11 ms·

The Army thought a veteran faked his health issues while having lead poisoning

154 points by mhkool 8y ago

snazz 8y ago
I was guessing that this was going to be about lead in the water, but instead it’s about airborne lead from ammunition. Since this seems like nothing new, I wonder if there any undiagnosed historical cases as well.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- megous 8y ago
  Lead contamintaion as a result of high use of lead and other metals (like mercury) during war (and after) is certainly a known and studied thing: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3464374/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3464374/ So it wouldn't surprise me if many soldiers would be affected too.
  - tyingq 8y ago
    I recall reading something similar about the depleted uranium rounds that A10s and other weapons dumped all over the middle east.
    - xnyan 8y ago
      Not just A10s but bunker busters and all kinds of other munitions where you need the hardest metal shell material that is practically available in quantity. They get shot deep in the earth and leach metals into the soil and thus the plant and animal life and it's already a problem with some crops in the middle east.
    - PaulHoule 8y ago
      Note that uranium is toxic in the same way lead and mercury are, but it is intermediate in potency. Uranium is probably more harmful in terms of heavy metal poisoning than it is in terms of radioactivity.
kurtisc 8y ago
Workers at a firing range I used to go to were sent home for weeks if they were exposed to too much lead. I am shocked a well funded army couldn't do the same.
- AllegedAlec 8y ago
  Do you mean particulates from shattered rounds, or that they were sweeping the range while someone was still firing at their target?
  - pandemicsyn 8y ago
    Its mostly because of two things. The primer that detonates and starts the powder burn is made up of lead and other metals. Thats great and getting in the air. Second, the copper jacket on rounds like the cheap stuff you train with tend not cover the back of the round leaving exposed lead - so a lot of lead fouling gets generated by the hot gases atomizing the lead on the tail of the bullet. That makes it into the air, ground, and surroundings when you fire. So you breath some in before the range ventilation ever has a chance. I feel that's probably especially bad at indoor ranges because you've got partitions on either side of you. lead's also great at sticking to shoes, clothes, etc and going home with you. So - de-leading soap ftw! Some rifles make this worst (especially if shooting suppressed or if you're a lefty) because the gas is much closer and much more in your face). Most indoor ranges also have subpar ventilation. So if shoot at the indoor range i try to limit my time, ask to be on a range with less other active shooters, use fully enclosed metal jacketed round's, use de-leading wipes when I'm done, and don't bring my shoes into the house when I get home. Really, I just stick to outdoor ranges where I can snag a big private bay. Even then, I still use de-leading wipes on all the things.
    - hedvig 8y ago
      Makes me wonder about gun people that go to the range a lot have altered thinking from the lead exposure, seriously.
      - 8y ago
village-idiot 8y ago
I believe the US army has created an EPA superfund site out of one of its rifle ranges due to the sheer volume of lead that built up into the earthen berms where privates learned how to shoot. Just because the kinetic energy has been taken out of the bullet doesn’t mean you can just ignore them. A similar effect has happened in former battle grounds, leaving the locals exposed to all of the known consequences of early life lead exposure including (ironically) an increased propensity for violence. For these reasons the Army has expressed an interest in developing a non-toxic rifle bullet that’s cheap enough for their usages. Swaged copper bullets exist, but at ~$1 a pop they’re appropriate for hunters and not for an army that goes through billions of bullets. Unfortunately many people on the webs are upset about this, perhaps out of the misguided opinion that we’re not being cruel enough in our foreign wars. In reality it’s well within US interests to reduce lead exposure to soldiers and combat zone civilians, especially to ensure that those zones transition better to peace once the fighting is over.
- moccachino 8y ago
  It seems to me that on a budget of 600-700 billion, it would not be too difficult to spend a few billion on bullets. Also not every bullet has to be the same (ignoring logistics and interoperability for the moment), but if there are already different sizes of bullets then they could be made out of different materials. At least that should slightly decrease the concentration of any single material when large quantities of bullets pile up.
  - _jal 8y ago
    > slightly decrease the concentration of any single material when large quantities of bullets pile up. Don't worry, then. They've been using depleted uranium rounds, too.
    - moccachino 8y ago
      ... Great. Well, I guess consideration for anything except mission results is too much to ask of an organization like a military...
Nasrudith 8y ago
I think in the future they will consider us in the past complete idiots for using lead for anything except /maybe/ radiation shielding because of the neurotoxic effects and it being well known as a danger. It will seem as dumb as using radium paint and radioactive "tonics" except that radiotherapy is a legitimate thing unlike lead therapy.
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  I don't really get why you worry about toxins in weaponry used to kill people TBH.
  - ehnto 8y ago
    They mean lead use in general I think. Lead still has many uses outside of ammunition.
  - pulisse 8y ago
    Because the toxins affect people other than the target. Some areas the US military has used for munitions testing have been declared Superfund sites. There are places in northern Europe so contaminated with arsenic and mercury from WWI munitions that they're predicted to be unsuitable for agricultural use for thousands of years.
  - dwater 8y ago
    What percentage of ammunition fired do you think kills people directly? And how many people do you think are exposed to that ammunition but not targeted by it?
