Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Tarmac on August 31, 2006, 01:48:41 PM
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Today's paper had an article (http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2006608310304)
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.
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Do it in Lake Erie so I can watch. :p
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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....
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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?
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Catfish would probabally get ahold of it, they eat anything.
I dont eat catfish anyways so it wont affect me
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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??
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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.
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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!
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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
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Originally posted by StarOfAfrica2
How can you live in S. Illinois and not eat catfish??
Well I have but I think i got some bad fish and it made me pretty sick, havent ate any since
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Tarmac, I'm kind of water oriented, and I don't see why you guys couldn't find someplace nearby onshore to shoot your guns... its always more fun to shoot at a target... right? Why would you want to shoot into water anyway? What would you shoot at?
Or do you wish to present an environmental issue? I'm confused.
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With all those billions of perch and walleye sinkers and split shot soaking for the last 150 years in the lakes, I have my doubts that a few fmj's will shead much into the water.
shamus
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I was all concerned about skeet shooting on a relative's farm until a few shooters reminded me that Viriginia is in the middle of U.S. Civil War territory -- imagine the zillion tons of lead expended in that conflict, and no complaints about any land or water lead pollution from that that I've heard of.
And consider all the lead fired throughout Europe in two world wars. Any lead residue from that causing problems?
I'm no chemist, but I think lead is already in the environment and it doesn't seem to break down, so it doesn't seem to be a problem unless somehow breathed (?) or ingested.
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Everyone knows that lead and copper do not occur naturally in the emvironment, therefor we must ban all lead and copper from society........
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I doubt the Coast Guard will cause much environmental impact. They ARE the environmental impact experts. I'm not sure if they have anything bigger than a 20mm Phalanx or maybe a 2" main gun on the Lakes.
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Originally posted by Gunthr
Tarmac, I'm kind of water oriented, and I don't see why you guys couldn't find someplace nearby onshore to shoot your guns... its always more fun to shoot at a target... right? Why would you want to shoot into water anyway? What would you shoot at?
Or do you wish to present an environmental issue? I'm confused.
Nah, I don't consider myself an environmentalist, but maybe a conservationist. I like the outdoors and want to make sure it's there for my kids to enjoy. I don't believe in waste because somone's too lazy to dispose of their stuff properly, but I also recognize that everything makes byproducts that must be disposed of. I just thought the article in the Free Press was timely based on my plans for the upcoming holiday weekend, and the fact that I'd never really thought about the lead.
We used to shoot clays over the water, shoot milk jugs/pop bottles in the water, or shoot things on the small rock islands that form breakers along the beach. We're not just hosing out into the water... like you said, it's more fun to shoot at targets. :)
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Originally posted by Halo
And consider all the lead fired throughout Europe in two world wars. Any lead residue from that causing problems?
I have not read any reports on this so i dunno.
We are cleaning up alot of the older live-fire ranges here before turning them over to the general public for use. Its going to take many years to make them safe from duds etc, but an even bigger problem is all the metals and lead that have gotten into the ground water and lakes in, and around the ranges. Thankfully there has not been alot of DU rounds fired as they were banned pretty early on but the metals are causing problems for fish and wildlife in the ranges.
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I would have thought that considering the cities and industry that are clustered round the Great Lakes (car making particularly) that a few rounds will make a negligable impact in comparison to all the heavy metals (eg Cadmium) and other pollutants dumped in there since the 50's / 60's. .......
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First off how many of you have seen a .50 cal MG belt that had pure lead bullets?
They are ALL copper jacketed!
Second, while shotgun shot will settle in shallow marshy area's where ducks feed and ingest it. Large caliber bullets are not near as likely to be ingested by anything. Ducks think the shot is grit, good for grinding up their food. Thats why waterfowl hunting switched to steel shot.
Next, someone back in the 70's was leading a big campaign about mercury & other poisoning in the great lakes. Well someone got smart & pulled a sample from a sturgeon on display in a museum caught more than a 100 years earlier.
Guess what, its levels where higher than current levels!
A lot of the toxic chemicals wash out of the rocks up there, run down into the lake. They are not all mankinds fault at all.
As to feeding sturgeon expended bullets laying on the bottom, well, good luck.
Sturgeon are no dummys, they "taste" before they swallow, unlike ducks.
Leave the Coast Guard alone, they are doing a good job.
Test firing a few .50's in the middle of the great lakes is going to hurt nothing!
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Originally posted by Ghosth
Test firing a few .50's in the middle of the great lakes is going to hurt nothing!
Who is going to patch the holes in the water?
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GhostH, I dont see many of us up in arms here aganst it. Relax. This is a friendly enviroment. :)
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anyone ever buy or look at 150 year old lead balls fired from muskets in battle?
They could be reloaded and fired again. The lead is in allmost perfect condition. It forms a white oxide coating that stops further errosion and..... pollution...
A recent study of federal land used for 50 years for a shooting range showed little or no lead pollution from the millions of rounds fired into the area. What pollution there was seemed to be confied to a very small area near lead deposits and did not migrate.
lazs
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I was gonna mention the oxide coating. It might not make a difference in bird shot, but might mitigate the environmental impact in larger calibers. There was an announcement of a fishing pier closing down for repairs a few years ago, and when it went into effect, I went diving, which had previously not been allowed. I was looking for fishing gear, lures, traps, etc. I got a lot of that, but weight-wise, I got a huge amount of lead - the result of people losing thier terminal tackle for whatever reason. All of it had a white-ish coating. This was saltwater, I'm pretty sure the surface of lead in sweet water oxidizes the same way.
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Originally posted by BlueJ1
Do it in Lake Erie so I can watch. :p
yea do it at lake erie.. that lake is already polluted beyond repair..