Casting cheap, lead-free bullets?

ADB, sorry you've been branded as an evil liberal lead hater for having a concern about your health. Forgive me for not addressing your alternative casting question... I think the answer is "all things in moderation", if your watershed was under a public range backstop with piles of spent projectiles I'd be uneasy.

Here's an idea, collect a tap water sample and have it tested for heavy metals through your extension service. Shoot at will for a year, and have it tested again, and again the year after. If you see a trend that makes you uncomfortable, then stop.

That study you pasted the abstract from is very shaky both in that Plos One is basically the wikipedia of journals and the group that submitted it is The Peregrine Fund, a subsidiary of Earth Share (hard to pretend there is not an agenda). Also, in the study they only fed the test pigs deer meat that was high in fragments. In reality you wouldn't only eat the region of meat that had been impacted by the bullet from all your kills. Not saying that lead isn't harmful but as a researcher I didn't find this data convincing.
 
I have not fired up the ol' pot for quite some time, so I have not kept up on the latest advances in casting and safety.

Is bismuth offered to home hobbyists to pour their own bullets?
 
Tourist, bismuth is much too brittle to be used for bullets. It would probably not cast well either. It's nearly impossible to find anymore, the outfit that was marketing bismuth shot has gone belly up. Bismuth shot was alloyed with tin to make it usable, it was so brittle in pure form, you couldn't push it to usable velocity without it shattering.

Even when alloyed with tin, you had to be real careful how hard you pushed it in shotshell loads. Then, you HAD to use a special buffer and slow burning powder to get good patterns. I spent most of one summer developing bismuth loads for 2 shells. One was 2-¾, the other a 3" shell. 1-¼ and 1-5/8 respectively.
 
Snuffy, thanks for the update. With Wisconsin being what it is, I'm expecting some very serious parameters passed into law.

We have a real mess here. During the Vietnam War, one of the places where munnitions were made was at Badger Ordnance. It was poorly run. They had their own fire department on site--a fellow shooter worked their during the hey-day and admitted they had "at least one fire per day." The water table in that entire area is contaminated.

I recently sold all of my reloading equipment to a fellow TFL member. Many of the supplies were related to the use of cast bullets. In fact, I gave him a few coffee cans of bullets to which the Dillon press was adjusted. He's in this for the long haul, and alternatives might be needed.
 
Another Thought...

If you are really concerned about the lead leaching into the ground, why not plant species of plants that will absorb the lead from the ground.

You could always later cut the plants and dispose of them in a safe place away from your well.

This is not a concern I have with my shooting, but I am sure there are species of plants which will absorb more lead than others. (Absorb is not the correct word, but I have not taken biology or botany classes in years, sorry :) )

It does not seem like there is an alternative available for lead at this time.

If you cast harder projectiles, would that alleviate your concerns?
 
This just in!!!!!!

I dug up a piece of lead in my back yard this past weekend. When we moved here, lot was somewhat treeless. We planted lots of trees, put those soaker hoses around them to water while small and buried hose under shallow soil and mulch. Trees large now, so I cut out hose before it strangled tree. Found an old LYMAN lead ingot underground when removing hose. Hose looked worse than lead ingot. Soooooo, does lead really "decompose" or desintegrate underground. Saw a little white discoloration, but I don't think I would get my panties in a wad about it.

And these guys are always selling civil war fired musket projos on ebay, and they are over 100 years buried in the ground. Seems like a non-issue, one would have more contamination problems from bird droppings.
 
Interesting links up there ... I read the paper from the abstract and I was stunned by the comment
... and two ground meat packages (2 deer) each contained a single shotgun pellet which had not been detected on the carcass radiographs.
Click to expand...

What? Shotgun pellets??? Not detected in the original radiographs??? Where did they come from? Certainly NOT from the 7mm RemMag ... Kinda makes me wonder what was up there ... but at least they admitted it.

The data that shows all the difference between the lead fed pigs blood and the control was gone by day four seems to fly in the face of saying that it is a long term effect, doesn't it? Also, I guess some folks do use a 150gr bullet out of a 7mmMag to hunt deer, but I'd expect to see more fragmentation from that combo than I would from something a little less over-kill ... no???

I try to read research with an open mind, but I know that researchers' agendas all too often taint their conclusions ... must read research critically ... even from the more respected peer reviewed journals.

Saands

PS ... I will continue to use my standard loads for my harvesting ...
 
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