    - stirfrykitty 8y ago
      It's sadly low in combat due to the chaos and lack of time to engage properly. It's similar to the police. It's something like 18-20% direct hits. What people who have never been military or police may not realize is that when your body goes into fight/flight mode, you lose your fine motor skills for gross motor skills. This is a very real thing. Training can compensate for this to a degree, but doesn't remove it. As the Corps used to say: "The more your sweat in peacetime the less you bleed in war." Also a person falls to the lowest level of training they have received during an incident. If you have developed great muscle memory and train hard, you should do fairly well. So many things come into play: learning how the weapon operates normally, how to tap/rack/bang, clear malfunctions, magazine changes, weapons maintenance--all these play a role in how well troops do when the chips are down.
wolco 8y ago
It seems like the most unhealthly act one can do is join the army.
- stirfrykitty 8y ago
  That's a bit of a stretch. Of the entire military, less than half are actual combat troops. While everyone does and should get firearms familiarization training, only the combat troops have regular contact with weapons. I served 8 years in the USMC and was in a combat MOS. I doubt there was a weapon in the inventory we didn't touch on a somewhat regular basis (individual and crew served). In my units, our commanders were positively insistent we learned not only our own weapon systems, but also those of potential enemies. To that effect, there were a number of captured AK-47s, AK-74s, RPKs, Makarov, Tokarev, Mosin-Nagant, you name it in our unit armory. We learned them all (and cleaned them all). We also learned the weapons systems of our allies, like the British, French, and Israelis when we had military exchange programs, which are tons of fun. Unless you are in a combat MOS, you are pretty safe being in the rear with the gear, as it were.
  - jki275 8y ago
    Actually less than 10% are combat MOS -- the USMC may be significantly more though. The vast majority are techs and support troops.
    - stirfrykitty 8y ago
      The USMC is significantly more. Everyone in the USMC is first and foremost a rifleman. Your actual MOS is secondary. The other branches are the opposite. You do your job primarily with weapons training and use a far outside possibility. The USMC has the most strenuous small arms requirements outside of actual special forces. It starts in boot camp and you must qualify every year until reaching E-8 or 0-5, respectively. The Corps is HUGE on marksmanship, and Marines are expected to hit targets out to 500M with iron sights, although these days, the kids get ACOGS, which I didn't have. Pistol out to 25M. Your promotion, in part, depends on how well you do. No one wants to go unq (unqualified) or not much better, wear the lowest level, which is Marksman (referred to as Pizza Box) due to the shape of the medal one must wear on their uniform.
vectorEQ 8y ago
i feel very sorry for this veteran, and don't mean to mock anyone. but i do see the irony (punception?:D) of bullets poisoning the people who shoot them chronically... sorry if that makes me a bad person.
bpchaps 8y ago
Holy crap. This very much matches my experiences. I'm not military, but I used to shoot air rifles competitively in high school. I was definitely overexposed to lead. I remember my fingers would literally be coated in lead, and I don't remember even once hearing that we should wash our hands after shooting. My experience with trying to get a medical professional to actually give a shit about the matter is exceptionally frustrating. Every doctor that I've ever spoken to have all come just short of laughing in my face when I try to self diagnose myself, and without exception, try to send me to get blood tests - which give no indication of lead poisoning except in recent exposure. I really just want some closure on this, since I know there's not much I can do treatment wise. Getting a doctor to take it seriously is an uphill battle...
- Raphmedia 8y ago
  A very good video that explains the effects of lead and puts it into a great context is Chubbyemu's. I used to know about the dangers of it but seeing a situation in details really brings home how dangerous it can be. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qHxEjINCAg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qHxEjINCAg
- rdl 8y ago
  One of the top firearms instructors globally (Massad Ayoob) is utterly paranoid about lead -- he has special range clothes/shoes, changes before getting into his vehicle in the way one would do with hazmat-contaminated clothing, and has the stuff commercially laundered outside his home. I think it's mainly out of concern for children/grandchildren in his home, but it was pretty impressive. I started keeping lead-removal wipes in all my range bags after this. The number of times I've seen people go through 500-1k rounds at the range in the morning during a class, then eat a sandwich or something without even washing hands, is..a lot.
  - vorpalhex 8y ago
    I buy the lead-removal wipes in bulk and hand them out like candy. I also notice all the ranges near me keep lead removal soap in the bathrooms. .22 ammo is the worst in this regard, just lead everywhere - which given that it's usually used in bulk given how cheap it is...
tomhoward 8y ago
I've had cause to research the topic of lead (and other metals) toxicity quite extensively. A key factor seems to be the body's propensity to produce metallothionein [1], proteins that bind metallic compounds in the body, either to metabolise and utilise them (in the case of beneficial metals like zinc, copper, iron, selenium etc), or to remove them (in the case of toxic metals like lead, mercury, aluminium, cadmium etc). This propensity seems to be determined by genetic predisposition and/or genetic expression in response to environmental stimuli. This is why, in a group of people subjected to similar levels of environmental lead exposure (e.g., soldiers in the same military unit, children in the same town with contaminated water), only some will exhibit symptoms. Here's my own experience: I have not done any military service as an adult, nor used firearms more than a handful of times. (I participated in army cadets in high school but it was little more than boy-scout