Yeah. Well. It was cool out of the broken thermometer, too.
Quite honestly, we’ve been poisoning ourselves in many ways for many decades.
We’re just more aware of it, there is more testing being done, more being learned.
We do have a need to clean everything up.
These thoughts have me echoing my 98 year old dad, I’m rather glad to be on the shorter end of this life. There’s too many problems that are too large for me.
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Jan, this sounds a bit negative, so I want to respond with positivity:
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I agree with what you are saying, and I think the pig studies are convincing, since the pigs were presumably the same in the control and experiment group, but I want to mention a possible issue with the human studies, for the sake of statistical accuracy. People who eat game are more likely to fish and to shoot guns, which are risk factors for lead exposure, as a traditional method of attaching a split shot sinker to a line is by biting it, and split shot are, or were, mostly lead. Shooting is a risk factor because gunpowder explosions are around 3,300F, and lead emits fumes when heated to 900F, lead dust is also generated by friction of the bullet against the barrel.
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https://www.inaturalist.org/observation_fields/19038
A little off topic but I created an observation field.
Observation field: (Pb 82) Lead Pollution
contaminated or polluted by lead, e.g. fishing sinkers or ammunition
Allowed values:
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Will the description define “low,” “moderate,” “considerable,” and “high”? Because different people will have different subjective ideas about that.
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How is low-high defined? Also, why does it say Pb 82? Written this way it looks like an isotope notation, referring to the lead isotope with an atomic weight of 82. No such lead isotope exists, and all isotopes of lead have chemical toxicity.
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you are right, difficult assessment of the degree of pollution.
Lead is a chemical element with symbol Pb and atomic number 82. periodic table.
I created a crowdfunding campaign to print information flyers and stickers. [
Stop
the lead fishing sinkers. Canary Islands
Uploaded the Pb82 prohibition sign image to Wikimedia Commons and made it available for everyone to use.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pb-82.jpg
Also added the lead prohibition sign to the Wikipedia.en article: “Fishing Sinkers”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fishing_sinker
In the Google image search with the keywords “Fishing Sinkers Wikipedia” the image now appears in 5th place.
Let’s see how long it stays there… 
I feel like they woudl remove it since it is against the neutrality rules, but who knows how often people check that article
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Many of the studies in humans are based on calculations solely from the lead bioavailability in harvested meat (similar to how guidelines might be calculated for how much fish to eat from any given watershed, etc. based on assessing the concentrations of contaminants like heavy metals in the fish). So any lead exposure due to fishing gear or use of firearms would be above and beyond that due to meat consumption.
I’m less familiar with the literature on physical lead exposure, but my understanding is that just touching lead isn’t very dangerous, and even using lead ammunition in the outdoors isn’t very dangerous either as long as you aren’t shooting a lot. There are known cases of lead poisoning in shooting range workers, and people who use indoor shooting ranges especially (police) or just shoot a lot, even if outdoors (military, firearms instructors). Lead dust from these sources can also come home on clothes and expose family members/others.
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I was only referring to the studies based on comparing meat eaters and non-meat eaters
The issue with lead exposure for anglers is that biting the sinker used to be common, so there was contact with mucous membranes and small fragments breaking off in the mouth to be ingested
I agree that hunting probably does not give much lead exposure, but to have good enough aim to hunt, someone likely does target practice, perhaps at an indoor gun range. I’ve never hunted, but I imagine that shots at prey animals constitute less than 1% of the shots fired by hunters
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Don’t know about lead from fishing, but lead from shotguns was considered a problem for the environment, so now there are all sorts of non-lead alternatives, and the ducks don’t seem to notice the difference.
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I do remember an article I read years ago that proposed that the landed gentry in Great Britain did not live as long as the working class in spite of better health care. One theory was it was all the lead shot that was in the pheasants and grouse that they ate.
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My Bavarian father is a dentist and medical doctor and, based on our experience, which is not yet clearly scientifically proven, we would like to prove a loss of tooth enamel in connection with lead exposure.
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Yes, I understand. The point is that many of those studies are based solely on the reported levels of game meat consumption, not direct measurements of blood lead levels in those who eat the meat. The findings of those studies which compare game meat eaters and non-meat eaters don’t attempt to calculate/account for non-consumptive exposure. So the reported effects by definition can’t be confounded with exposure due to handling/inhalation as part of harvesting.
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I really don’t understand what you are trying to say, this sounds like it is simultaneously saying 2 opposites
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Hunting waterfowl with lead shot was banned across the US by 1991, and in Canada in 1997. I think it’s still legal for land gamebirds and small mammals, although it is banned in some states (e.g. California banned use of any lead ammunition, shot or bullets, for the use of hunting in 2019). I see you’re in Australia; I can’t find any information about national restrictions but most states seem to have restrictions.
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I tried to create a sticker roll with Photoshop. Not the easiest task with the mobile Adobe PS app. If you have better solutions for creating such stickers and flyer templates, I am very open to any suggestions for improvement.
Since these stickers and flyers in waterproof format are not produced for free by local Canary islands printers, it was suggested that we start a crowdfunding campaign for them. E.g. Indiegogo, Earthshare.
What do you think, are cool stickers a solution to make the local population, schools and tourist anglers aware of the issue?
Improvement
happy with every suggestion for improvement.
Improvement 2
happy with every suggestion for improvement.
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needs a mention of alternatives, this could be interpreted as “don’t fish, sinkers are toxic” when the message is actually “use tin, tungsten or steel sinkers, lead is toxic”
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Relatively young kid here, I may or may not still do this on the rare occasions where I am A. using split shot and B. forgot my forceps/pliers. Whoops.
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