Lead poisons and kills dozens of wildlife species and is also an acute threat to hunting families and others eating wild game shot with the toxic, irreducible metal
ALBANY, NY — Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy have filed a formal petition with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) calling on the agency to initiate rulemaking to prohibit the ongoing use of lead-based ammunition for sport hunting across the state’s fields and forests and marshlands. The groups assert that the scientific evidence documenting the harms of lead ammunition to wildlife, the environment, and public health is overwhelming and long settled. Hunting with lead ammunition is already forbidden under federal law for ducks, geese, and other waterfowl, but not restricted to deer, bears, turkeys, mourning doves, and dozens of other species.
“Lead is a potent neurotoxin, and it’s been recognized as deadly to humans and other animals for more than 2,500 years,” said Wayne Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy. “Lawmakers and regulators have banned its use in gasoline, paint, plumbing, and other pathways of exposure. For their own welfare and that of wildlife, hunters should stop dispersing this toxic metal across millions of acres of New Jersey’s landscapes, poisoning wildlife and putting themselves and their families at risk from ingesting of lead-infused wild-game meat.”
While some states have adopted voluntary programs in an attempt to curtail lead ammunition the petition filed with DEP calls for a mandatory phase out since “voluntary programs attract very few participants, have proved to be unscalable, and are no substitute for comprehensive legal standards to compel the transition to widely available, affordable ammunition made from other elements and alloys that does not keep killing long after a round has left the barrel,” noted Scott Edwards, the general counsel for Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy.
“Gun and ammunition makers already produce and sell bullets made from copper, bismuth, and other non-toxic elements and alloys,” said Nicolas W. Platt, the former Mayor of Harding Township where he continues to sit on the town council and is the newly minted New Jersey state director for Animal Wellness Action. “We need a state policy to require that an immediate shift toward non-toxic ammunition, so our environment isn’t littered with widely dispersed, irreducible lead fragments that will kill long after the bullets have left the barrel.”
Rounds of lead ammunition fragment and disperse widely, including within a broad wound channel of an animal struck by the hot metal. Scavenging wildlife—including eagles, hawks, vultures, and mammals—ingest lead fragments as they pick through gut piles and suffer acute poisoning or long-term neurological damage. Other animals directly consume lead fragments from stream bottoms or in the soil.
There are more than 500 peer-reviewed papers that document mass poisoning of more than 130 species of wildlife that perishes from plumbism. A landmark 2022 study published in Science of 1,210 eagles across 38 states, including New Jersey, found that nearly half of eagles had bone lead levels consistent with chronic poisoning, and roughly one-third showed evidence of acute exposure. Lead fragments in the remains of hunted animals were identified as a primary driver of these population-level effects.
Dr. Aisha Dickerson, a pediatrician and epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, recently told a Maryland Senate committee that there is no CDC safe level of lead and testified lead is a well-documented neurotoxin affecting brain development, organ systems, and long-term cognitive health in humans, too. She described that lead accumulates over time in the brain, blood and bones, blocking calcium absorption, reducing growth in children, causing bones to be more brittle in women, and weakening bones in seniors making them more susceptible falling and serious harm if not worse.
She noted there should be serious concern about donated deer meat to food banks, where these consumers unwittingly consume dangerous levels of lead. Peer-reviewed scientific studies from NIH show there can be a reduction in IQ in children who have been exposed to lead, including lead ammunition, from 5 to 7+ points impacting their ability to learn and create behavioral issues that parents and the school systems are left to deal with. See study here.
The groups point to the experience of California, which enacted a statewide ban on lead ammunition for hunting in 2013. That policy was phased in and now is in place for all 60 species legally hunted in the state. A generation prior, in 1991, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife mandated an end to the use of lead ammunition in hunting ducks, geese, and other waterfowl. Waterfowl hunting was, and is today, a significant commercial and recreational enterprise in many states. When this ban went into effect – long before there were online sales of ammunition allowing hunters to purchase ammunition in the national marketplace in two or three days — hunters made the transition to lead-free shot for waterfowl hunting in all 50 states. The policy saves 1.4 million to 3.9 million ducks and geese annually, with more abundant waterfowl population enhancing hunting success rates for hunters and hunting guides.
The organizations stated that if the agency declines to act on the petition or unreasonably delays rulemaking, they are prepared to pursue all available legal remedies to ensure that the public trust in wildlife is upheld and that preventable lead exposure is addressed.
Jim Keen, DVM, PhD, director of veterinary science for the Center for a Humane Economy, wrote a synthesis of the literature on the deadly effects of hunter-dispersed lead fragments. That report is here.