The Doe Run Company, Lead Smelter in Herculaneum, Missouri to Close

NRA-ILA

Doe Run made significant efforts to reduce lead emissions from the smelter, but in 2008 the federal Environmental Protection Agency issued new National Ambient Air Quality Standards for lead that were 10 times tighter than the previous standard.  Given the new lead air quality standard, Doe Run made the decision to close the Herculaneum smelter.

Whatever the EPA's motivation when creating the new lead air quality standard, increasingly restrictive regulation of lead is likely to affect the production and ct of traditional ammunition.  Just this month, California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law a bill that will ban lead ammunition for all hunting in California.  The Center for Biological Diversity has tried multiple times to get similar regulations at the federal level by trying, and repeatedly failing, to get the EPA to regulate conventional ammunition under the Toxic Substances Control Act.

At this time, it's unclear if Doe Run or another company will open a new lead smelter in the United States that can meet the more stringent lead air quality standards by using more modern smelting methods.   What is clear is that after the Herculaneum smelter closes its doors in December, entirely domestic manufacture of conventional ammunition, from raw ore to finished cartridge, will be impossible.

Gun-rights fanatics and Obama haters like Allen West see this as a conspiracy against gun owners. Being completely self-absorbed, they see the EPA decision only as it affects them. They think it really has nothing to do with air pollution or the dangers of lead in the environment and only about "back door gun control."  The fact that many industries use lead other than the ammo makers doesn't phase them. It's all about their rights, you see.

Lead Poisoning Puts Workers At Risk Thanks To Outdated Regulations

Huffington Post

In a letter to a friend dated July 31, 1786, Benjamin Franklin wrote of lead's "mischievous" effects on workers. He cited his own encounters with the heavy metal 60 years earlier at a printing press and bemoaned how unsuspecting plumbers, painters and other professionals continued to be exposed and harmed.

"You will observe with concern," Franklin concluded the letter, "how long a useful truth be known, and exist, before it is generally received and practiced on."

Health experts echo Franklin's laments today. They say scores of working adults continue to be exposed to high levels of lead, including recent cases at indoor gun ranges, as regulations lag decades behind knowledge of the metal's health hazards and budget cuts further hamper efforts to prevent poisonings.

It turns out the danger is not from the lead bullets melting into the ground and getting into the drinking water, like the lying pro-gun fanatics said is not really a danger, it's the lead dust that gets into the air from the lead projectiles smashing into their backdrop.

The air in indoor shooting ranges is poison, especially for the workers who breathe it day in and day out.

Alternatives to Lead Ammo

The Herald

The fear is that eliminating lead bullets would amount to a ban on hunting, but that hasn't happened in the area where non-lead ammo is required. Not even close. Condors are still being poisoned because of lack of compliance with current law caused by an insufficient amount of alternative ammo on the market. Was paint or gasoline banned when lead was removed from these products? Of course not, and neither will hunting, just as waterfowl hunting in the 1990s continued despite the ban on lead shot.

At Ventana Wildlife Society, we gave out free nonlead ammunition, costing us about 5 percent of our annual revenue. The program is funded by private donors and the Monterey County Fish and Game Advisory Commission, from fines.

The society believes this is an effective approach and we encourage federal and state wildlife agencies to duplicate it on broader scales.

So, I guess our exhuberant commenters were mistaken when they said banning lead bullets would leave no alternative.

It make you wonder if those guys just make shit up and passionately push it as fact.