Thousands, maybe millions, of game animals get killed every year with lead bullets and shot and nobody dies of lead poisoning from eating them.
I was taught the following by a chemist from the FDA:
People don't die from eating lead particles, (as drunkenpoacher points out.)
People are most commonly harmed by lead from ingesting
lead oxide. Babies who got poisoned from eating lead paint, were harmed because the agent used to produce the white in the white paint, was lead oxide. Women in the past centuries, who had skin damage from their white makeup... were damaged because lead oxide was used to make the face cream white. (Clowns in the 19th century had the same problem.) Romans who heated their wine in vessels lined with lead, sped up the process where the oxide that formed on the containers when the containers were empty, was released when the liquid wine (red and acidic) was added, and the process was accelerated when heat was applied. This is also the reason one should not use antique pewter for drinking vessels (The water in Rome is hard, and the lead piping that brought water into the city quickly formed a layer of
scale that sealed off lead from the incoming, cold water.) The Franklin Arctic Expedition where all hands were lost seems to be from the use of lead solder on the canned food..., the cans were made, stored until filled thus oxide probably formed, then they were filled with food and sealed
and heated for the canning process, and stored for a
very long time, THEN when eaten the men simply
heated the cans....,
Old, outdated, indoor target ranges without modern ventilation don't poison the shooters from breathing in fresh lead dust from the bullets impacting the backstop..., the impact of the projectiles causes oxidized flakes of old dust to be kicked up into the air, and that is what harms the people who breathe it..., if they breathe a lot of it over time. Cops that used such ranges for a few hours, four times a year didn't get poisoned, the guy who ran the range every day got poisoned. Lead fumes from very hot lead (like casting bullets, or toy soldiers, or working with real pewter) is another very specific instance where it's easier for the lead to get into the body. It's much easier to get the lead into the water or into blood which is mostly water via lead oxide.
So why do birds get sick and/or die? Well they have a gizzard while we don't, so when you're talking waterfowl, they ingest little stones from the bottom of ponds, lakes, streams, rivers to help their gizzard grind up grains they have eaten. Those pieces of lead shot, launched by hunters in the past came down into the water, oxidized in the water, and then are picked up by the birds like sand and fine pebbles, and held for a long time in the gizzard since the birds don't know it's shot and not fine pebbles or sand. Plenty of time for the oxide to transfer, AND the birds pass it so they are constantly replacing the little rocks so if oxidized lead shot is present, they are constantly taking in new sources of lead oxide. What about raptors? Back in the days of leaded gasoline, lead pollution in the atmosphere was carried by rain into the streams, so into the fish or aquatic birds, and into the raptors that ate them, or consumed some of the water. Plus the occasional incident of leaded waste water from industry, and the runoff from the use of DDT.... Carrion eaters like condors have a very reduced risk of ingesting oxidized lead shot from a lost game animal, so their elevated lead levels are probably from the flesh of some of the animals they have eaten, which might be fish or birds, OR might be mammals that have high lead levels from a non-hunting source. Doesn't matter to the anti-hunters in California though.
Easier to blame the projectiles.
LD
