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Lloyd,

I am dismissive (I would say I just disagree), as you call it, due to a complete lack of evidence for your arguments. If the industries produced their own studies produce them. I cannot find them. I would love to see evidence of your claims but so far I can't find it and neither can you apparently. Perhaps the fact that we are on a shooting affiliated webpage is less ironic and more reveals a bias towards your opinion. Certainly it does not point to a bias towards mine. I do, and will continue, to shoot a fair amount but will do everything I can to not cause harm. I do not propose a ban on lead just a move away from it as it becomes more and more possible. I don't think that is a radical or reactionary position. Certainly the lead alternatives are much better than they were 20 years ago. As for my level of delusion I am happy with it.

James

Joined: 17 Jan 2014 Posts: 1381 Location: Denver, Colorado

James:

Fair enough.

The company I that remember being reportedly working on their own data (by feeding mine tailings to pigs) was Newmont Mining (the argument at the time was "bioavailability"). This would have been back in the early/middle 1990s when I was working on an EPA job in Salt Lake City (for SAIC on the Bingham Canyon site). Now, this is hearsay, so I can't testify to the veracity of the information (& I can no-longer remember the names of the individuals that were enlightening me, but they might have been State of Utah environmental folks). And, as far as actually completing the tests and publishing the data, I cannot say (as I have not looked). There were some high-stakes poker being played by the mining companies then (& always) with the regulators and those negotiations are seldom relayed to the public at large (at least in my experience). My work in those days was in litigation support as a paralegal (yet another sidebar to my educational adventure) and our work products were going to the Office of Regional Counsel for EPA Region VIII. Under RCRA (the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act) mining products and wastes have been exempted under several categories. I'll spare you the rest of the spiel, but suffice it to say that our environmental laws evolved over time as the case law developed. You may believe that the only information on the subject of lead contamination exists in published and peer-reviewed studies, but I can assure you that there is way-more history and information that has not been released. I suspect that the only way to access such information would be through a congressional investigation, and of course, as time passes that information degrades (memories fail, people die).