On The Gun Shots: Lead-in-meat ‘study’ unnecessarily alarmist

Andrew McKean:

Maybe a follow-up study should look at practices in commercial meat shops and not implicate hunters who kill animals with lead bullets.

Or maybe a study should investigate the prevalence of lead poisoning in hunters’ families. As in the very real lead-paint epidemic of the 1960s, there should be evidence of the problem in the population.

If I’m poisoning my family, I want to stop. And if bullet-spraying hunters are a public-health menace, let’s discover the depth of the problem and systematically resolve it. But I want to make those decisions based on peer-reviewed science, not alarmist do-gooding.

The scary study was conducted by a dermatologist who is on the board of a non-profit group dedicated to banning lead in certain areas of the coutry. I'd say more research is needed.