Using a brass cleaner indoor is also a huge source of lead and can hurt your entire family.
Copied from shootists post-page 1
What does this sentence mean?? Brasso?? Tumbling brass?? Ill bet many do this regularly.
Using a brass cleaner indoor is also a huge source of lead and can hurt your entire family.
Copied from shootists post-page 1
What does this sentence mean?? Brasso?? Tumbling brass?? Ill bet many do this regularly.
It means using a tumbler, vibrator etc. to clean fired brass indoors. The brass cases and primers my look nice but those devices fill the air with very fine particles that have a huge lead content.
Once they are in the house the furnace or air conditioner will circulate them throughout the home.
You should also use laytex gloves if hand sorting fired brass too. I sort a lot because of my classes and I use the Dillon sorting basket tool... but I do it outdoors and wear a mask.
None of this did I do before I had lead troubles--- but I learned my lesson.
Just curious, why latex gloves? I usually just wash my hands carefully afterwards. What mask do you use? Just a dust mask or one with a real filter cartridge?Originally Posted by MichiganShootist
Once you have your hands filthy the lead can be absorbed by the skin... especially when you wash them in warm water.... which opens the pores of your skin.
The mask I use is hepa rated mask. They have to be rated to the same level as those you would use for asbestos or the partictles go straight through.
One rated for painting would be better than nothing but the ones I use are $6.00 and I by one a year... it's worth it to me.
Latex gloves are a good idea when handling your brass.
Pores are nothing more than tiny openings in your skin. They don't have muscles, and that means they can't open or close. It doesn't matter what you do -- there's no way to change the size or your pores.
Original thread about lead (Pb) but mercury (Hg) was mentioned later.
Recently got together w/ a copuple of high school friends. We mentioned 'playing' w/ Hg in study hall. The only thing we worried about was getting it on/in your watch, non dig in those days.
Now if one was to have Hg a school, it would be evacuated and 3 or 4++ would show up in space suits and decontaminate the place. It would be closed for several DAYS and cost thousands of $$$$.
Lead-copper soldiered w/ Pb is a no no.. Paint is an absolute no no. Lead used to be the expensive part of paint. It was removed and paint went up in price??
Gasoline=no need to discuss.
Both were bad?? I guess they cause some kinds of mental degradations and suppress gray matter developement.
I wonder how that bad compares to alcohol, tobacco and pot that most think should just be legalized??
Did you make that up or is that a quote?Originally Posted by seery
"Every late-19th-century legal scholar that we have read interpreted the Second Amendment to secure an individual right unconnected with militia service." -- U.S. Supreme Court, June 26, 2008.
....
Last edited by StoneyBones; 10-08-2013 at 06:37 AM.
The bad news, you absolutely can absorb lead through your skin, especially if the particle size is very fine, like shooters and reloaders are exposed to all the time. You can also inhale it and ingest it.
The good news. Lead that is absorbed through the skin does not appear to go immediately into the blood stream, and it appears that you can also sweat it out, to some extent. Not that this is a good way to treat high blood levels of lead. But interesting none the less. Some of the miners who were exposed to too much mercury were treated by putting them in a sauna...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3238426
People can't make their pores bigger or smaller, that's a common myth. And it turns out it's irrelevant anyway. You can absorb lead through your skin regardless of how "open" or "closed" your pores are. That has more to do with lead particle size and what the lead is combined with chemically.
Everybody should get tested and take appropriate action. The blood test is cheap/affordable, and the treatment (if needed) is fairly successful.
Yes, I am a doctor, and a shooter, and a reloader. I live in an old house with lead paint. I cast lead bullets. I shoot a fair amount.
My blood levels test pretty much off the scale low. Prevention is the best.
HTH,
troy
I finally was tested for lead poisoning. None detected, inspite of my life long exposure.