training - camping, survival skills, hiking, etc). But I did spend a few years in my late teens/early 20s working in an electronics factory soldering circuit boards. I grew up in the last few years of leaded car fuel still being commonplace. I also grew up in an old house that may (or may not) have had lead water pipes. For much of my life, I've experienced a complex set of vague, but moderately debilitating symptoms. Nothing apparently life-threatening, but always frustrating and often painful. In childhood it manifested as respiratory problems, learning/cognition difficulties (including modest academic and sporting performance even though I tried hard at both and was often assessed as being of high natural ability), social difficulties, anxiety and mood instability, tinnitus, and digestive issues. In adulthood it progressed into conditions such as depression, chronic fatigue syndrome, endocrine problems, painful muscle tension in the back, head, neck and hip regions, dizziness/confusion/fuzzy vision at times, among other things that have come and gone along the way. I happened to do a home urine test just this morning, something I do from time to time. It indicated the presence of lead in my urine, which has routinely been the case for the past year or more. I've also sent hair samples to a commercial testing lab every 6-24 months over the past 10 years, which have consistently suggested accumulations in my body of lead and other metals including aluminium, cadmium, mercury and others. People may react with skepticism that home urine tests and commercial hair tests are of any clinical validity. Fair enough. But, as the linked article explains, you just can't easily get this stuff considered, tested and diagnosed by mainstream doctors. I've seen multiple mainstream doctors over the years, and the best they can ever offer is anxiety or anti-depressant medication. They'll run tests on all the standard stuff - cholesterol, Vitamin D, iron... that's usually about it. Everything always shows up close enough to normal and they tell you you're fine and send you on your way. But despite doctors' assurances, I haven't felt fine, and my ability to live a normal life, compared to most other people I observe, has not been fine. So I do the only thing that seems to be available to me, which is home urine tests and commercial-lab hair tests. And they tell me something thing that makes sense when I read things like the linked article; there's just too much lead in my body. In the 10+ years since this possibility became apparent and I started doing these kinds of tests, I've done a lot of work to get my physiology to a state where it could remove the metals from my system. I've considered doing chelation therapy but I understand that carries its own risks (i.e., removing important nutrients and moving toxic metals to areas where they can cause more harm), and that you're better off just supporting your body to detoxify at its own pace. It seems to be working, slowly but surely. That would be why the lead is showing up in my urine now, after not doing so in the first few years; as alluded to in the article, it's been accumulated in my bones and is now coming out. My health, and life, is steadily improving. People keep saying I'm looking healthier and functioning better. My fitness keeps improving. My muscle tension and pain keeps subsiding. My work performance and career seems to be on the up. But boy, it's been tough to get through, and all the more difficult through the lack of mainstream medical recognition, and from the ridicule that inevitably comes your way as soon as you start talking about testing methods and healing techniques that are outside the mainstream. That's probably the toughest part. I'm a scientifically-minded person from a family of mainstream science and medical professionals, yet due to the hand I've been dealt, in the absence of any other options, I've been forced to venture outside the mainstream, and have found myself being the subject of ridicule and scorn at times. Anyone who has read this far might want to think about that next time you mock someone for seeking help from non-mainstream practitioners like naturopaths, acupuncturists, chiropractors, etc. You probably have little idea of just how much difficulty and frustration they've been through before winding up there, or what undiagnosed underlying issue has caused their predicament. I know I'm not alone in having these challenges, and I know plenty of people have it a lot worse than me - particularly those lacking the financial means and family+social support that I’ve had. With that in mind, it's high time that we started taking this problem seriously. Knowing what I know now, it wouldn't surprise me if it turned out that lead and other metals toxicity is an explanation for a huge amount of the debilitating illness that mainstream medicine is currently unable to diagnose and treat. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallothionein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallothionein
rdl 8y ago
> In a single six-week course, each student would fire upward of 150,000 rounds Whoa. 3571 rounds per day for every day for 42 days?
- mikestew 8y ago
  Obviously the ammunition is purchased very much in bulk, but let's say, I dunno, $0.05/round? (I pay around $0.25 or more for .45ACP for a handgun.) Carry the one...$1250/week just in ammo.
  - rdl 8y ago
    $0.25/rd is a fair price for 9mm or 5.56mm. However, it is 25000 rounds per week. $6250/wk. Plus a bunch of other costs far exceeding the ammo costs. I don't think the 150k rounds round count is reasonable, unless a lot of that is fired from something other than individual weapons used by the servicemember.
johnminter 8y ago
In addition, there are lead issues in older military housing on bases like Ft. Meade. My youngest granddaughter had a false positive on her test; several other children were not so lucky. The good news is that the top brass at the highest levels are working to resolve the problem.
kyleblarson 8y ago
A gun shop and range in Bellevue Washington had a serious lead issue a few years back: http://projects.seattletimes.com/2014/loaded-with-lead/2/ http://projects.seattletimes.com/2014/loaded-with-lead/2/
zeristor 8y ago
Chelation therapy seems to solve their problems, but doesn't that mean that it goes into sewers and will become a problem there?

