Gerofke et al. 2018 - Lead in wild game shot with lead and non-lead ammunition
Gerofke and colleagues measured lead in wild game meat and compared animals shot with lead versus non-lead ammunition. The study is routeable for game-meat lead occurrence because it reports lead concentration distributions and explicitly ties the concentration difference to ammunition type. It supports the game-meat page’s distinction between environmental uptake and projectile-derived contamination.
Key numbers
- The study reports arithmetic mean, median, geometric mean, and 95th percentile lead values for game-meat groups.
- Values below LOD or LOQ were substituted as 0.5 times the LOD or LOQ for arithmetic mean and median calculations.
- The authors state that, for cervids and wild boar, lead ammunition significantly increased lead concentrations in game meat.
- The paper notes that detected concentrations were in the range regularly found in game meat available from the German food trade.
Methods (brief)
The authors analyzed lead in game meat and compared ammunition categories. Statistical summaries include mean, median, geometric mean, and upper-percentile values. The study reports total lead; no lead isotope or species distinction is used for routing.
Implications
Certification: This source supports direct game-meat Pb evidence and an ammunition-source note.
Courses: It is a core example for explaining why non-lead ammunition is a contamination-control intervention.
App: Game-meat risk scoring can treat ammunition type as a meaningful exposure modifier where known.
Wiki pages this source may touch
Verification notes
The source is a primary occurrence study with distribution statistics. It should not be collapsed with policy papers about lead ammunition that do not measure meat concentrations directly.
Page history
The five most recent substantive edits to this page. The full version history lives in git; when DOI minting comes online (see schema docs), each entry below will also link to a version-pinned DataCite DOI.
| Commit | Date | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 6eea0b9 | 2026-05-29 | ingest auto-fetched 2026-05-29 0000 batch 1: 9 source pages |