Lead bullet fragments in venison from rifle-killed deer: potential for human dietary exposure

Overview

Hunt and colleagues radiographed rifle-killed white-tailed deer carcasses and commercially processed venison packages to test whether standard lead-based bullets leave fragments in edible meat. The study reports direct occurrence evidence for projectile-derived lead fragments in ground venison, plus ICP confirmation of lead in excised radiodense fragments. A separate swine feeding experiment tested bioavailability; those blood-lead results are exposure context rather than product concentration measurements.

Key numbers

• Article identity: PLoS ONE 4(4), article e5330, DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0005330. The local PDF is a reproduction in Ingestion of Lead from Spent Ammunition: Implications for Wildlife and Humans, with proceedings DOI 10.4080/ilsa.2009.0112.
• Deer sample frame: 30 eviscerated white-tailed deer shot by licensed hunters in Sheridan County, Wyoming in November 2007; all bullets were 7-mm Remington Magnum, 150 grains, 9720 mg, with a lead core comprising 68% of bullet mass and a copper jacket comprising 32%.
• Carcass radiographs: all 30 carcasses showed metal fragments; the reported central count was 136 fragments, with a range of 15-409; fragment-cluster distances averaged 24 cm with range ± SD 5-43 ± 9 cm, and maximum single-fragment separation was 45 cm.
• Processed ground venison: fluoroscopy found visible metal fragments in ground meat from 24 (80%) of the 30 deer. At least one fragment was visible in 74 (32%) of 234 ground-meat packages; 160 (68%) had no visible fragments, 46 (20%) had one, 16 (7%) had two, and 12 (5%) had 3-8 fragments.
• Package-level distribution: an average of 32% of ground-meat packages per deer showed metal fragments, with N = 3-15 packages per deer, mean 7.8, and range 0-100% of packages.
• Aggregate ground-meat particles: the study observed 155 metal particles in ground-meat packages, equal to 3.1% of the 5074 particles counted in carcass radiographs.
• Processed loin steaks: among 16 deer carcasses with metal fragments near the spine, 4 deer (25% of selected deer) and 8% of 49 scanned loin-steak packages showed fragments; package fragment counts were 1-9.
• ICP confirmation: ICP analysis of radiodense fragments from ground meat packages from 13 deer identified lead in 25 (93%) of 27 samples. Aggregate lead fragment mass per package averaged 17.2 mg, with range ± SD 0.2-168 ± 39.8 mg, reported as 0.03% of the lead component of bullet mass.
• Background shank tissue: unprocessed muscle collected from the shank and away from the bullet path in the same 13 deer was below the 2.0 µg/g detection limit for lead.
• Swine bioavailability context: 8 pigs received venison over two feedings; 4 received fragment-containing venison and 4 received venison without fluoroscopically visible fragments from the same deer. The total lead fed to each pig was unknown; similar packages in the study contained 0.2-168 mg of lead, with median 4.2 mg.
• Blood-lead context: control pigs ranged from below the 0.5 µg/dL ICP-MS detection level to 1.2 µg/dL, with mean ± SD 0.63 ± 0.19 µg/dL. Fragment-fed pigs peaked at mean 2.29 µg/dL on day 2, with maximum 3.8 µg/dL, and were significantly higher than controls on days 1, 2, and 3.

Methods (brief)

Hunters killed 30 white-tailed deer under normal hunting conditions; each carcass was taken to a different commercial processor in Wyoming for normal boneless steaks and 2-pound (0.91 kg) ground-meat packages. The authors radiographed wound channels, scanned processed ground meat and selected loin-steak packages using digital radiography/fluoroscopy, excised visible radiodense fragments from selected packages, and measured lead and copper by ICP after nitric-acid digestion with a 2 µg/g lower detection limit. Lead isotope ratios were measured by MC-ICP-MS to compare meat, bullet, and bone lead. In the bioavailability experiment, blood lead was measured by ICP-MS with a 0.5 µg/dL lower detection limit and analyzed using repeated-measures ANOVA.

Implications

Certification (HMTc): This is direct occurrence evidence for projectile-derived lead fragments in rifle-killed venison processed under ordinary commercial procedures. It should route to game-meats lead context, with radiographic fragment incidence and ICP fragment confirmation kept distinct from bulk homogenized concentration studies.

Courses: The paper is a strong example of source-pathway attribution: the study links radiodense meat fragments to bullet lead through ICP and isotope ratios rather than treating all game-meat lead as background environmental uptake.

App: The source can support game-meat lead explanations that distinguish fragment detection in packages, lead mass in excised fragments, and post-ingestion blood-lead response.

Wiki pages this source may touch

• Lead
• Meat and poultry
• Meat and Poultry
• Game meats (venison, bison, rabbit)

Verification notes

• PDF text was extracted with pdftotext -layout to /tmp/mfk_june8_582.txt; the abstract, Methods, Results, Figure 1 caption, Figure 2 caption, and Discussion were checked against this page.
• DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0005330, title text, raw handle MFK_lead-bullet-fragments-in-venison-from-rifle-killed, and candidate cite-key hunt2009-lead-bullet-fragments-venison were searched before creation; no existing source page was found.
• Units and basis were preserved as the source reports them: fragment mass in mg, tissue detection limit in µg/g, package weights in 2-pound (0.91 kg), and blood lead in µg/dL; no unit conversion was performed.
• Speciation: the study concerns elemental lead in ammunition fragments. No arsenic, mercury, chromium, or organotin speciation is involved.
• Brand firewall: the source states that cartridges came from a single locally common brand but does not name that brand in the extracted text. No brand names are attached to contamination values.
• Frontmatter slugs were checked against docs/gpt-collaboration/taxonomy-snapshot.md. The taxonomy has game-meats as a product slug but lacks exact venison or game-meat ingredient slugs, so ingredients route through broad meat and meat-and-poultry.

Update history

The five most recent substantive edits to this page, classified major (evidence or structure moved), correction (a published value or statement was wrong and has been fixed), or minor (narrative rewritten without changing the underlying evidence). Each description is derived from what the edit did to this page; the linked commit is the authoritative record, routine regeneration passes are excluded, and 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.