154 points by mhkool 8y ago

I was guessing that this was going to be about lead in the water, but instead it’s about airborne lead from ammunition. Since this seems like nothing new, I wonder if there any undiagnosed historical cases as well.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
megous 8y ago
Lead contamintaion as a result of high use of lead and other metals (like mercury) during war (and after) is certainly a known and studied thing: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3464374/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3464374/ So it wouldn't surprise me if many soldiers would be affected too.
- tyingq 8y ago
  I recall reading something similar about the depleted uranium rounds that A10s and other weapons dumped all over the middle east.
  - xnyan 8y ago
    Not just A10s but bunker busters and all kinds of other munitions where you need the hardest metal shell material that is practically available in quantity. They get shot deep in the earth and leach metals into the soil and thus the plant and animal life and it's already a problem with some crops in the middle east.
  - PaulHoule 8y ago
    Note that uranium is toxic in the same way lead and mercury are, but it is intermediate in potency. Uranium is probably more harmful in terms of heavy metal poisoning than it is in terms of radioactivity.

kurtisc 8y ago

Workers at a firing range I used to go to were sent home for weeks if they were exposed to too much lead. I am shocked a well funded army couldn't do the same.

AllegedAlec 8y ago
Do you mean particulates from shattered rounds, or that they were sweeping the range while someone was still firing at their target?
- pandemicsyn 8y ago
  Its mostly because of two things. The primer that detonates and starts the powder burn is made up of lead and other metals. Thats great and getting in the air. Second, the copper jacket on rounds like the cheap stuff you train with tend not cover the back of the round leaving exposed lead - so a lot of lead fouling gets generated by the hot gases atomizing the lead on the tail of the bullet. That makes it into the air, ground, and surroundings when you fire. So you breath some in before the range ventilation ever has a chance. I feel that's probably especially bad at indoor ranges because you've got partitions on either side of you. lead's also great at sticking to shoes, clothes, etc and going home with you. So - de-leading soap ftw! Some rifles make this worst (especially if shooting suppressed or if you're a lefty) because the gas is much closer and much more in your face). Most indoor ranges also have subpar ventilation. So if shoot at the indoor range i try to limit my time, ask to be on a range with less other active shooters, use fully enclosed metal jacketed round's, use de-leading wipes when I'm done, and don't bring my shoes into the house when I get home. Really, I just stick to outdoor ranges where I can snag a big private bay. Even then, I still use de-leading wipes on all the things.
  - hedvig 8y ago
    Makes me wonder about gun people that go to the range a lot have altered thinking from the lead exposure, seriously.
    - 8y ago

