Lead Ban Chronicles – New Report on Lead Exposure from Venison

I still think that a hunter who cleans and butchers his game properly, including carefully cutting away the meat around the entry and exit wounds, is not likely to experience meaningful lead ingestion, if any. The question is not whether we can absorb ingested lead, but how to prevent ingesting it in the first place. Some obviously think banning lead bullets altogether is the answer. I think using quality, non-fragmenting ammo and cleaning game properly is the answer.

I spend some time reading the references cited in the study and found quited a few that originated from the Peregrine Fund. Bad practice to cite your own studies.

Of note, however, where a few studies done in Canada among the First Nations people and the Inuit in Greenland. Those studies did show elevated blood leads in humans. Not suprising, really. Those two populations rely heavily on wild game for subsistence. Not the case here in the U.S. where we sport hunt.

We do, in fact, ingest lead from big game, but we don’t do it in sufficent quantities to cause health problems. Here in CA, we’re allowed 2 deer. Really not enough lead in the diet to make a difference.

Waterfowl, on the other hand, routinely ingest spent lead pellets in the craw to aid digestion, causing bio-accumlation that can cause systemic poisioning of the bird. Hence the well documented and studied change to non-lead
shot.

I just don’t believe there’s any significant risk to the big game hunter.

I hope you don’t mind me adding a comment, as one of the authors of the paper in discussion.

Many of us at the PFund are hunters. We were surprised during our earlier studies on behalf of condors, around 2003-5, to see all the bullet fragments in the x-rays of deer we shot, and even more so when we looked at x-rays of the venison we got back from the butcher. We wondered then about potential human health effects, and when we looked into the published science we were astounded to learn how very tiny amounts of lead cause horrible problems, especially for children. Most of this research on low lead levels is new, published in only the past 5-10 years, so it is understandable that not many people really know about it.

Although we had this insight, we couldn’t go public with it until we had done the research systematically. The paper just published is the result of a study we began in fall 2007 and to my knowledge, this paper is the first peer reviewed and published science that follows lead from a bullet in the hand, all the way through to increased blood lead levels after eating venison, with all the tests to prove that it is the same source of lead. The CDC study and others from Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, and Iowa last year provide parts of the story, some of the links, but none are peer reviewed and published in scientific journals (yet)….all are useful reports when used in the proper context, though.

I’d like to clear up an important point about our study. It demonstrates a health risk from lead in venison, but it does not demonstrate a health effect. There is no way to do that without a long-term study of people who eat venison compared with people who do not. There are too many variables involved, from who is eating the venison (child/adult, male/female, pregnant women, etc), how often it is eaten (daily, such as communities in Alaska, to once a year and everything in between), and over what time period (one week, one year, or a lifetime), plus many confounding sources of lead to account for, such as in old paint, ceramics, electronics, etc. A well-designed study could take a decade to complete, so we have encouraged the public health community to do this research, but I don’t think you will see results too soon (is my guess).

There are serious known health effects of lead at levels that were considered trivial until recently (e.g., intellectual decrement in children, increased probability of dying of a heart attack or stroke in adults). The CDC stated in 2005 that there is no safe minimum level of lead in the blood. So, given that conclusion by health professionals, and our conclusion that bullet lead ends up in your blood, it seems reasonable to conclude that there is a health risk from eating venison shot with lead-based bullets. Does it really matter what that risk is, or “how harmful” it is?

At least hunters now know with some certainty what we figured out a few years ago, along with our best shot at assessing the frequency of the risk (32% of venison packages were contaminated in our study, others have found from 20 to 60% rates….a lot of variability, little predictability).

I encourage you to read a paper by Michael J. Kosnett, a lead toxicologist with the Centers for Disease Control, on an estimate of that risk: Health Effects of Low Dose Lead Exposure in Adults and Children, and Preventable Risk Posed by the Consumption of Game Meat Harvested with Lead Ammunition online at
http://www.peregrinefund.org/Lead_conference/PDF/0103%20Kosnett.pdf

Sorry we can’t tell you more, but we have done our best to document the facts as far as we can. The rest is up to public health researchers.

Phillip: We agree that individuals should be able to make the decision for themselves. Along with AZGFD we have gone to great effort to provide our insight to hunters in northern Arizona (since 2005), and now in southern Utah (wherever we track foraging condors) so they can make informed choices. In Arizona last season, 90% of hunters in condor range chose to use lead-free bullets or carry all the remains out of the field….we have great partners to work with! It’s a conservation success story that doesn’t get enough attention.

Dan, you are right. Hunters should be able to make their own informed choices. Our goal has been to provide what information we can.

I can’t comment on the ND panic, or actions in Wisconsin, Minnesota, etc. because we were not involved.

Granted, it was a PFund Board member who sampled the venison in ND, but his study was independent of us, and the response to the results was entirely the ND Health Dept’s.

I understand why the Health Dept. did what they did, though. The recipients of donated meat don’t have the opportunity to choose the bullets used to harvest the game, so the Health Dept. must have felt a responsibility to intervene on their behalf. I guess recipients could be told about the possibility of lead in venison and then could choose not to eat the meat at all, but I can imagine that would be really hard to do when you are hungry. Better to make sure they don’t have to make the awful choice between hunger or lead. Given that low income folks often live in older housing where lead paint is still the leading source of lead exposure in the U.S., they don’t need any additional sources of lead exposure in their lives, no matter how small it may seem to you and me.

Once the price comes down, you’ll hear a bit less grumbling. Its tough for a hunter on a budget, to have to decide on a decent set of hiking boots or two boxes of ammo.

E-tips are $45 a box, for crying out loud!