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CDC Study Shows No Health Risk Associated with Traditional
Ammunition
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November 6, 2008
National
Shooting Sports Foundation
A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study on
human lead levels of hunters in North Dakota has confirmed what
hunters throughout the world have known for hundreds of years,
that consuming game harvested with traditional ammunition poses
absolutely no health risk to people, including children, and
that the call to ban lead ammunition was and remains a scare
tactic being pushed by anti-hunting groups to forward their
political agenda.
Today, additional information became available about the CDC
study, originally released yesterday, that is important to
disseminate to hunters, their families and the general public
about the total and complete lack of any evidence of a human
health risk from consuming game harvested using traditional
ammunition. For instance, in the study the average lead level of
the hunters tested was lower than that of the average American.
In the CDC's study, children's lead levels had a mean of just
0.88 micrograms per deciliter, which is less than half the
national average for children and an infinitesimally small
fraction of the level that the CDC considers to be of concern
for children (10 micrograms per deciliter). Yet, despite the
total and complete lack of any evidence from this study of the
existence of a human health risk, the Department of Health
nevertheless urges that children under 6 and pregnant women not
eat venison harvested using traditional ammunition. The North
Dakota Department of Health's recommendation is based on a "zero
tolerance" approach to the issue of blood lead levels that is
not supported by science or the CDC's guidelines.
To further put in perspective the claims concerning the safety
of game harvested using traditional ammunition, consider this
statement from the Iowa Department of Public Health (IDPH) -- a
state agency that has conducted an extensive panel of blood-lead
testing for more than 15 years: "IDPH maintains that if lead in
venison were a serious health risk, it would likely have
surfaced within extensive blood-lead testing since 1992 with
500,000 youth under 6 and 25,000 adults having been screened."
It has not.
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