It’s estimated that the minimum direct cost of lead on wildlife, people and the environment, across Europe is £400m to £1.17 billion annually.3
Feature
Policy briefing: Lead ammunition
We’re calling for a ban on the use of lead shot for the safety of wildlife, people and the environment.
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The problem with lead
Lead has long been known to be a poison and has been banned from most consumer products including petrol and paint. However, most ammunition – including bullets, gunshot and airgun pellets – has traditionally been made with lead, or lead alloys.
Lead poisoning from spent ammunition is a significant problem for the health and welfare of a wide range of wild birds, notably waterbirds, carrion-eaters and gamebirds. Despite a partial ban on lead shot, lead remains a significant cause of mortality for a range of species.
Birds and mammals can ingest spent lead ammunition by mistaking it for food or grit, or by scavenging shot animals that have not been retrieved. Animals that are shot but not killed may carry lead shot in their bodies that negatively affects their behaviour and survival.
In areas of intensive shooting, lead can leach out from spent ammunition and be taken up by some plants and soil microfauna, resulting in it entering the food chain1. Exposure to lead can cause anaemia and damage to the nervous and circulatory systems. Swallowing even a single pellet can compromise a bird’s immune system and its ability to store energy, with potentially fatal consequences, for example when it starts migration.
As well as posing a problem for wildlife, lead is also harmful to people. For example, exposure to lead can have permanent adverse effects on cognitive function in children2. The UK Food Standards Agency states that ‘there is no agreed safe level for lead intake. Independent scientific expert groups advise that exposure to lead should be reduced as far as possible’. The European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) considers lead to be a non-threshold substance, which means that no amount of exposure is considered safe for humans.
What’s the scale of the problem?
It’s estimated that 8,000–13,000 tonnes of lead gunshot are used in the UK each year4 and this shot can take many hundreds of years to degrade. As a result, the amount of lead in the environment is widespread and accumulating.
It’s thought that 50,000–100,000 waterbirds (about 1.5–3.0% of the wintering population) are likely to die each winter as a direct result of lead poisoning in the UK. In addition, the welfare of several hundred thousand wildfowl may be affected every year5.
Several birds of conservation concern have been recorded as suffering from lead poisoning, including Grey Partridges, Red Kites, Marsh Harriers and Honey Buzzards6. Clearly, avoiding unnecessary mortality of these species is a conservation priority.
An RSPB study found that, on average, a whole deer carcass contained 356 bullet fragments and the internal organs contained on average 180 fragments7. Most of these fragments were very small and it was estimated that at least 80% of metallic bullet-derived lead in the internal organs would be expected to be ingested by scavenging birds.
Many lead fragments are sufficiently small and distant from obviously injured tissue that professional butchers did not remove them when trimming venison for human consumption8. Of the deer carcasses examined, 90% contained bullet fragments, mostly less than 2mm in size.
What’s the alternative?
Alternatives to lead have advanced significantly over the last 20 years. Copper is the primary alternative to lead for bullets used in the control of large vertebrates, such as deer, although smaller calibres are also used for Fox and Rabbit control. For shot used for wildfowling, as well as grouse and pheasant shooting, steel is the most widely used alternative. A wide range of alternatives are available for airgun pellets, which are generally used in conservation projects for the humane dispatch of animals.
Since effective, safe and reasonably-priced non-toxic alternatives to lead shot are now widely available there are no technical reasons not to ban the sale and use of lead in ammunition.
What are the current regulations?
In the UK, current regulations are limited to partial bans on the use of lead gunshot. In England9 and Wales10 use of lead shot is banned for shooting certain species (ducks, geese, swans, Coots and Moorhens) and shooting any species over the foreshore or named wetland Sites of Special Scientific interest (SSSIs). In Scotland11 and Northern Ireland12, use of lead shot is banned for any shooting over any wetland, as defined by the Ramsar Convention13. All use of lead shot away from wetlands is currently legal.
Even where regulations have been introduced, compliance can be very poor. A study of compliance with existing wetland- and waterfowl-based regulations in England14, commissioned by Defra, found that 70% of ducks sampled (344 out of 492) had been shot with lead, ten years after the regulations had been introduced.
Our position
We believe that the existing partial ban on the use of lead shot over wetlands is nowhere near adequate to address the risk of lead poisoning to wildlife, therefore we’re calling for a statutory ban on the usage of all forms of lead ammunition in the UK. Our concerns about the impact of lead in the environment led us to phase out lead ammunition on land managed by the RSPB by the end of 2020.
Citations
- Pain D et al (2015) Poisoning of birds and other wildlife from ammunition-derived lead in the UK.
- Canfield RL et al (2003) Intellectual impairment in children with blood lead concentrations below 10 mu g per deciliter. New England Journal of Medicine 348: 1517–1526.
- Pain DJ et al (2019) Wildlife, human and environmental costs of using lead ammunition: An economic review and analysis. Ambio 48: 969–988.
- Pain DJ et al (2016) Poisoning of birds and other wildlife from ammunition-derived lead in the UK. Proc. Oxford Lead Symposium.
- Green RE and Pain DJ (2016) Possible effects of ingested lead gunshot on populations of ducks wintering in the UK. Ibis 158: 699–710. doi:10.1111/ibi.12400
- Fisher IJ et al (2006) A review of lead poisoning from ammunition sources in terrestrial birds. Biological Conservation 131: 421–432.
- Knott J et al (2010) Implications for wildlife and humans of dietary exposure to lead from fragments of lead rifle bullets in deer shot in the UK. Science of the Total Environment 409(1): 95–99.
- Hunt WG et al (2006) Bullet fragments in deer remains: Implications for lead exposure in avian scavengers. Wildlife Society Bulletin 34: 167–170.
- Environmental Protection (Restrictions on Use of Lead Shot) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2003 – http://www.hmso.gov.uk/si/si2003/20032512.htm [first enacted in 1999]
- The Environmental Protection (Restriction on Use of Lead Shot) (Wales) Regulations 2002 – http://www.hmso.gov.uk/legislation/wales/wsi2002/20021730e.htm
- The Environmental Protection (Restriction on Use of Lead Shot) (Scotland) (No.2) Regulations 2004 – http://www.opsi.gov.uk/legislation/scotland/ssi2004/20040358.htm
- The Environmental Protection (Restriction on Use of Lead Shot) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2009 – www.opsi.gov.uk/sr/sr2009/plain/nisr_20090168_en
- Wetlands are defined as, regardless of size, any areas of foreshore, marsh, fen, peatland with standing water, regularly or seasonally flooded fields, and other water sources whether they be natural or man-made, static or flowing, fresh, brackish or salt.
- Cromie RL et al (2010) Compliance with the Environmental Protection (Restrictions on Use of Lead Shot) (England) Regulations 1999. Report to Defra, Bristol.