village-idiot 8y ago

I believe the US army has created an EPA superfund site out of one of its rifle ranges due to the sheer volume of lead that built up into the earthen berms where privates learned how to shoot. Just because the kinetic energy has been taken out of the bullet doesn’t mean you can just ignore them. A similar effect has happened in former battle grounds, leaving the locals exposed to all of the known consequences of early life lead exposure including (ironically) an increased propensity for violence. For these reasons the Army has expressed an interest in developing a non-toxic rifle bullet that’s cheap enough for their usages. Swaged copper bullets exist, but at ~$1 a pop they’re appropriate for hunters and not for an army that goes through billions of bullets. Unfortunately many people on the webs are upset about this, perhaps out of the misguided opinion that we’re not being cruel enough in our foreign wars. In reality it’s well within US interests to reduce lead exposure to soldiers and combat zone civilians, especially to ensure that those zones transition better to peace once the fighting is over.

moccachino 8y ago
It seems to me that on a budget of 600-700 billion, it would not be too difficult to spend a few billion on bullets. Also not every bullet has to be the same (ignoring logistics and interoperability for the moment), but if there are already different sizes of bullets then they could be made out of different materials. At least that should slightly decrease the concentration of any single material when large quantities of bullets pile up.
- _jal 8y ago
  > slightly decrease the concentration of any single material when large quantities of bullets pile up. Don't worry, then. They've been using depleted uranium rounds, too.
  - moccachino 8y ago
    ... Great. Well, I guess consideration for anything except mission results is too much to ask of an organization like a military...

Nasrudith 8y ago

I think in the future they will consider us in the past complete idiots for using lead for anything except /maybe/ radiation shielding because of the neurotoxic effects and it being well known as a danger. It will seem as dumb as using radium paint and radioactive "tonics" except that radiotherapy is a legitimate thing unlike lead therapy.

Cthulhu_ 8y ago
I don't really get why you worry about toxins in weaponry used to kill people TBH.
- ehnto 8y ago
  They mean lead use in general I think. Lead still has many uses outside of ammunition.
- pulisse 8y ago
  Because the toxins affect people other than the target. Some areas the US military has used for munitions testing have been declared Superfund sites. There are places in northern Europe so contaminated with arsenic and mercury from WWI munitions that they're predicted to be unsuitable for agricultural use for thousands of years.
- dwater 8y ago
  What percentage of ammunition fired do you think kills people directly? And how many people do you think are exposed to that ammunition but not targeted by it?
  - stirfrykitty 8y ago
    It's sadly low in combat due to the chaos and lack of time to engage properly. It's similar to the police. It's something like 18-20% direct hits. What people who have never been military or police may not realize is that when your body goes into fight/flight mode, you lose your fine motor skills for gross motor skills. This is a very real thing. Training can compensate for this to a degree, but doesn't remove it. As the Corps used to say: "The more your sweat in peacetime the less you bleed in war." Also a person falls to the lowest level of training they have received during an incident. If you have developed great muscle memory and train hard, you should do fairly well. So many things come into play: learning how the weapon operates normally, how to tap/rack/bang, clear malfunctions, magazine changes, weapons maintenance--all these play a role in how well troops do when the chips are down.

wolco 8y ago

It seems like the most unhealthly act one can do is join the army.

