California Lead Warning on Handgun Grips

Most of California's health warnings only apply to those living in California. If you live anyplace else in the world you will probably be fine............
 
You can find that same sticker on hundreds of other products.
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I recently noticed it on some brightly colored paracord at Walmart. Is there such a thing as worrying too much? Sure. However, it would be smart to use it in fewer consumer products because it really does persist in the environment. Of course, there are people who are exposed to a lot of it and are fine. There are people who smoke a pack a day for 50+ years without much trouble. There are a lot of factors involved, including individual health or metabolism and just plain probability. The idea is to hedge our bets by having less of it in our personal environments.

Shooting means exposure in most cases. Lead is hard to beat as a ballistic material. It's dense, soft, and slippery. It's relatively cheap and easy to machine. There are new frontiers opening up with alternatives like copper but as most of you know, they can't match lead's density and cost a fair bit more. The lead in primers, which presents a much bigger source of exposure for a lot of us, is used because its chemistry is very reliable. There have been some advances here too but I'll leave that to someone better informed to discuss.
 
The only lead warning that should be on firearms should be visible on the muzzle

"Warning, this device may cause fatal lead poisoning if you don't cease and desist right the hell now."
 
My wife has a prescription drug that must be injected every couple of weeks.
It has a proposition 65 warning on the box... :rolleyes:



Just something we on the left coast are doing that is eliminating chemicals from our environment such as lead (sinkers, shot, pencils, etc).
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Now that's funny.

There are over 32 million registered highway-going vehicles in California. I'm sure they contain no chemicals whatsoever.
...Nor all of the Chinese drywall.
...Nor the chemically treated lumber.
...Et cetera...
 
Lead in it's metallic state is relatively harmless. Lead oxide is very toxic. The lead in paint is lead oxide. The lead we breathed in from burning leaded fuel was lead oxide. The white crust on things like dug up civil war bullets is lead oxide.

Lead like what you get splashed on you at the range, and the black residue you get on your hands from handling lead is metallic lead and not very toxic. The only real danger would be the metallic lead turning into lead oxide very quickly which isn't very likely.

If you work around a great quantity of metallic lead, like a foundry, there is bound to be a bunch of lead oxide lurking around.

I'm not a expert on this matter. If someone knows more about this subject, please chime in.

This is IMPORTANT.
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I don't consider myself an expert on lead toxicity, but I did work in environmental and human health toxicology for many years (primarily with nonpolar organic compounds, not lead) and have read a good bit of the scientific literature on lead because of my shooting hobby, much of it in indoor ranges, resulting in my own elevated serum lead concentrations some years back.

You are correct that lead oxide is more acutely toxic than elemental lead, but elemental lead is quite toxic as well, and does readily enter the body, primarily via inhalation and, secondarily, through ingestion. For shooters, the primary route of exposure is inhalation of fine particulate lead that's suspended in the air from lead bullets and also from lead styphnate priming compound - nearly 100% of the lead you inhale enters the bloodstream. This is obviously more of a problem for those of us who shoot in poorly ventilated indoor ranges. Ingestion of lead results primarily from eating, or touching the mouth, with lead-contaminated hands, as might be the case after a shooting or reloading session. There are a lot of numbers floating around in the literature, but something like 40% of the lead you ingest entering the bloodstream is probably about right. The metallic lead on your hands is most certainly potentially toxic via this route of exposure, but elemental lead does not pass through the skin (well, in trace amounts), so, strictly speaking, the lead on your hands does not pose a risk as long as it stays there. Hand-washing after shooting or reloading takes care of the problem.

With regard to the original question about the California Proposition 65 warning on rubber grips, I have no doubt the warning is there for the grips themselves, not because they would become lead-contaminated during use. But, I seriously doubt that touching rubber grips results in a 1 in 100,000 (what we refer to as a 10^-5) lifetime excess cancer risk, and would really like to see the exposure assumptions and risk calculations that resulted in that conclusion.

ETA: I'm guessing that the warning on lead in rubber grips is due to the "reproductive harm" provisions rather than excess cancer risk. There's probably no established "safe" level for reproductive harm, so manufacturers have to list the risk even though it's so low as to be unquantifiable.
 
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Thanks all. I appreciate the replies and the information.

P.S. Despite the replies there will NOT be a sudden and unexplained glut of various used Pachmayr grips going up for sale in the Twin Cities. ;)
 
I skimmed the thread didn't see anyone mention this but did the grips have any brass in them?

I know some pachmayr grips have metal plates in them surrounding by rubber (I think they use brass/copper).. even if that's not the case did it have the Lion medallion?

Brass pretty much always has SOME lead in it.
Even lead free plumbing fixtures are allowed to have up to I think .25% lead in them.

Do not worry about it.. we're talking about tiny amounts of lead.
CA goes nut's with that warning.
 
I picked up some manilla targets today and the package had the "cancer and reproductive harm" warning on it too.
Got a chuckle out of me. If they didn't contain lead from manufacturing they will when used!
 
/\ Where's the like button for this post?

Apparently everything made these days is coated in cancer, Can't even trust paper.. we're deep in it brothers.

Time to start checking our food packaging.
 
I was a maintenance manager at a factory. I was called to a machine one night because the operator complained that paint was chipping off and falling from the ceiling. When he complained the paint could contain lead, I told him, "Don't eat it!" I then left and had a word with his manager. He was young. But not that young.
 
I don't think I have seen any product in the past ten or twenty years that isn't "known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm."

Pay it no mind.

The above is post #3--

Everything except POT...no problem with that.
 
if it contains a known or suspected carcinogen, it gets a warning. Often a label, if not actually on the product or container, in the MSDS (or whatever they call them now).

The warning is there, not just to inform the end user, but also workers making and handling the product. Worker right to know laws require it.

Something that may not be any problem with occasional exposure can be a health hazard with continuous exposer.

Why do you think the X-ray technician goes behind a shield or leaves the room?

You are getting one X-ray or one series, the tech may do 25 a day, day in, day out, so their exposure is potentially many times yours.
 
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