, some speculative:
-Don't shoot indoors
-Wash hands after shooting or cleaning guns
-Wear gloves when cleaning your gun
-D-Lead wipes with chelators after shooting
-Fan to blow vapors away
-Wet tumbling? Tumbling outside? Odorless mineral spirits to dampen dust in tumblers?
-A generous meal and multivitamin in the morning to saturate binding sites?

[SA Friday]

Metallic lead itself is fairly non-reactive. Compounds, particularly organics and oxides, have significantly higher bioactivity. Unfortunately, combustion is one of the better ways to promote compound formation, and our various cleaning products and oils are typically organic in nature.

Elevated temperatures from melting are likewise a good way to produce any of the potpourri of highly-bioavailable compounds.

If you've ever watched a glass of room temp water evaporate over a couple days, you've witnessed the Gaussian distribution of Brownian kinetics. You don't need to be at boiling point to vaporize lead.

I'll happily pay a grand a year to have some other guy melt and coat my bullets for me.


Suggestions for minimizing lead uptake, some proven, some speculative:
-Don't shoot indoors
-Wash hands after shooting or cleaning guns
-Wear gloves when cleaning your gun
-D-Lead wipes with chelators after shooting
-Fan to blow vapors away
-Wet tumbling? Tumbling outside? Odorless mineral spirits to dampen dust in tumblers?
-A generous meal and multivitamin in the morning to saturate binding sites?

Wow, good post. Way better than I've written so far. What organics in cleaning solutions would promote absorption of lead salts? NH3 is the primary in a lot of the cleaners, some with very high concentrations, but at what concentration of NH3 will it start to react with Pb at any significant level?

[sellersm]

Interesting discussion!! I have always read & heard that the D-lead products are basically hogwash & ineffective. Anyone know if they really work as claimed?

[sellersm]

Zombie, that pic is just plain wrong! [M2]

[Zombie Steve]

Zombie, that pic is just plain wrong! [M2]


That's a real Dutch Boy ad from back in the day... I sell real estate and am always up against the lead based paint thing.

[sellersm]

Well that explains all those "lead positioning" cases! [ROFL2] [LOL]