Thousands of people, including workers, shooters and their family members, have been contaminated at shooting ranges due to poor ventilation and contact with lead-coated surfaces, a Seattle Times investigation has found.
Those most at risk are employees who work around firearms, unknowingly inhaling lead-tinged dust and fumes as they instruct customers and clean shooting ranges of spent ammunition. Lead exposure can cause an array of health problems — from nausea and fatigue to organ damage, mental impairment and even death.
Even those who’ve never stepped inside a gun range have become sick. Employees have carried lead residue into their homes on their skin, clothes, shoes and work gear, inadvertently contaminating family members, including children, who are the most vulnerable to lead’s debilitating health effects.
For the public, shooting firearms is the most common way of getting lead poisoning outside of work, according to national statistics.
"Nausea, fatigue, organ damage, mental impairment, death," damn that exercising of your 2nd Amendment rights can really take a toll on a fella.
Kind of makes you wonder if the lunacy of the pro-gun folks is due to their overwhelming fetish for guns, or simply the result of too much lead in their systems. Or maybe a combination of both.
Well I'll tell you one thing, it certainly puts some of these accidental shootings into perspective.
Kind of hard to control a weapon when you have lost the feeling in your arms and hands.
One of the funniest(to me) letters to the editor I read recently was some tunnel visioned conservative jerk complaining dead seriously about a push to use lead free ammunition. He was whining about why must we change the way it's always been and what does it matter if the animals get shot with lead, they die anyway. Why oh why do liberals always want to change things?
ReplyDeleteI always looked at lead free ammo as a benefit to the environment but considering the story about the effects of lead on the gun fetishists, I am thinking that maybe keeping the lead in could benefit the nation and the world in the long run.
Too bad exposure doesn't cause impotence or sterility.
ReplyDeleteWell good old veganism and vegetarianism might cause impotency.
DeleteCould be that those deer hunting country hicks are going to take over the world by outbreeding the greenie vegans.
http://www.politicalears.com/blog/study-vegetarian-men-have-lower-sperm-counts-/
Oh, but lead in sperm IS linked to male impotence and infertility. http://www.webmd.com/men/news/20030206/lead-linked-to-male-infertility
DeleteOther sources of lead include: air, water, cigarettes, paint, pipes, and cosmetics (especially lipstick and tattoos).
Hair dye is another source of lead exposure. Nothing like slathering it right on top of your brain, right?
DeleteGun-Nut America: Man Trying to Sell a Gun Gets Robbed at Gun Point With His Own Gun
ReplyDeletehttp://aattp.org/gun-nut-america-man-trying-to-sell-a-gun-gets-robbed-at-gun-point-with-his-own-gun/
NRA Says People Shouldn’t Be Afraid Of Guns Since They’re Just Metal And Plastic
ReplyDeleteIn a video released by the NRA Monday, commentator Billy Johnson asked people to be more tolerant of guns and stop being scared of them. In the video, he claimed that we as a society have humanized guns too much and people have become too intimidated of them. He wants more people to realize that guns are “just bits of metal and plastic” and should be looked at in the same manner as a vacuum cleaner or other well-known appliances or tools. Johnson’s commentary regarded the public’s reaction to ‘open carry’ activists. These people have made headlines in recent months by openly carrying long assault weapons out in public.
Apparently, what set Johnson off, per Media Matters, was an incident that occurred near his hometown where an open carry enthusiast received push back from citizens for attempting to carry a gun into a public school. In Jonson’s mind, the man was just abiding by the law and wasn’t doing anything illegal. He feels that those who try to demonstrate their legal right to openly carry assault weapons wherever they go are getting a bad rap because the guns look scary. Therefore, Johnson wants people to stop being mean to those poor little guns because they are completely harmless.
Below is Johnson’s video, courtesy of NRA News:
http://www.politicususa.com/2014/10/20/nra-wonders-people-intimidated-guns-metal-plastic.html
Guns don’t kill people. People who say “Guns don’t kill people” kill people. With guns.
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/robdelaney/status/226393467293671424
Same symptoms from eating old lead paint chips. Give em more time--- maybe they'll figure it out eventually. Or maybe they won't.
ReplyDeleteOh, boy. The Seattle Times is in trouble now. How dare they point out problems with businesses involved with guns. The NRA is going to have a hissey. I read the whole article and it states that even with gun ranges that have violations, if any penalties are even imposed on them, they are minor. They are subject to the same workplace safety standards as everyone else, but don't get inspected as much, and definitely are not penalized as much. Shows you the power of the gun lobby.
ReplyDeleteToo much lead explains why Chucky Sr is a total fucking moron.
ReplyDeleteThe state of this country and what we trust...
ReplyDeleteThe Pew Research Center is out Tuesday with an exhaustive study on how news sources are evaluated across the ideological spectrum, ranging from “consistently liberal” to “consistently conservative.”
One part of the study ranks the degree to which a sample of TV, radio and internet news sources are trusted. The only outlet that is more trusted than not by each ideological group is the Wall Street Journal.
http://static01.mediaite.com/med/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Pew-Research-copy.jpg
http://www.journalism.org/2014/10/21/section-1-media-sources-distinct-favorites-emerge-on-the-left-and-right/
Media Matters interviews Chuck Todd because, well I don't kow since he isn't very interesting.
ReplyDeletehttp://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/10/21/media-matters-interviews-chuck-todd-part-1-scan/201236
In Reversal, Pro-Gun Forbes Columnist Discloses National Rifle Association Ties In Latest Column
ReplyDeletehttp://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/10/20/in-reversal-pro-gun-forbes-columnist-discloses/201234
My sister is an environmental physician. I can tell you from what I have learned from her that lead poisoning is a very serious thing among shooters. There is no safe exposure level limit for lead. None. It impairs the body in serious ways at just a few parts per billion. Your article does not mention this, but it is also a carcinogen. And good luck detoxing and getting the lead out of the body, especially out of the brain: it most likely won't happen. When you combine even low levels of lead exposure with a poor diet (high in sugar, refined carbs, and processed oils), then you are asking for permanent chronic disease, behavior alteration, and lowering of intelligence levels. The righties are essentially fighting for their 'right' to be sick, angry, and dumb, all under the guise of the Second Amendment. And if we look at the Second Amendment people, that's exactly what we see: a bunch of sick, angry, and mentally-compromised people, people who are incapable of rational thought and with whom any intelligent discussion is impossible.
ReplyDeleteAll plastic contains lead. Thus, each time you give a child a pacifier or put them in plastic diapers, you are exposing them to lead. In the case of diapers, you are basically rubbing the lead against their genitalia. Plastic is ubiquitous in America: it is everywhere. We even put food on or inside of plastic containers, then head the food in a microwave. We drink beverages from plastic bottles. But the plastic also contains phthalates, which are hormone disruptors (and which also cause weight gain). Any wonder why sperm count in America is just a fraction of what it was in the 1950s, and why fertility rates are much lower?
ReplyDelete