Why don't we find out how serious this problem is before we start throwing the mud?
YooperJack

How do we know that the lead was not the result of a contaminated processing facility, as I understood it all the tainted meat was from the same hunter's deer.

Right on, Jstreet. You are exactly right. It would be especially unfortunate if Dr. Cornatzer himself catches a bunch of flack from hunting groups over this. He is an avid hunter himself and he never said his finding where conclusive. But he did feel an obligation to share the POTENTIAL problem with fellow hunter. No matter how this turns out, the hunting community owes him a debt of gratitude; he had out health and that of our children in mind.
Now lets do the proper research.

I seriously question how that lead got into the meat. When I process my deer, I cut out and pitch all bloodshot meat. Usually we are talking about front shoulder and neck. I can not imagine that scrupulous trimming of damaged meat would not eliminate 99% of any issue. If your bullets are fragmenting that badly, you need to get a different bullet or back the load off a few grains.

Ok guys I'm from Bismarck.
It was the ground venison that was recommended to pulled. Only a few hundred pounds were left. The Game & Fish dept. a long with the health department is in the process of setting up some guide lines to follow. We don't whether or not blood shot meat was ground with good meat. And no the program is not being discontinued.

To be continued.

How does a CT scanner detect the concentration of lead? This is ridiculous. Some guy puts a lump of meat in an MRI, and says he can tell how much lead is in the tissue?

20 years as an environmental engineer and our entire industry has been wasting time with mass spectrometers when we could have just taken our stuff down to the local MRI lab.

What you have here is a guy wanting to push non-lead bullets, getting one over on the public because I doubt many outdoor writers or local journalists have engineering degrees.

I forgot to look at the byline, was this story published on April 1st?

BTW
From the pictures I saw it had something in it. I don't know what it was ?

I wouldn't go that far Bubba. Your deer obviously had no lead. How about someone else's where the bullet blew up upon entry? Maybe they just didn't take the time to get those teeny bloodmarks out. Just threw that into burger.

BTW, what's the signigicance of the bullt/powder/cap info. Would that bullet performed differently with a different powder? Would a round ball(like I use) break up easier? I'm a bit new to the front stuffer.
YooperJack

As a health care scientist myself, I would say this is alarmist. How many war veterans, past and present, are walking around with little chunks of lead debris in their body without any ill health effects? The point is, if you swallow a bullet today, you'll see it tommorrow in the toilet and your blood lead won't be elevated. It's all about the dose uptake to the body. The average joe that eats, say, two deer a year is not going to suffer any heath effects. Mercury contaiminated fish much riskier. The Perigrine Falcon fund pulled this same game here in CA and hunters were slow to recognize the threat. As result, 1 July of this year, lead ammo is banned in the bulk of the state (Condor range) and is a matter of law. The science was shoddy, inconculsive and the data was not directly correlated to the conclusions. Quite frankly, I believe the reports were designed to frighten the uninformed public and it succeded. Beware of anything coming from the Peregrine Falcon fund, do your homework and come out swinging. If we, as hunters, want lead out, we'll do it. No need for law and fines to do it.

Seems a scintific study could settle this up once and for all. Where do I donate for it at?

There are health hazzards with lead and I think most people are aware of that. I don't think it is a problem with this meat, but still the development of new bullet material would be a good thing. With the price of lead going up I would welcome a subsitute also.

Dan from CA- there are plenty of Veterans who do have shrapnel and pieces of lead in them that do have health problems that are chronic. Spend some time in a VA medical center and you'll find that lead in the body does indeed cause problems down the road. If a Vet is lucky it will just be stiffness, soreness and occassional pain. If they're not lucky a Vet can expect multiple surgeries, infections and even amputations. My 2 cents.

William,

I'm a recent disabled vet myself and retired Medical Service Corps officer. I have some experience in that regard. I should have been clearer about lead in the body and elevated blood leads. You have,in fact, made my point for me. Lead embedded in living tissue (regardless of other health problems), will eventually;i.e. years, show up in blood leads.

Not so in dead tissue, the metallic lead has to be metabolized in some way to cause a significant problem. I still contend that eating a few deer a year where prudent care has been taken to remove blood shot tissue, will not result in a health problem. The actions of these states was overly alarmist.