stirfrykitty 8y ago
That's a bit of a stretch. Of the entire military, less than half are actual combat troops. While everyone does and should get firearms familiarization training, only the combat troops have regular contact with weapons. I served 8 years in the USMC and was in a combat MOS. I doubt there was a weapon in the inventory we didn't touch on a somewhat regular basis (individual and crew served). In my units, our commanders were positively insistent we learned not only our own weapon systems, but also those of potential enemies. To that effect, there were a number of captured AK-47s, AK-74s, RPKs, Makarov, Tokarev, Mosin-Nagant, you name it in our unit armory. We learned them all (and cleaned them all). We also learned the weapons systems of our allies, like the British, French, and Israelis when we had military exchange programs, which are tons of fun. Unless you are in a combat MOS, you are pretty safe being in the rear with the gear, as it were.
- jki275 8y ago
  Actually less than 10% are combat MOS -- the USMC may be significantly more though. The vast majority are techs and support troops.
  - stirfrykitty 8y ago
    The USMC is significantly more. Everyone in the USMC is first and foremost a rifleman. Your actual MOS is secondary. The other branches are the opposite. You do your job primarily with weapons training and use a far outside possibility. The USMC has the most strenuous small arms requirements outside of actual special forces. It starts in boot camp and you must qualify every year until reaching E-8 or 0-5, respectively. The Corps is HUGE on marksmanship, and Marines are expected to hit targets out to 500M with iron sights, although these days, the kids get ACOGS, which I didn't have. Pistol out to 25M. Your promotion, in part, depends on how well you do. No one wants to go unq (unqualified) or not much better, wear the lowest level, which is Marksman (referred to as Pizza Box) due to the shape of the medal one must wear on their uniform.

vectorEQ 8y ago

i feel very sorry for this veteran, and don't mean to mock anyone. but i do see the irony (punception?:D) of bullets poisoning the people who shoot them chronically... sorry if that makes me a bad person.

bpchaps 8y ago

Holy crap. This very much matches my experiences. I'm not military, but I used to shoot air rifles competitively in high school. I was definitely overexposed to lead. I remember my fingers would literally be coated in lead, and I don't remember even once hearing that we should wash our hands after shooting. My experience with trying to get a medical professional to actually give a shit about the matter is exceptionally frustrating. Every doctor that I've ever spoken to have all come just short of laughing in my face when I try to self diagnose myself, and without exception, try to send me to get blood tests - which give no indication of lead poisoning except in recent exposure. I really just want some closure on this, since I know there's not much I can do treatment wise. Getting a doctor to take it seriously is an uphill battle...

Raphmedia 8y ago
A very good video that explains the effects of lead and puts it into a great context is Chubbyemu's. I used to know about the dangers of it but seeing a situation in details really brings home how dangerous it can be. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qHxEjINCAg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qHxEjINCAg
rdl 8y ago
One of the top firearms instructors globally (Massad Ayoob) is utterly paranoid about lead -- he has special range clothes/shoes, changes before getting into his vehicle in the way one would do with hazmat-contaminated clothing, and has the stuff commercially laundered outside his home. I think it's mainly out of concern for children/grandchildren in his home, but it was pretty impressive. I started keeping lead-removal wipes in all my range bags after this. The number of times I've seen people go through 500-1k rounds at the range in the morning during a class, then eat a sandwich or something without even washing hands, is..a lot.
- vorpalhex 8y ago
  I buy the lead-removal wipes in bulk and hand them out like candy. I also notice all the ranges near me keep lead removal soap in the bathrooms. .22 ammo is the worst in this regard, just lead everywhere - which given that it's usually used in bulk given how cheap it is...

