At the end of March, "North Dakota health officials told food pantries in the state to throw out donated venison, saying it may have lead fragments," the Associated Press reported. "Officials in Minnesota and Iowa followed with similar alerts, asking that donated venison in those states not be distributed."

The venison, of course, was donated by hunters, who were upset that thousands of pounds of venison were being discarded.

"Lawrence Keane, vice president of the Connecticut-based National Shooting Sports Foundation, says that reaction was alarmist and not supported by any science," AP reported. "Keane says the action has taken high-quality protein out of the mouths of needy, hungry people."

Wisconsin officials were conducting lead tests on donated venison, too, although the Star Tribune reported, "Most of the 414,000 pounds of venison donated by hunters to Wisconsin food shelves has been distributed and likely consumed."

Paul Holtan, of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, said Wisconsin health officials were concerned about the testing methods used by the North Dakota physician who concluded that lead was present in hunter-donated venison.

"From all the research they have conducted with human health risks and lead consumption, this pathway of lead exposure has never come up," Holtan said. "It's never been a concern."

OMG, thats got to be the dumbest........................
Well, I guess that's just another way to get the guns out of the populations hands:
They're not guns, they are "lead delivery systems"!

The safety Nazis strike again.

Maybe a certain bullet manufacturer will benefit.

I see a new advertising slogan:

"Barnes bullets: Providing a Lead Free Lunch for the Needy"

I hate it when that happens. All the best...
Gil

Next it will be seat belts on your john or safty harnness in the tub

The dumbest thing is, I my self and most all of my family have dented more than a few lead shot with our teeth while eating Pheasant, squirrel, Rabbit and have suffered no ill affects in 40 years.
Liberal idiots!

Just more government sponsored "leaf lickers" trying to save us from their troubled world!

We can trust Govies and Acadimwits to be totally cluless but to scream "the sky is falling" at most anything they can get an equally clueless media to hype.

Lead, as a solid, is harmless to humans. We can ingest a handfull of birdshot and it will all be pass along tomorrow without effect. Only powdered oxides of lead, such as used to be used in paints, can be absorbed by human or animal digestive systems.

The only reason birds are harmed by it is that they have a gravel-filled "craw" that does grind the contents into a dust before it moves into their systems. But no one could expect a dumazz Govie to try to learn the truth before shouting alarms, right?

wncchester wrote:

Lead, as a solid, is harmless to humans. We can ingest a handfull of birdshot and it will all be pass along tomorrow without effect. Only powdered oxides of lead, such as used to be used in paints, can be absorbed by human or animal digestive systems.

it is known that stomach acid does and will desolve lead and will compund into lead poisoning. the problem with birds is the mear fact of size per size.

yeah eating a handfull of lead shot wont kill you will make ya a little sick, but you are also 200 pounds,(not you but using you as a catch all)..

feeding a bird a tablespoon of lead pellets and he will be dead cause he cant get rid of the toxicity levels fast enough to survive it..

if you were to injest the same lead pellets as the bird did PER WEIGHT as in if it weighs 1 pound and eats 25 grams and you weigh 200 you would have to eat 200 times that or 5000grams of lead you can definatly bet you wouldnt be feelin too well

The Romans used lead as a spice for years cause of its sweet taste, and was later used as the white powder to use as make up for women in the middle ages. Queen Elizabeth 1, being in the time period of of using powdered lead as make up did live up to the ripe old age of 70.

Not too worried about digesting a few bb's from a rabbit or 2 myself.

Dimitri

The point I'm makeing is that, when most of us shoot a deer, or anything else for that matter, We use 1 maybe 2 shots to put the animal down as fast as possible. The lead we used in the bullet does not spread through the meat at all to make you or any one else sick from eating game killed with lead bullets or shot.

The lead in game meat, for the most part is probably confined to the blood shot part that most hunters discard. As an Environmental Scientist, I'm not worried about it. Most lead problems in the world come from the ingestion of lead-based paint by poor children in homes built prior to 1978. When lead-based paint (or any other paint for that matter) gets old, it will start sloughing off as a powder. Kids crawl around the floor, then put their hands in their mouths, or chew on window sills or any other lead painted object, thus ingesting lead. Ingesting lead will retard brain development and cause other problems these children. We see most of the problems in children below the age of 6 years. To remedy this, you can simply encapsulate it by painting over it with a good paint. The reason it shows up in poor kids is because the homes are not in good repair.

As far as lead in Roman society, the main problem was lead water pipes. Some scientist blame the fall of the Roman Empire on the ingestion an widespread use of lead.

OLG wrote:

As far as lead in Roman society, the main problem was lead water pipes. Some scientist blame the fall of the Roman Empire on the ingestion an widespread use of lead.

I think another big problem they had was using pewter mugs and plates.

For a very long time it was believed that tomatoes were poisonous when in fact it was the acids in them that would dissolve part of the pewter plate which was then ingested. Of course pewter contains lead.

Cheers, Vince

I wish our politicians and other public officials were just a fraction as smart as some of our members here.... Life might be alittle more tolerable with our government.

OntheLasGallinas wrote:

...chew on window sills or any other lead painted object, thus ingesting lead. Ingesting lead will retard brain development and cause other problems these children.

NOW it finally makes sense.

I remember chewing on window sills when I was a little-bitty 2x4....