Bullets into water = pollution?

[Tarmac]

Today's paper had an article
about a Coast Guard plan to begin live-fire training on the Great Lakes in designated areas.   There are of course opponents, ranging from the idiot  "ohnoes my boat will get shot" to the NIMBY crowd, but the environmental questions seem to have some merit.  The Coast Guard commissioned its own study and says it's environmentally sound, but hasn't released the study to the public... which of course makes me trust them even less.  

A couple of questions:

1) How has the Coast Guard traditionally done live fire training, if not in zones in the lakes?
2) Lead shot is banned for waterfowl hunting because of lead pollution... why not lead bullets?
3) What will a copper-jacketed bullet do when it hits the water?  Will the copper contain the lead, or will it split open like it does when it hits a 70% water gooey human target?  
4) What happens in 100 years?  Will the copper separate from the lead and allow it to soak into the water?  Can lead leech through copper and into the water?  

In addition, the public comment period ends today... the same day the story broke, giving people little time for debate or to form an intelligent opinion.  More fishyness.  

Pregnant women and women who may yet have children, according to the govt and pretty much everybody else, should avoid eating Great Lakes fish because of lead, PCB, and mercury levels, and even for healthy adult males you're at risk if it's a regular part of the diet.  

This article is particularly appropriate now, as I was pondering taking the rifle and handguns to my buddy's cottage on Lake Huron for the holiday weekend and doing some shooting over the water.  I'd never thought about the lead in the bullets.

[BlueJ1]

Do it in Lake Erie so I can watch.

[Dux]

I can only speak about (2) with any certainty... the problem with lead shot is that waterfowl directly ingest it while feeding (it's small and sits on the bottom), and has little to do with the lead poisoning the water. A lead bullet would not be ingested... too large.

[BlueJ1]

Lake Erie and Ontario has a high population of sturgeon and other bottom feeders. Its alreayd reccomended you only eat 1 fish oput of Lake Erie a month at most. Pregnant women should avoid it at all costs.

[Mustaine]

Originally posted by Tarmac
3) What will a copper-jacketed bullet do when it hits the water?  Will the copper contain the lead, or will it split open like it does when it hits a 70% water gooey human target?  

mythbusters did a thing on bullets fired into water...

at an angle of like 30-45º you only have to be 2' underwater and the bullet will not hit you at all... they disentrigate as soon as they hit the surface. the higher caliber bullet, the more it blows apart. the .50 they tried didn't even penetrate 1.5 feet.

[Gunthr]

I don't know, lead is obviously a heavy metal, and its bad for you and wildlife/fish.  I heard that military is developing green rounds made of tungsten/tin alloy that is significantly cheaper than lead and performs just as well for training....

[Tarmac]

Originally posted by Dux
I can only speak about (2) with any certainty... the problem with lead shot is that waterfowl directly ingest it while feeding (it sits on the bottom), and has nothing to do with the lead poisoning the water. A lead bullet would not be ingested.

right, but if a bullet pulverized (see Mustaine's post) upon impact you'd have lead dust everywhere which could be ingested by bottom feeders and work its way up the food chain, right?

[Meatwad]

Catfish would probabally get ahold of it, they eat anything.


I dont eat catfish anyways so it wont affect me

[Tarmac]

It all comes around though.  A lead-laden catfish dies and its carcass is eaten by all kinds of little things, which are eaten by bigger things, which are then eaten by a yummy bass or perch - which is now full of lead.

[BlueJ1]

But thats the thing. Hardly anyone eats the fish out of the lakes. And when they do its in limited amounts or they could care less. I'll go get my tacklebox in a few and get the NYS Regs. book and I'll post the amounts of fish that can be eatn from the lakes.

[Clifra Jones]

I'm not an enviro-nazi but it's probably not a good idea. Many old firing range on land are seriously lead contaminated and need to be cleaned up and considerable cost.

BlueJ1, I grew up on the shores of Lake Erie (Black Rock in Buffalo) I wouldn't eat anything out of that lake. Ontario is worse.

[StarOfAfrica2]

Originally posted by Meatwad
Catfish would probabally get ahold of it, they eat anything.


I dont eat catfish anyways so it wont affect me

How can you live in S. Illinois and not eat catfish??

[BlueJ1]

Originally posted by Clifra Jones
I'm not an enviro-nazi but it's probably not a good idea. Many old firing range on land are seriously lead contaminated and need to be cleaned up and considerable cost.

BlueJ1, I grew up on the shores of Lake Erie (Black Rock in Buffalo) I wouldn't eat anything out of that lake. Ontario is worse.

Ontario has the Nuclear plant. The only fish I eat from lakes around here is from the Mtns.

[nirvana]

Last fishing trip i went out and bought a bunch of new lures, all of them except the rubber worms and nightcrawlers said "Warning contains lead which is know to the state of California to cause cancer" or whatever that warning is.  It's not a huge amount of lead and it's not breaking apart, but imagine all the lures lost over the years.


Living in Colorado, the best fish come from mountain streams, naturally filtered Rocky Mountain water.  Trout is teh nummay!

[ASTAC]

I eat Fish and Shrimp out of a river (ST. Johns)that I KNOW first hand that a paper mill in Palatka dumps it's waste in...No problems yet