I am wondering how much shooting you would need to do before you started to contaminate the ground around the target. Any info on this?
This is discussed elsewhere.
https://thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=610907
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Why worry??
First point, "Lead", evil, scary lead that causes all kinds of medical problems is more than a bit of a "red herring" when you're talking about bullets.
Metallic lead, the kind used in bullets, is not water soluble. It does NOT dissolve in water, you CANNOT ingest it from drinking well water. The proof of this is obvious to anyone who does not have an anti-lead agenda and who bothers to take the time to actually use at least two of their brain cells at the same time.
To this day, people can find lead bullets on old battlefields, exposed to the action of weather and erosion for a couple HUNDRED YEARS, or more, and they are not "melted, dissolved, or eroded". The iron of the musket can be rusted away to powder, the stock rotted to dust but the lead musket ball will be essentially intact. (with an oxide coating on the exposed area).
Do not do as others do, (including the govt) and confuse other lead compounds with the lead used in bullets. Those compounds may contain lead in a soluble form, and can enter the body. Lead in paint is "bad" (but only if you EAT IT), lead in the air isn't good, so don't inhale over the melting pot. but the lead in the bullets themselves isn't a problem when its in the ground, except for various govt regulations, which may, or may not apply to private property.
If you're wondering why lead shot is banned for waterfowl, the science part is because waterfowl EAT IT, and their systems grind up the shot into powder that digestive acids can dissolve and enter the bloodstream. The rest of the reason it's banned is political.
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Much of our work was at government ranges and the results from the samples we took showed the local pH made all the difference between leachable lead and lead that didn't.
I read an article a while back about French farmers finding bullets, unexploded ordnance, etc. when they till their fields.
A colleague was in on some of that and he saw similar effects. Well used bullet stop berms might contain intact bullets, bullet jackets with the lead leached out, bullet cores with the jackets corroded away, or nothing at all of any age.
I have a slight acquaintance with that; what they are concerned with is UXO, both explosive and gas.
Yes, but the issue is more complex than just the amount of lead you put in the ground. Studies of military ranges have shown the soil type, the amount of "acid rain" you get, all determine the level of contamination that really gets into the soil and groundwater. Lead oxidizes and develops a passivation layer unless soil or rain is acidic. If the soil isn't acidic and you're not in an acid rain area the lead typically doesn't leach. I spent two decades in the haz waste site/environmental industry. Much of our work was at government ranges and the results from the samples we took showed the local pH made all the difference between leachable lead and lead that didn't.
A colleague was in on some of that and he saw similar effects. Well used bullet stop berms might contain intact bullets, bullet jackets with the lead leached out, bullet cores with the jackets corroded away, or nothing at all of any age.
France still has zones rouge, Red Zones, where battlefield contamination is high enough to bar agricultural use.The fact that they’re tilling fields that were once WW1 battlefields leads me to believe that perhaps lead contamination may not be as large of a problem as we think.
I have a backyard range in an agricultural area. Since the bullets splatter when they hit the target, I am wondering how much shooting you would need to do before you started to contaminate the ground around the target. Any info on this?