Lead, why isn't it banned?

Dave_W wrote:
Lead split shot is banned in Yellowstone (or used to be) and lead bird shot has been banned for years in some places due to ingestion by waterfowl.

I'm agnostic on the issue and am willing to consider some new angles or knowledge on this. For now, I'm inclined to think a lead ban, at least for fishing gear, probably isn't warranted in PA. When you consider how much lead a FFer leaves in the environment compared to shooting firearms, especially shotguns, it seems mighty inconsequential.

Am I wrong?
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I agree, so you can't be wrong. ;-)

But seriously, everything we do has impact on the environment. Some more than others. Fly fishing has very little impact.

The standard 12 gauge shot shell has an ounce of lead shot. 3" and 3.5" have even more. I'm not advocating for outlawing lead shot. Just ask yourselves how much lead you lose in a year of fishing compared to shooting.

I've used lead free split shot. Costs a lot more, requires more, and dousn't stay on as well. Considering all that, it costs at least 10 times as much.

From a conservationist or environmentalist standpoint, there are much bigger fish to fry.
 
Jifigz, what are your countertops made of. Hopefully not granite because it often contains lead as well as uranium and other radioactive materials. As these elements go through radioactive decay they give off radon gas. According to EPA, radon is the #2 cause of lung cancer. Is it enough to worry about? Should granite be outlawed as a building material? If not, should a warning be etched into it?

I think there is a point or two in that.
 
Littering? Blame millennials. Cool.
While I think the lead issue is a reasonable topic to ponder, I kind of feel like there are more significant threats to our watersheds that we need to be wary of: poor logging and farming practices, Oil & Gas impacts, water withdrawals, stormwater and wastewater discharges, aging pipe networks, loss of permeable surface area from development, privatization of land adjacent to non-navigable waterways, risk of train derailments on some rivers, the list goes on.
 
Why isn't catch & release fly fishing banned?

We catch & release fish, torturing them for our pleasure by playing them; knowing many of the fish we release are maimed or die regardless of how often you insist every fish YOU catch lives to be caught another day.

...just sayin?
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Once I started crushing my hook barbs, I started feeling a whole lot better about this aspect ......
 
Maybe some type of scientific test should be done. Start by dragging a magnet behind a tractor through a known field and see how much lead is dredged up. Do the same for creek beds with the same magnet.

 
A lump of lead is not magnetic, it is diamagnetic because it can interact slightly with magnetic fields.
 
PennypackFlyer wrote:
Maybe some type of scientific test should be done. Start by dragging a magnet behind a tractor through a known field and see how much lead is dredged up. Do the same for creek beds with the same magnet.
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Yeah, as far as I know only ferrous metals will be attracted to a magnet.
 
I knew the people doing the work with lead and waterfowl back in the early 70's that was one of the drivers that produced the lead shot ban. The work was done in Great South Bay on the south side of Long Island which had been the site of years of market gunning. Nearly all the duck blood checked was close to the lethal limit. Not many dead ducks found, but further research showed the sick ducks simply went back into thick brush before dying and are not found. That was a severe case, but other duck marshes were similar.

Two other lead outlaws; in gasoline and in paint. The blood lead level in the general public dropped after removing lead from gasoline. Car and truck fumes certainly spread a lot of lead around. The paint issue was also prompted by real health issues.

However, I'm not sure about the lead sinker ban. I use steel barrel sinkers for fishing plastic worms because they are big chunks of metal, but use lead for stream fishing. The tin substitutes aren't all that great either. Many anti-fouling paints use tin compounds so tin is toxic to some degree. Tungsten is OK, but expensive. I don't think the concentration of lead in streams from sinkers is that great. As was stated earlier, the Earth's crust has plenty of heavy metals (lead, arsenic, etc) and life has evolved to deal with them. Plus the heavy metals are so unlike our body that they can be handled by our immune system. However, only up to a point. Some cases like lead shot in marshes, in gasoline, and in paint have shown real problems. I'm not sure lead sinkers are in that situation.
 
That is kind of funny PPF, but not really. I am pretty sure you knew that lead doesn't stick to magnets.

But along those lines...

This area was glaciated. In fact, my farm is basically glacial till. What most don't know is that those glaciers brought gold with them from the north. Many of the streams in NE Ohio. have traces of it.

When I learned of this, I thought... How cool would it be to find some gold on my own oroperty.

I started by sluicing and panning a 5 gallon bucket full of material from the creek. I found lots of iron and garnet, and possibly one tiny grain of gold. Not sure because while trying to capture it, I lost it.

I also sluiced and panned a bucket of material from a dry rivene. Not a field, but between 2 fields. Found more iron and garnet, plus a couple lead pellets. It told me I was doing it right.

Me being a scientist means that was a scientific study, right?;-)
 
JeffK wrote:

Two other lead outlaws; in gasoline and in paint. The blood lead level in the general public dropped after removing lead from gasoline. Car and truck fumes certainly spread a lot of lead around. The paint issue was also prompted by real health ...
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Yea, lead put into the atmosphere was a biggy. It eventually settles as dust on everything where it then enters the food chain. Removing it from transportation fuels may not have been good for old engines, but was a big plus for the environment.
 
Were you wearing a lab coat while dredging? If not, no it doesn't. LOL GG
My father used to say, "get the lead out". Is that significant?
 
Does Carhart make lab coats?
 

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FWIW had a job site at my company that is a shooting range at a gun club. they wanted the field regraded to expand the shooting area. But first, they had to strip the top 6 inches of soil from the entire site and pay for special disposal because it was covered by several inches of lead from many decades of target practice. So by comparison fishing seems low impact in terms of lead.

I don't worry about lead split shot though as much as I do leftover line in trees and in the water. There are some spots on the Potomac that are becoming unfishable because of tangles of 50 lb braid left in the river everywhere. Hard to fish without snagging someone else's line.
 
My Old Age must be making me forgetful. But then again, you would think that they would come up with some way to easily collect all the lead in order to recycle it.

One time while fishing the Barnaget inlet i snagged one of those 30lb wads of fishing line and broke off my lure. Since I spent like $14.00 bucks on it - I spend a couple of hours fishing that wad.....Sure enough I hooked into several times before it finally broke off and brought it to shore (The Rocks). I got several other lures out of it.
 
FarmerDave: Does Carhart make lab coats?

Coldbore: They sure do!

:lol: :pint:
 
PennypackFlyer wrote:
My Old Age must be making me forgetful. But then again, you would think that they would come up with some way to easily collect all the lead in order to recycle it.
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Well, it isn't all that difficult to separate it from dirt (shooting range example). It's much heavier than dirt, so easy to separate. It just isn't cost effective.

Scarce, I once put an offer on a house where the owner was big into reloading. He not only had bags of lead shot in the basement, but was not neat with his reloading. Lots of it ground into the basement floor, and likely tracked through the house. Apparently I wasn't thinking when I made the offer. Fortunately, the house and septic failed inspection and the owner didn't want to pay the large estimated cost. So I backed out. Nice house on 5 acres, but the lead got me thinking and scared me off.
 
FD....Talking about God looking out for you. He's got your back:)
 
In late spring when the flows are down I always harvest the split shot and lures from the line in the trees wherever I fish. Much of the time I can rip the line down as well and pack it home in my wader pouch.
 
PennypackFlyer wrote:
FD....Talking about God looking out for you. He's got your back:)
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No doubt.

 
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