tomhoward 8y ago

I've had cause to research the topic of lead (and other metals) toxicity quite extensively. A key factor seems to be the body's propensity to produce metallothionein [1], proteins that bind metallic compounds in the body, either to metabolise and utilise them (in the case of beneficial metals like zinc, copper, iron, selenium etc), or to remove them (in the case of toxic metals like lead, mercury, aluminium, cadmium etc). This propensity seems to be determined by genetic predisposition and/or genetic expression in response to environmental stimuli. This is why, in a group of people subjected to similar levels of environmental lead exposure (e.g., soldiers in the same military unit, children in the same town with contaminated water), only some will exhibit symptoms. Here's my own experience: I have not done any military service as an adult, nor used firearms more than a handful of times. (I participated in army cadets in high school but it was little more than boy-scout training - camping, survival skills, hiking, etc). But I did spend a few years in my late teens/early 20s working in an electronics factory soldering circuit boards. I grew up in the last few years of leaded car fuel still being commonplace. I also grew up in an old house that may (or may not) have had lead water pipes. For much of my life, I've experienced a complex set of vague, but moderately debilitating symptoms. Nothing apparently life-threatening, but always frustrating and often painful. In childhood it manifested as respiratory problems, learning/cognition difficulties (including modest academic and sporting performance even though I tried hard at both and was often assessed as being of high natural ability), social difficulties, anxiety and mood instability, tinnitus, and digestive issues. In adulthood it progressed into conditions such as depression, chronic fatigue syndrome, endocrine problems, painful muscle tension in the back, head, neck and hip regions, dizziness/confusion/fuzzy vision at times, among other things that have come and gone along the way. I happened to do a home urine test just this morning, something I do from time to time. It indicated the presence of lead in my urine, which has routinely been the case for the past year or more. I've also sent hair samples to a commercial testing lab every 6-24 months over the past 10 years, which have consistently suggested accumulations in my body of lead and other metals including aluminium, cadmium, mercury and others. People may react with skepticism that home urine tests and commercial hair tests are of any clinical validity. Fair enough. But, as the linked article explains, you just can't easily get this stuff considered, tested and diagnosed by mainstream doctors. I've seen multiple mainstream doctors over the years, and the best they can ever offer is anxiety or anti-depressant medication. They'll run tests on all the standard stuff - cholesterol, Vitamin D, iron... that's usually about it. Everything always shows up close enough to normal and they tell you you're fine and send you on your way. But despite doctors' assurances, I haven't felt fine, and my ability to live a normal life, compared to most other people I observe, has not been fine. So I do the only thing that seems to be available to me, which is home urine tests and commercial-lab hair tests. And they tell me something thing that makes sense when I read things like the linked article; there's just too much lead in my body. In the 10+ years since this possibility became apparent and I started doing these kinds of tests, I've done a lot of work to get my physiology to a state where it could remove the metals from my system. I've considered doing chelation therapy but I understand that carries its own risks (i.e., removing important nutrients and moving toxic metals to areas where they can cause more harm), and that you're better off just supporting your body to detoxify at its own pace. It seems to be working, slowly but surely. That would be why the lead is showing up in my urine now, after not doing so in the first few years; as alluded to in the article, it's been accumulated in my bones and is now coming out. My health, and life, is steadily improving. People keep saying I'm looking healthier and functioning better. My fitness keeps improving. My muscle tension and pain keeps subsiding. My work performance and career seems to be on the up. But boy, it's been tough to get through, and all the more difficult through the lack of mainstream medical recognition, and from the ridicule that inevitably comes your way as soon as you start talking about testing methods and healing techniques that are outside the mainstream. That's probably the toughest part. I'm a scientifically-minded person from a family of mainstream science and medical professionals, yet due to the hand I've been dealt, in the absence of any other options, I've been forced to venture outside the mainstream, and have found myself being the subject of ridicule and scorn at times. Anyone who has read this far might want to think about that next time you mock someone for seeking help from non-mainstream practitioners like naturopaths, acupuncturists, chiropractors, etc. You probably have little idea of just how much difficulty and frustration they've been through before winding up there, or what undiagnosed underlying issue has caused their predicament. I know I'm not alone in having these challenges, and I know plenty of people have it a lot worse than me - particularly those lacking the financial means and family+social support that I’ve had. With that in mind, it's high time that we started taking this problem seriously. Knowing what I know now, it wouldn't surprise me if it turned out that lead and other metals toxicity is an explanation for a huge amount of the debilitating illness that mainstream medicine is currently unable to diagnose and treat. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallothionein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallothionein

rdl 8y ago

> In a single six-week course, each student would fire upward of 150,000 rounds Whoa. 3571 rounds per day for every day for 42 days?

mikestew 8y ago
Obviously the ammunition is purchased very much in bulk, but let's say, I dunno, $0.05/round? (I pay around $0.25 or more for .45ACP for a handgun.) Carry the one...$1250/week just in ammo.
- rdl 8y ago
  $0.25/rd is a fair price for 9mm or 5.56mm. However, it is 25000 rounds per week. $6250/wk. Plus a bunch of other costs far exceeding the ammo costs. I don't think the 150k rounds round count is reasonable, unless a lot of that is fired from something other than individual weapons used by the servicemember.

johnminter 8y ago

In addition, there are lead issues in older military housing on bases like Ft. Meade. My youngest granddaughter had a false positive on her test; several other children were not so lucky. The good news is that the top brass at the highest levels are working to resolve the problem.

kyleblarson 8y ago

A gun shop and range in Bellevue Washington had a serious lead issue a few years back: http://projects.seattletimes.com/2014/loaded-with-lead/2/ http://projects.seattletimes.com/2014/loaded-with-lead/2/

zeristor 8y ago

Chelation therapy seems to solve their problems, but doesn't that mean that it goes into sewers and will become a problem there?