TargetTalk

Is anyone competing in 10M air pistol with lead free pellets?

We don't need no stinkin' lead free pellets!

Si Señor, but just wondering if anyone out there is using them. May be worth considering if you practice in your house.

H&N Match Green look interesting.

Rover wrote:We don't need no stinkin' lead free pellets!

“Never contend with a man who has nothing to lose.”

- Baltasar Gracián

(Rover: Ya get it? If so, you too should probably worry about lead. If not, continue not worrying...)
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I am curious about this. I didn't even know that there were lead-free target pellets available. I see that those H&N Match Greens are expensive, but I practice in the house so infrequently that the price wouldn't matter that much.

One thing I'd worry about is whether or not they ricochet: I currently use a silent trap (duct seal) so the pellets just get stuck in it and then hit themselves to form little nuggets. If these lead-free pellets are harder than lead, which I imagine they are, does that mean they might bounce back and hit me (or even worse, some breakable thing of my wife's)?

Has anybody used them, or know anyone who has?

Don't mess with an old guy...they just don't care.

There was quite a bit of stuff on this a while back (do a Search). The consensus was that the non lead pellets were no damn good.

BTW Dump the ductseal and shoot into a box of rags. Save all your angst!

I use lead free pellets for HFT, to make my .22 rifle act like a .177

I get the occasional flyer, so have no idea why you would use them for absolute accuracy.

Oh, they are much harder than lead, I had one bounce back from a HFT target at 10m and hit me in the neck, I would not trust them indoors!!!!


Enjoy them if you must.



Geoff.

I work at an indoor range that has an advanced air handling system. Despite this, several of the other range officers recently encountered significantly high levels of lead in their blood and had to take some time off to get their blood lead levels down. Interestingly, although there are blood lead level standards from the CDC for children there are none for adults (only recommendations).

The idea of non-lead pellets is appealing. However, they do not maintain the accuracy of lead pellets. The best suggestion is to use quality lead pellets for training/competition and always wash hands/body/clothing thoroughly afterward. Cheers.

m1963 wrote: ...The idea of non-lead pellets is appealing...

Perhaps not.

Once the sandal wearers find out, they will lobby for lead to be banned, and we all pay more to shoot inferior pellets!

True, the "appeal" is there. However, the "accuracy," is not. The question (perhaps for another thread) is, "how do we shooters show non-shooters what the issue is?" Cheers!

m1963 wrote:I work at an indoor range that has an advanced air handling system. Despite this, several of the other range officers recently encountered significantly high levels of lead in their blood and had to take some time off to get their blood lead levels down. Interestingly, although there are blood lead level standards from the CDC for children there are none for adults (only recommendations).

The idea of non-lead pellets is appealing. However, they do not maintain the accuracy of lead pellets. The best suggestion is to use quality lead pellets for training/competition and always wash hands/body/clothing thoroughly afterward. Cheers.

Adult levels are found in OSHA as most adults exposure is work related.

OSHA has set a PEL (enforceable) of lead in workplace air at 50 µg/m3 averaged over an 8-hour workday for workers in general industry.

For those exposed to air concentrations at or above the action level of 30 µg/m3 for more than 30 days per year, OSHA mandates periodic determination of BLLs.
If a BLL is found to be greater than 40 µg/dL, the worker must be notified in writing and provided with a medical examination.
If a worker's one-time BLL reaches 60 µg/dL (or averages 50 µg/dL or more on three or more tests), the employer is obligated to remove the employee from excessive exposure, with maintenance of seniority and pay, until the employee's BLL falls below 40 µg/dL.

Thanks for the feedback.

I never gave any thought to using lead pellets with an air gun (other than to wash my hands) until I had a conversation the other day with a forum member who had to stop shooting for a while to get his levels down. He attributes his elevated levels to extensive training at an indoor range that is shared with rimfire/centerfire shooters.

Because I need to practicie inside my home, I thought I would look into this and see if there is any research or literature available specific to air shooting. I found a few things online including this informative doc from USA Shooting:

https://www.usashooting.org/library/You ... SASCMP.pdf

It looks like the only real area of concern is forward of the shooting area since small amounts of lead fragments do come off of the pellets just after they exit the gun muzzle and accumulate on the range floor in front of the firing line.

Rather than deal with cleaning up this area, I think a non-lead alternative for practice in the home sounds like a good idea. I also found a couple of reviews (not much) of green pellets and the results were not bad.

m1963 wrote:I work at an indoor range that has an advanced air handling system. Despite this, several of the other range officers recently encountered significantly high levels of lead in their blood and had to take some time off to get their blood lead levels down. Interestingly, although there are blood lead level standards from the CDC for children there are none for adults (only recommendations).

The idea of non-lead pellets is appealing. However, they do not maintain the accuracy of lead pellets. The best suggestion is to use quality lead pellets for training/competition and always wash hands/body/clothing thoroughly afterward. Cheers.

I'm guessing that the range you work at is fullbore/smallbore and not just airgun ? The source of the lead is almost certainly through inhaling the products of combustion and not lead from airgun pellets.

The move away from lead has been discussed for decades and whilst I think it will happen on an environmental front, I'm not convinced it will happen any time soon.

Rob.

Richard H wrote:...If a BLL is found to be greater than 40 µg/dL, the worker must be notified in writing and provided with a medical examination.
If a worker's one-time BLL reaches 60 µg/dL (or averages 50 µg/dL or more on three or more tests), the employer is obligated to remove the employee from excessive exposure, with maintenance of seniority and pay, until the employee's BLL falls below 40 µg/dL.

These seem to be fairly high levels given that I have been told that >90 µg/dL tends to be fatal.

AUS recommendations are that anything over 10 µg/dL is of concern.

A major problem with many indoor ranges is that the ceiling/roof is higher at the firing point end than at the target end (convection), and/or the air flow is from target end to firing line.

Metallic lead is not so much of a problem as lead compounds (particularly PbO, Pb3O4, and PbO2); I have carried around a whack of shotgun pellets in my legs for decades - it was handling lead at work and when casting/reloading that sent my blood lead levels rocketing.

Was bored and on youtube earlier and watched some Pyramid Air produced videos on cleaning air rifles. On one of them they talked about pellets made out of a variety of materials including some with plastic. Looked like shooting anything other than lead was hard on your barrel. I guess if it is made by H&N it would most likely be safe for your target gun. However, sounds like the verdict is that they are not as accurate.
I had always been concerned about putting anything other than quality match pellets in any of my barrels and am more concerned after learning about all the other types of pellets that non-competiton pellet guns use.

A PAL / High School league in N.Y. that I am familiar with had to go "lead free" and is using tin pellets for air rifle. Significant change in point of impact as the tin pellets are about 1/3 lighter than lead. Tin pellets are also about twice as expensive as lead.

Since no one did a Search, they did not find this covered. Anyway...

viewtopic.php?t=16777&highlight=lead+poison

Ha! Guys, the only solution to this pellet quandry is to shoot steel or alloy pellets in lead barrels!

Tony