Lead poisoning is a major threat at America’s shooting ranges
projects.seattletimes.com
projects.seattletimes.com
For starters, as others have noted, the danger is from the lead styphnate in primers when used in indoor ranges. They ought to have made that clear ... especially since there's an obvious solution which is good for ranges (we don't entirely trust lead free primers yet, but unless one causes a squib misfire that lodges a bullet in the barrel, it's not a serious problem).
They invoke the eeeeevil NRA ... which is the organization of gun owners. Not a word about the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the organization for the gun industry, including ranges.
Don't know if they went into it for real, but this danger has been generally recognized for as long as 3 decades. The NRA has certainly been telling its members about it. Just like we're told not to eat or smoke while reloading. Of course, there's more than one compelling reason to not smoke while reloading ^_^.
You're obviously reading something into this. I didn't get a "guns are bad, NRA is evil" vibe at all. Instead I read about how people in this industry, customers and employees have little to no protection from potentially hazardous environments and perhaps no idea how severely contaminated some of these ranges are.
It would seem that if one of these ranges had an elevator in it, the elevator would be inspected far more frequently than the range itself would be.
Maybe you've been informed about the potential risks of an indoor range, but it seems that those risks are severely compounded when an operator flagrantly ignores any reasonable safety standards like filtering recirculating air.
For that matter, the MSM's Der Stürmer approach towards the NRA and gunowners suppresses membership in the former and therefore the education the latter might otherwise get from reading the member magazines.
Perhaps I'm oversensitive, but being part of this fight since the early 1970s (sic) bias from the MSM is assumed and the tropes are trivial to detect. Counterwise, not genuinely biased reporters and editors are so marinated in gun grabbing bias---as you are unless you read a lot from other sources to counter it, even if you're an active gunowner, even a NRA member (or so surveys tell us about the latter)---they'll automatically use them even if they weren't really meaning to be biased. Perhaps a style vs. substance problem, since the problem is real ... but, again, the dismissive attitude towards the NRA and the blackout on the NSSF shows the limits of their research, and at some point "they're the generically clueless MSM" excuse doesn't cut it.
Did the article give any examples of customers being harmed? In these situations, it's almost always an occupational danger, since owners, employees and volunteers get massively longer exposures, and are also responsible for cleaning the place, which can also expose them to lead fragments at the end of the range. I think nowadays almost all centerfire bullets are jacketed, but ubiquitous and inexpensive (until very recently) .22 LR rimfire aren't jacketed, or not seriously. Probably less of a threa
I also wonder why OSHA and the state OSHAs aren't on the ball. The usual suspects on my side, the NRA and NSSF, are very serious about this (the exit of the very nice NRA's HQ range in Virginia has two hand washing stations you can't miss and as mentioned publicity of the dangers, and see https://www.google.com/search?q=nssf+range+lead), they publicize the dangers, the NSSF helps ranges ... the OSHAs could be more heavy handed if they wanted to be, as long as it was clear to these orgs they weren't just trying to shut down ranges. And there's funding to be had for ranges (add "fund" or "funding" to the prior search).
Lead is a hazardous material. There's no debate here. Where you have hazardous material in an enclosed environment you will have problems unless proper precautions are taken. Without even cursory inspections, how can you know this is the case?
If you want to froth and rage against the so-called mainstream media, which it should be noted is largely owned by massive empires controlled by extreme right-wing oligarchs like Rupert Murdoch, that's hardly helping. How do you expect someone to write an article aimed at the general public when it'd end up drowning in industry jargon and speak about organizations few ever have to directly interact with?
Like it or not, the NRA is the PR department for not just gun owners, but the gun industry at large. The NSSF seems largely absent from any debates.
(There are earmuffs that'll receive, or even amplify outside noise except of course for gun shots. They're very useful for instruction.)
Is it all native Pb, or are other more soluble compounds formed during firing?