Is shooting lead pellets safe for the enviornment?

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My water supply is from a well on my property, so I am somewhat concerned about the additional lead my hobby introduces to the environment. So, when I am plinking or target shooting, I shoot into a duct seal filled container to catch all the pellets. When I am pesting/hunting, I am unconcerned. I would say at least 95% of the lead I use is captured and disposed of safely. I am not concerned enough about lead to consider alloy pellets.
 
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Not to make light of your question but ask yourself where does lead come from? Too many people now a days ( in my opinion) get transfixed on a single subject and blow it out of proportion. Is lead bad for you to eat or inhale yes most definitely will you die from handling pellets probably not. A lot of these subjects are very subjective and need considerable thought and research to fully understand. Me personally im just an old fart that grew up spitting lead shot out of my supper as a kid and pinching lead split shot on to fishing line with my teeth but im still here!
 
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Solo1 said:
Not to make light of your question but ask yourself where does lead come from? Too many people now a days ( in my opinion) get transfixed on a single subject and blow it out of proportion. Is lead bad for you to eat or inhale yes most definitely will you die from handling pellets probably not. A lot of these subjects are very subjective and need considerable thought and research to fully understand. Me personally im just an old fart that grew up spitting lead shot out of my supper as a kid and pinching lead split shot on to fishing line with my teeth but im still here!
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Lead came from the ground obviously but did they mine the lead from your property’s water source? Highly unlikely, if they do then you should move. There are countless things from ground you would not want to be near like radio active materials. Why are people so paranoid about spent nuclear fuels rods? They came from the ground too. While trace amount of lead are naturally present in most water sources but very light traces. But adding lead over long periods of time is not good as it is a neurotoxin, symptoms are not obvious and not felt. Great Roman and ancient Chinese empires fell partly due to lead poisoning.

While some lead pellets is not a huge deal but years of accumulation certainly could cause issues. Again, issues will not be obvious and when you found out it’s a big problem. If you are on east coast where the rain is more acidic then leaving lead pellets on the ground might eventually get to your drinking water if you have well.

To each their own. We have have enough actual data on it and you can buy test kits online now so it’s not all conspiracy. I drink mostly reverse osmosis filtered water regardless since we poop where we drink for way too long.
 
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Lead comes from the ground, so it's 100% natural. That said, it's a good idea to recover and recycle it. (That's what I do.)

I've done thousands of environmental audits and it can cause big problems when found on a site. It's normal for a potential buyer to back out when it's found. Remediation is expensive.

I haven't looked at any data on wildlife affected by lead, but it can't be a positive thing. It really comes down to how much a particular critter ingests, absorbs and then fixes in bones and the central nervous system.

Fun fact - The soil on and adjacent to railroad tracks often contains a lot of lead because leaded grease was used to lube the axles and carriages.

J~
 
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I'm definitely more in the "be a good steward" than the "people control everything" camp. I think most of the talk about global warming is nonsense - the US going to electric cars will not make a measurable difference in world temperature (especially with China building a coal plant a week). But lead is a bit different. Health authorities say things like "we haven't found a safe level of lead". Not sure how hard they've looked at low concentrations but it slows me down some on wanting to ignore it. I do not worry about handling lead pellets and I do not wash my hands afterwards. I will cast my own when I find a mold my gun or guns like (with good ventilation). But I also shoot most of my shots into a pellet trap so they don't go into the lake in my back yard. It's not so much that I think the fish or the ducks will eat them, it's just that it doesn't seem like a great idea to dump pounds of lead into a fairly small area I shoot towards. Not sure it will make sense to others but this is the somewhat balanced approach I take. I also work hard to find every animal I kill. But that is a very low percentage of the pellets I shoot.
 
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Kraemer99 said:
Certainly lead pellets contribute to global warming............
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yes the heat from pellets friction on the lands in the barrel and then releasing that heat into the atmosphere is terrible ! just terrible !
 
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Well knowing ( as a painter ) what lead can do, then i would urge people to police their lead if possible. ( there is a reason lead based paint are banned now )
I mean its not like it is hard to do, and even here in my little hell hole of a country that is like ultra green or at least pretend to be and ask a whole lot ( in taxes ) to support that, there are not even a tax on disposing of the lead, hell i even think you can make money on it.

But yeah the stuff come out of the ground, what some people tend to overlook is it come from deep under ground where no people and animals generally are / live.
So if you bring it up into society i think it is only fair to show some consideration.
Asbestos it also come out of the ground, again not stuff you want to use for fake snow in movies ( have happened ) or other silly antics, you be wise to be careful around that stuff too.

Say the guy that so far put a few kilos of lead into the back corner of his friends field, but i / we are working on solutions, just take a while as we can not just go and buy stuff to put together to a trap, we are forced by our meager pensions and numerous hobbies to be creative..
 
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darylm said:
Everything under the sun is “bad” for the environment these days. It’s a miracle the planet survived before all these enviro-psychos showed up to save us from ourselves. Just go shoot your gun and have fun.
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The little planet called earth doesn’t care if there is life on it or not, it has been around BILLIONS of years with out life at all(not even single cell organisms). Some of us on the other hand do care if the environment is livable or comfortable to us.

Global warming/climate change does NOT bother the planet one bit but could potentially be very uncomfortable for us little humans.
 
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How do you people sleep at night? Cannot even imagine how you justify this hobby while tossing toxic material around like Johnny Appleseed.
Do you realize every time you send a pellet or slug down the barrel minute amounts of lead are expelled separate from the projectile?
 
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I shoot with a boulder / hillside as my backstop. Opposite end of the property from the well and aquifer. Frankly, I don't think a lot of lead "dust" is going to make it's way from either solid or fragmented pellets/slugs through 100 or 500 feet of soil and rock into the water source anyway. My guess is it would take a massive amount of pellets/slugs, exponentially more than I could ever accomplish, to cause even a micro-fraction more lead in the water above baseline/natural amounts. And if it's just sitting in the dirt doing nothing, who cares?

As for animals, I've never heard of an animal that likes to eat lead or the dirt over there either. Okay, maybe a bad spot for worms to live. That is, if they don't get blown to pieces by the asteroid-like impact of my ammo over there anyway.

Granted my situation is rural and maybe in a tighter-knit environment you'd want to have more manners about it just to keep everyone happy.
 
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Chicken little nailed it.

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