Brass question

While at the range today I was looking at some loaded ammo one of the other shooters had. It was Mil. surplus and it had a wierd texture to it, I asked him what he cleaned it with. He said a Dremel with a wire brush attachment!

Does this sound safe? Yes, it was .50 BMG. On some of the Mil. surplus that I've bought that had some tarnish on it I used a scotch brite pad to remove it. Just thinking about that Dremel spinning at 5 or 10K revo's on brass. I would assume you could weaken the brass if you held it in the same spot for to long or just weaken the brass by using a wire brush period.:confused:

I have written a large draft from my lifetime experience on lead poisoning and in it I tell about a fellow that he constantly cleaned his large volume of competitive brass and primer pockets with appropriate sized brushes in his high speed Dremel tool. His doctor diagnosed him with lead poisoning. If you will read your reloading manuals on the section about primers, that when the manufacturers discontinued mercury that weakened brass and rusted the barrels of weapons they replaced it with lead styphnate which is highly toxic and becomes airborne to be breathed when primer pockets and lead contaminated brass is cleaned by that method. Lead vaporizes from bullets when fired and is in the air and builds up in the dirt of shooting ranges, some adhering to brass that hits the ground and the use of a Dremel tool in any reloading proceedure is hazardous to your health unless a adequate dust mask is worn.

50 caliber brass is too strong and thick to worry about a Dremel brush damaging it in an ill advised cleaning process.